ROCKHAMPTON TRAGEDY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19528, 10 July 1925, Page 9

ROCKHAMPTON TRAGEDY

FATHER MURDERS DAUGHTER, IMPRISONMENT FOR LIFE. JURY VISITS THE PICTURES. Prea« Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. BRISBANE, July 9. Oliver Johnson Duck was found guilty of the murder of his daughter Olive, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life with hard labour. On Tuesday night the jury, foreseeing that they would be looked up all night, asked to bo allowed to break the monotony by attending a picture show. By permission of the judge, and at the expense of the Crown, the 12 jurors, escorted by the police, occupied seats in the dress circle and witnessed, a Wild West production m which most of the characters except the hero and heroine were slain or wounded. In the course of the trial the police produced a confession mode to them by Duck giving pathetic details of how hw daughter pleaded with him not to shoot her. When lie pointed the revolver at her she screamed, and, refusing to be quiet, he fired and shot her dead. Then he strapped the body on his saddle and rode 37 miles through the night. He, buried his daughter at dawn.

A .grim tragedy was perpetrated near Rockhampton, when. Oliver Johnson Duck, aged 39, shot his illegitimate daughter, Olive Violet Duck, aged 13. He earned the body about on horseback all nighty, and buried it at dawn in the sand; then, late in the afternoon he surrendered 'to the Calliope police. The girl had been reared by her grandmother. Duck had expressed a wish to claim her and put her in a convent. Accompanied by the police, Duck showed where he hid the revolver with which the deed was committed.