TORONTO TRAGEDY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19498, 5 June 1925, Page 9

TORONTO TRAGEDY

INQUEST ON VICTIM. ALLEGED CONFESSION BY ACCUSED Proas Association —By Telegraph—Copyright. SYDNEY, June 4. (Received June 4, at 11.10 p.m.) The inquest on Mona Beacher, the victim of the Toronto tragedy, was commenced at Newcastle to-day. A huge crowd, mostly consisting of women, violently struggled to gain admittance to the court. Oakes was present in custody. The medical evidence showed that the girl was in a curtain condition, and that she had died as a result of concussion, perhaps hastened by hemorrhage. The police produced a statement alleged to have been made by Oakes at the police station after his arrest, in which ho was alleged to have said that he knocked about with Mona. She told him that she was in a certain condition, and they agreed to get married. After the ceremony they went to Toronto. They went to bed together about 9 o’clock. About midnight he got up while Mona was asleep and murdered her with a razor and a hammer. Hu then detailed how he tried to obliterate traces of the crime. He added that he took a train to Sydney and sent a telegram to Miss Poacher's parents. He then returned homo. • Ho did this as he knew ho had done wrong and did not want to be found out. A story of what appeared to bo a gross deception was disclosed on May 21 last when the body of a young woman was found in a cottage at 'Toronto, near Newcastle, with tornhJo injuries to her head and throat. At first the affair was surrounded by an air of mystery, but police investigations showed that the woman's name was Mona Beacher, aged 20, and that she had gone to the cottage a few days earlier in company with a man named Arthur Agustua Oakes. The couple had been married on the previous Friday, the girl being ignorant of the fact that Oakes was a married man with two children. They had been keeping company for two years. Oakes, who was employed by a well-known linn of merchants at Newcastle, was remanded on a charge of murdering the girl.