BURWOOD BORDER TRIAL

Taranaki Daily News, 16 November 1927, Page 9

BURWOOD BORDER TRIAL

JURY RETURNS A TRUE BILL JUDGE EXPRESSES HIS DOUBTS. REVIEW OF EARLIER EVIDENCE. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Christchurch, Nov. 15. In his address to the Grand Jury at tlie opening of the criminal sessions, Mr. Justice Adams, referring to the charges against Charles William Boakes in connection with the Burwood murder, 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 lie presented, one of murder and one of supplying a noxious drug. For one purpose evidence upon a charge of supplying a noxious drug might be taken and considered m connection with an indictment for murder.

After reviewing the evidence, His Honour said he had the gravest doubts 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 dead girl. The only’ direct evidence was that of a chemist’s assistant. A man should not be pre-judged by statements, whether written oi- 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 oi murder. He referred at some length to the movements of Miss Scarff prior to leaving the hotel. With regard to a 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 Miss Scarff, went to the hotel and saw her. When he went to the hotel, Muriel Usher, a clerk, said 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 said, and a good deal. I think, you will find, depends upon the identification of that overcoat and whether or not it can be by any reasonable inference connected with the overcoat that was afterwards found. “On June 11,” added His Honour, “a man named I’risk saw Miss Scarff at tlie Coliseum 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 carefully in That is the last occasion, so far as the evidence is considered, 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. There Is nothing in the evidence so far as I can see as it stands to show that Boa-kes was anywhere in the neighbourhood of the scene of the murder on the night of June 15. There appears to be nothing in the evidence to show that Boakes ever saw the woman after June IL Neither the spanner nor the military overcoat would appear, so far ae the evidence is concerned, ever to have been traced to his possession.” The Grand Jury retired at 11.15 a.m. and returned at 3.50 p.m., with a true bill against Boakes on both charges.