AGED COUPLE MURDERED

Taranaki Daily News, 24 September 1928, Page 9

AGED COUPLE MURDERED

BODIES IN SHALLOW GRAVE SEARCH FOR SUSPECT MOTOR THE MOTIVE UNDISCLOSED By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. Australian Press Association. Received September 23, 11.5 p.m. United Service. London, Sept. 22. Following the discovery of the shallowly buried bodies of an elderly couple, Thomas Kirby and his wife, of Old Thornaby Green, by Mrs. Stead, of Norton, near Stockton on Tees, while seeking for soil for her plants, tTie police are searching for a suspect in a motor car. Mrs. Stead noticed a mound in a lonely lane with a wrist and coat-sleeve protruding. She informed her son-in-law and the police exhumed the bodies. Kirby had been wounded in the head and was still bleeding. His wife had apparently been strangled. Her boot was discovered in an adjacent ditch.

The police prevented hundreds of inquisitive people from flocking to the scene.

The woman victim was formerly a widow and she married Kirby in 1925. He was a market trader and she was a prosperous tripe-dresser and was keenly interested in public affairs. The police forced an entry to Kirby’s locked house and ascertained that the couple had been murdered there and then conveyed three miles to the burial place, apparently in & car which was garaged on the premises.