ATTACK ON WOMAN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22246, 26 April 1934, Page 10

ATTACK ON WOMAN

A LABOURER CHARGED ATTEMPTED MURDER ALLEGED fPer United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, April ,24. A charge of attempted murder was preferred in the Police Court to-day against John Conway Murphy, a labourer, aged 43 years. It is alleged that he attacked Mrs Heimdal when she was walking along a lonely track on the Town Belt, near the municipal golf links, on the night of April 2, inflicting serious injuries. ' Mrs Heimdal said she was divorced, with four children. She had known the accused intimately six or seven years. He accompanied her and two children to the pictures on the afternoon of April 2, and witness and accused arranged a meeting that evening. They stopped on the way for a few minutes, and an argument arose. The accused asked her if he could accompany her to work the following morning, but witness declined. The accused thought she was meeting somebody else, and hit her on the head, and then, took something from his pocket, and began to cut her. He then left her. She managed to reach her sister’s house, where she lived. Cross-examined, witness said that when she obtained her divorce she did not contemplate marrying Murphy, but Murphy might have contemplated marriage. Murphy was jealous of her, and three days before the attack he said that if she refused to marry him, uobody else would marry her. It was stated in the police evidence that shortly after the time of the assault the accused gave himself up voluntarily and a, l° n K statement by him describing the circumstances of the assault and those contributing to it was rend out. At the end of the hearing an application by the accused’s counsel for the charge ’to be changed to one of aggravated assault was not upheld by the magistrate.