TRIAL OF BOAKES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 202, 15 November 1927, Page 13

TRIAL OF BOAKES

Judge Doubts if Charge of Murder Should be Proceeded With DEATH OF GIRL SCARFF Press Association . AWAITING trial on the charge of murdering Gwendoline Ellen Scarff, at Burwood, Christchurch, Charles William Boakes depends for his defence upon the lack of direct evidence against him. The Judge, addressing the Grand Jury, said that he doubted if the charge of murder should be prpceeded with. There is also a charge of supplying a noxious drug.

CHRISTCHURCH, To-day. TN his address to the Grand Jury at the opening pf the criminal sessions Mr. Justice Adams, referring to the charges against Charles. William Boakes, for the murder of Gwendoline Ellen Scarff, pointed out that when a person was indicted for murder, no other charge should be Included In the same indictment, and accordingly separate indictments would be presented, one of murder and one of supplying a noxious drug for one purpose. Evidence upon the charge of supplying noxious drugs might be taken and considered; in connection with the indictment for murder. After reviewing the evidence his Honour said that he had the gravest doubts as to whether a true bill ought to be found on the charge of murder. The judge reviewed the evidence with regard to the charge of having supplied a noxious drug. It depended, he said, mainly on the evidence of two witnesses, one of them a chemist’s assistant named King, and the other, Mrs. McClure, who was engaged in the same house as Miss Scarff. The only direct evidence was that of the chemist’s assistant. A man should jiot be prejudiced by statements, whether written or oral, which were made in his absence and which were not traced to him. His Honour next dealt in detail with the evidence relating to the charge of murder. He referred at some length to the movements of Miss Scarff prior to leaving the hotel. With regard to the conversation which took place between her and Amelia Watts on the river bank on June 9, the judge pointed out that no one could be prejudiced by a conversation which took place in his absence. The law, therefore, was that such conversations were not admitted in legal proceedings. On June 9 Boakes, in answer to a telephone message from the Hotel Federal, from Miss Scarff, went to the hotel and saw her. When he went to the hotel, Muriel Usher, a clerk, said - that he was wearing a military overcoat. Then she said she saw him again some time in July, and he* was then wearing a different military overcoat. “It is important you should remember that,” said his Honour, “because a good deal has been sa’id, and a good deal I think you will find depends upon identification of that overcoat, and whether or not it can by any reason-

able inference be connected with the overcoat that was afterwards found.” “On June 11,” added his Honour, “a man named Frisk saw Miss Scarff at the Coiisseum Garage. He said that Boakes spoke to her then, and that was the last occasion on which there was any evidence to show that Boakes ever saw her. “That, of course,” said the judge, “you ought to bear very carefully in mind. That is the last occasion, so far as the evidence is concerned, upon which Boakes was ever seen in company with Ellen Scarff, or as having had any connection at all with her. It is not shown by the evidence that Boakes was ever seen in her company after that moment.”

His Honour continued; “There is nothing in the evidence, so far as I can see as it stands, to show that Boakes was anywhere in the neighbourhood of the scene of the murder on the night of June 8. There appears to be nothing in the evidence to show that Boakes ever saw the woman after June 11. Neither spanner nor military overcoat would appear, so far as the evidence is concerned, ever .to have been traced to his possession.”