DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21118, 27 February 1932, Page 13

DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

HUSBAND AND WIFE DEAD.

SHOTS FIRED BY THE MAN. NO MOTIVE DISCLOSED. [from our own correspondent.] MELBOURNE, Feb. 18. The double tragedy at Elwood, Melbourne, on January 20, when Margaret Alexandra McKenzie, aged 53, and her husband, David Anderson McKenzie, aged 56, were found dead in the bedroom of their home, was investigated this week by the coroner, who found that McKenzie shot his wife and then shot himself. No motive was disclosed. McKenzie was proprietor for . many years of a firm of grocers and wine and spirit merchants at Bendigo. He retired about eight years ago, and, with his wife, went to live at Elwood. The tragedy was discovered by Maud Ellson, housemaid, when she took up the customary cup of tea to the couple's bedroom about 7.30 a.m. On the previous evening Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie went out in their car about 7.45 p.m„ but before going Mrs. McKenzie "said she was going to the pictures and that Mr. McKenzie might go on to his club. McKenzie returned about 8 p.m., said Misa. Ellson, and after having put his car ip the garage he went out for a walk.. He returned about 10 o'clock, and sat in the lounge room. Senior-Constable Rowe said he found McKenzie in bed with a gunshot wound in his right temple. In his hand, which pointed in the direction of the wound, was a sawn-off breech-loading gun. There were two empty shells in the breech of the gun. Mrs. McKenzie was beside him with a gunshot wound behind the right ear. Both were dead. On the workshop bench at the rear of the house he saw two hand-saws and a hack-saw, with steel filings close to a small vice. , He saw Detective Jeffery move a small piece of flooring board from the floor in the worksnop and pull out portion of the barrel and stock of a gun. John Boothman Sawers, auditor, who identified the bodies, said that Mrs. McKenzie was his sister. He had been in the habit of visiting the McKenzies \ almost weekly during the past four years. They had been a happy couple, and he could give no reason for the tragedy. His sister and her husband did not suffer from nervous strain. McKenzie had spoken to him of financial matters only in a general way, and he had not seemed worried. Evidence that McKenzie had purchased a small double-barrelled gun and some cartridges was given by a storekeeper. McKenzie told him that he wanted to buy a small gun for shooting rabbits out of a motor-car. " I showed him a gun known as the '4lo' which takes small, short cartridges. He purchased the gun and some cartridges, which were charged to him," said the witness. " McKenzie appeared-to be as bright and jovial as he always was, and he did not appear to have a care in the world." The coroner found that Mrs. McKenzie died from a gunshot wound feloniously, unlawfully and maliciously inflicted by her husband, and that McKenzie died from a gunshot wound in the head, wilfully inflicted.