CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22905, 12 June 1936, Page 16

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

MELBOURNE MURDERER HANGED ANOTHER EXECUTION IN SYDNEY (From Oub Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, June 4. The hanging of a murderer in Melbourne and the decision of the New South Waleß Cabinet that another should be hanged here have again revived controversy about capital punishment, which had only recently died down following the execution of Edwin Hickey, a youth who killed a man in a train between the Blue Mountains and Sydney. The Melbourne murderer was Arnold Bodeman, aged 36, who was found guilty of killing a six-year-old girl at Leogatha, and, according to a confession he made to the police and produced at his' trial, had similarly killed three other girls in the last few years by binding and suffocating them. He elated that he killed them without motive, but from an irresistible desire. An appeal was made to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on behalf of Sodeman, but it was dismissed. From the time of his arrest in December until his execution he spoke only 13 words at the inquest, the trial, and the execution. This is unique among condemned men in Melbourne. Neither his wife, relatives, nor friends saw him after his arrest, his only visitors being his solicitor and a clergyman. After his arrest he ■aid he wanted to be hanged, because he could not help himself. Shortly before his execution he told the deputy governor at Pentridge Gaol that he was "glad it was nearly over." A post-mortem examination showed that Sodeman's brain was diseased and showed early lepto-meningitis, which was causing gradual mental degeneration. A doctor who specialises in diseases of the brain said that lepto-meningitis had no specific cause and no specific effect, but it would lead to paralysis of the brain, causing mental trouble of various kinds. The disease can persist for years without causing death, but can bring about serious congestion of the brain should the subject take much alcohol. At the trial of Sodeman three doctors, all lunacy experts, stated that Sodeman was suffering from some mental disorder, and at times was not conscious of what he was doing. The Sydney murderer condemned this week to be hanged on June 15 was James Leighton Massey, 21, who shot and killed Norman Stead, after having attempted to rob the Star Service Station, Darlinghurst, on the night of February 10. Massev claimed that Stead rushed at him and made a grab at the pistol, and that in the struggle the safety catch must have been released. He denied that he had fired the shot, saying that all he had the pistol for was "to scare him." Massey, a married man who came from Victoria, declared that he was badly pressed for money, and it was with the object of trying to raise his fare back to Melbourne, that he decided to hold up the service station. The pistol, he said, he had found in a Melbourne park. He had had the oistol for about 12 months—it had a fascination for him, he said. He admitted in cross-examination that, armed with the same revolver, he had held up a caraee in Old South Head Road and had taken £5 4s. Aubrey Potter, wh& was with Masses' when the murder was committed and had been sentenced to death, had his sentence commuted to 15 years' hard labour. MasBey had said that Potter did not know the revolver was loaded, and had stood outside the caraee when Massev entered it. „

The Executive Council, which endorsed the Cabinet's decision about Massey and Potter, commuted the sentence of death on four other murderers to nenal servitude for life. These were:—Lionel John Roberts, 17. who murdered Robert King. 22 crazier, at Mooroobee Station, near Ta'mworth. on February 14: Roy Malcolm Souter, 17. murderer of Christopher Bolder. 22. crazier, near Wajrcra. on December 30; James Earsman, 07. sentenced for the murder of John Hcwett. 04. who was found battered to death in n hut in Cilsandra on January 1°: and Percival Henry Thompson. 55, sentenced for the murder of his wife and mother-in-law. at Parramatta. on December 27. It was ordered that all except Earsnjan should never be released.