ALLEGED CHILD-MURDERS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1211, 17 May 1895, Page 31

ALLEGED CHILD-MURDERS.

SERIOUS CHARGE AGAINST A WOMAN. By Association. IjJVEiidA-RGihL, May 9. At Winton to-day, Minnie Dean, wife of Charles Dean, was arrested on a charge of having on or about the 3rd inst. murdered an infant named Eva Hornsby. Dunedin, May 11. la connection with the arrest of Mrs Dean at Winton, on the charge of the murder of an infant named Eva Hornsby, a number _ bf constables Urfi engaged. in sOai'chihg 1 the neighbourhood of Clarendon for the body. The woman got possession of the child, with <£lo, from its grandmother, and had it when she got out of the train at the Clarendon Station. When she reached Invercargill she did not have the child.

This morning the police found in Mrs Dean’s garden the bodies of two baby girls answering the description of those left in her charge. Dean has been arrested on a charge of murder-.

May 12. OnC of the, bodies found in the garden Of Dean at Winton has been identified as thd,t Of the child, which the wohian Dean had on the 30th. The woman left Christchurch because the police had interfered in a case in which she had received a child from a young woman and her mother. The child was being badly treated, and the police hearing of it, and tracing the mother of the child, insisted on it being taken away. The extent of the trade carried on by the Deans can only be ascertained by those who entrusted them with children coming forward and giving information to the police.

Invekcakgill, May 12. The garden at the house occupied by the Deans at Winton has been further searched by the police, but the only thing of a suspicious nature found was a small skull. It is not certain yet if it is human. The elder infant, whose body was found in the flower plot, was in Mrs Dean’s custody for four or five days before she started for Milburnwia Lumsden and Gore, and went with her. | The doctors who have examined the ! bodies have found no distinct traces of violence. There are a few marks about the neck of a month - old baby, but these may arise from decay. The grandmother of this child identified its clothes in Dean’s house. Charles Dean was at one time the holder of a large area of land at Etal Creek, Wairaki, but gave it up some years ago. He is a very old resident. Mrs Dean is his second wife, and was the widow of a doctor. It is said she gives her age as 48, but she looks older. She is well educated. A preliminary letter to the relatives of the child Hornsby made great professions of kindness to the child, and spoke as if the woman had a good position. Dean is somewhat affected by the arrest, but the woman was not perturbed. She denied stoutly that she had ever seen the person from whom she was said to have received the child Hornsby. While she was doing so, Detective Herbert noticed her surreptitiously fumbling with some clothing, which she stuffed into a bed. Herbert pulled it out, and the woman identified the articles as the clothing the infant Hornsby wore when she handed it to Mrs Dean, who thereafter I maintained a stubborn, silence. *

The police had kept an eye on the woman, but had great difficulty in approaching her, as she declined to register her home, although once fined for keeping children without a license. Invergakgil/O, May 12. The’ police this morning unearthed the body ox a boy about four years old, much decomposed, off the Dean’s section at Winton. This makes the’ third body recovered. Digging operations are Still proceeding. The inquest will probably bs opened tonight.