TERRIBLE TRAGEDY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21296, 24 September 1932, Page 18

TERRIBLE TRAGEDY

BOY'S GRUESOME DISCOVERY v • TWO MEN DEAD IN FLAT . Terribly mutilated as a result of gunshot wounds, James Oswald Smith, aged 20, and Richard Leonard Dalton David Bond, aged 40, both single men, were discovered dead recently in a flat at Bondi, Sydney. Although no explanation can be found for the tragedy, the evidence seems to show that Bond shot Smith and then killed himself. He was found with a rifle clenched in his right hand and his wounds indicated that he had placed the end of the barrel in his mouth and then pulled the trigger. The men were believed to be on good terms. For the last five years Bond had been living with members of Smith's family, who occupy a flat over the Commonwealth Savings Bank Chambers. Smith was an electrician employed at the Chullora railway workshops and Bond was unemploved. They were last seen alive about 11 a.m. by Smith's father, who did not notice any bad feeling between the pair. Arriving at the flat about 5.15 p.m., Oscar Smith, a brother of James Smith, found the two men lying dead. He faintod and it was not, until other mgmbers of the family arrived home several hours later that"the police were notified of the tragedy. Smith was lying on his hack with a bullet wound in his forehead over the right eye. Bond was lying close beside him with a gaping hole in the back of his head, and his finger still on the trigger of a small-calibre rifle. There were no signs of a struggle. The police, after careful inquiry, were not able to find anything to indicate that there was ill-feeling between the two men Members of Smith's family say they were on friendly terms. However, the position in which the two were lying, the nature of their wounds, Bond's strong grasp of the rifle and the presence of two shells, one lying on Smith's body, have convinced them that the case must bo one of murder and suicide.

When Oscar Smith, sped 15, called at ♦ho flat, hn found the front door locked. He knocked and shouted,, but received no reply. Puzzled, he went to the hack of the building and, after considerable difficulty, gained admittance to the kitchen by a window. He found no one in the living room, and had decided that the flat was empty, when he had occasion to enter one of the bedrooms, where he discovered ,the bodies.