MURDERS IN VICTORIA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XIII, Issue 4489, 30 January 1886, Page 2

MURDERS IN VICTORIA

The latest Melbourne telegrams state : — A shocking murder and suicide has been committed at Forbes, a town a short distance from Mansfield, by a farmer named Harry Brooks. He deliberately cut his wife's throat and then his own. It is supposed that he was suffering from despondency, induced by financial embarrasment. — At Richmond last week, a painter named John Buckley tried to kill his wife with a pair of scissors, and failing killed himself. — At Beaufort, a lad 13 yoars of age, named Ballantine, shot liis stepfather, who was called Stewart. The lad went about it in a fashion so cool as almost to be comical. He went to a neighbor and borrowed the gun, "for his father; " and he asked to have one barrel loaded. The neighbor obliged him, and he went to look for his father, whom lie found working in the garden. He laid the gun along the gatepost to secure a good aim, which he obtained, as the stepfather fell down with 80 pellets in his back and arm. The youngster then took the gun back, and told the neighbor that " his father thanked him for the loan of it." The stepfather ia not much the worse. The lad is an incorrigible youth beyond the control of his parents.