THE WAIHAO MURDER CASE

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1514, 7 March 1901, Page 46

THE WAIHAO MURDER CASE

W AIM ATE, F ebru ary 2 8. At the Magistrate’s Court, before Major -Keddell, S.M., this morning, Jeremiah McCarthy was charged with having murdered Thomas Sullivan, at Waihao, on the 12th January, 1895. Mr White, Crown Prosecutor, stated that new evidence would connect the accused with the • injuries from which Sullivan had died, or which accelerated his death. This evidence was that of two witnesses who were not called at previous inquiries. They would state that the accused beat the deceased ‘with a heavy stick, and then assisted him across a paddock to a wire fence aud threw him over. Subsequently he took a wheelbarrow and wheeled him out to the road. Next day the accused! took the deceased a considerable distance along the road iu a cart. The first Witnesses were those called in the previous case to establish identity. The cnly fresh evidence was that given by the accused’s daughter Catherine, who deposed that lidr father struck the old man Sullivan several times with a stick like an axe handle. He knocked him down, and as he could not walk when he got up again the accused lifted him, up and threw him over a six-wire fence. McCarthy then got a barrow, and, putting Sullivan on it, wheeled! him down the road and laid him alongside a gorse fence. Next evening he put him iu a trap and shifted him to the cross roads, where he was subsequently picked up dead. Ellen McCarthy, another daughter, fifteen years of age. was being examined when the Crown Prosecutor asked that she be treated as a hostile witness. Argument was proceeding on the request when the Court adjourned till te-morrow-The accused was sent to the Timaru Gaol. WAIMATE. March 1. On resuming inquiry into the charge of

murder laid against Jeremiah the Magistrate ruled that Ellen McCarthy might be treated as a hostile witness. Her statement made to Defective Fitzgerald and signed by ber on the 10th January was put in. It stated that when the old man (Thomas Sullivan) came to the door in the evening her father hit him with a stick and knocked him dowa. Her father then took him away in a wheelbarrow. Afterwards slxe heard that the old man was dead. On a subsequent date, at tbe Crown Prosecutor’s office, she added that her father hit the old man half a dozen times with an axehandle. The police evidence as to the finding of the body indicated tbat it had been placed where it was found after death. Dr Barclay, who made tie post~:nortem for the inquest, was the last witness for the Crown. The injuries which he found were accounted for by tbe evidence of Kate McCarthy, and accelerated death. Mi* Raymond, who appeared for the accused, called no witnesses. He reserved the defence. The accused was committed for trial.