CHARGED WITH MURDER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25428, 8 January 1944, Page 8

CHARGED WITH MURDER

BOY UNMOVED BY CRIME

DRAMATIC STORY IN COURT (0.C.) ' SYDNEY, Dec. 21. Described by a doctor to be of average mentality, Leslie John Turner, aged 15, was unmoved when police showed him the body of Gordon Miles Archibald, aged 53, grazier and racehorse owner, whom he was alleged to have murdered at Nabinabah Station, near Scone, New South Wales, on November 18. Turner showed no emotion when an alleged confession by him was read at the Coroner’s Court.

Police Sergeant John Loomea, of Scone, said that while travelling to the homestead in a police car, he passed Archibald’s motor truck travelling av high speed in the opposite direction. He chased the track for five miles before stopping it. Loomes said: “Turner stepped from the truck with his hands upraised, saying, ‘ I surrender.’ Turner said he had shot Mr Archibald. In the back of the truck I found two rifles. Both had been recently fired. At the homestead Kenneth Archibald was sitting on a doorstep, bleeding from a wound in the left knee. Turner said, ‘ J shot him, too.’ ”

In an alleged statement, which Loomes read in court. Turner said: “ When Mr Archibald left the house in a car at about 5 p.m. I decided to rob the place. I packed into suitcases a lot of stuff, including a tommy-gun, and took a rifle and money. I loaded a .303 and a .22 rifle. Archibald came in the washhouse door and said, ‘ What’s going on here? ’ I dropped the suitcase and fired at him through the wire door with the .22. Archibald said, ‘You’ve shot me.’ I grabbed the .303, ran outside, and fired at him. I then- went in and got the suitcases. Archibald was lying on the floor in n lot of blood.

“I saw Ken Archibald coming home in the truck. I went to my room, and he into the washhouse. I heard him calling me, and when I saw him coming I put the .303 out of the window and fired. He turned and ran to the house " Kenneth Gordon Archibald, aged 20,who appeared in court on crutches, said he found his father’s body when he returned to the house from the wool shed. ‘‘l was shot in the knee when I was heading for Turner’s room,” he said.