DAWN TRAGEDY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 732, 8 April 1933, Page 22 (Supplement)

DAWN TRAGEDY.

ATTACK WITH AN AXE. MOTHER AND GIRL DEAD. PROTEST LEADS TO MURDER TRIAL “God never made a better woman than my wife. I loved her more than anything on earth. That baby was my life. I would have gone to hell before I’d have harmed a hair of their heads!” So asserted Stanley S. Puryear after his wife and eight-year-old daughter Aurelia had been found clone to death. At dawn neighbours had been aroused by the frenzied cries of Stanley Puryear, who is a motor car dealer in Memphis, U.S.A. He stood in the front of his house shouting:—“Help. Help. There’s been murder done!” Puryear cried again and again. “A man has killed my wife and baby.” When the police arrived, they found the mother and daughter had been attacked with an axe. In the house the police also' found a negro named Will Jamison, his left side riddled with shot. ‘T .know 1 am dying. Give me a drink of water and take my shoes off,” he whispered to a policeman. ‘‘Who shot you, boy?” an officer asked. “A red-faced, middle-aged man,” the dying man replied. "He picked me up in the street. Said he'd give me three dollars to help him move some whisky. He took me to his house and went in. I stayed out in tile garage. Pretty soon lie called me from inside the house. I started in. When I got to the door he shot me. I turned and ran. Then he shot me again.” “But did you not kill his wife and child?” asked a policeman. “Boss, I’m dying,” the man repeated weakly. “I ain’t got no reason to lie to you all. I ain’t seen no white woman and baby. I ain’t done nothing. He just called me to the door and shot me.” An ambulance carried Jamison to a hospital .where lie repeated his story before he died, swearing to his innocence as his life ebbed away. Body Exhumed for Finger Prints. Puryear was later arrested on a charge of taking the lives of his wife and daughter and Will Jamison. A week later a solemn party of attorneys, doctors, and police officers went to a burial ground and exhumed the body of Will Jamison.

Claims had been made that he had a notorious criminal record. Jamison’s finger-prints were taken from his cold, stiff fingers.* No criminal record could be found. The prosecution sprung a surprise at the outset by electing to try Puryear for the murder of Will Jamison. Two days and a half were required to select the jury. Hearing of the evidence began the next day and the 23-day trial was under way.

The prosecution claimed that Puryear had carefully planned the murder of his wife, and had put the negro “on the spot” to provide an alibi. Then, the State contended, Puryear had killed his wife and had been forced to kill liis daughter when j she awoke. Calling the negro to the door, j Puryear shot him to support his carefully planped crime, it was held. "But Divine Providence, looking down and seeing the brutal killing of this godly woman, kept that negro alive long enough to gasp out the storj r of what had occurred,” the State attorney cried. Alleged Romance With Another Woman. As a motive for the killing of Mrs. Puryear, the State advanced the alleged romance between Puryear and a girl named Sunshine Walker. "Mrs. Puryear’s religion would not permit her to divorce her husband,” the State attorney said. “Sunshine was threatening to marry another man, and Puryear was desperate. He had to be free so that lie could marry Sunshine. He planned and schemed until he had contrived this diabolical crime for which there is no fit term in the English language.” Puryear, in a statement to the police, said that he had gone nowhere on the night before the murders except to his place of business. Then the State turned to Sunshine Walker. Witnesses testified that Puryear had given her money, a pair of red pyjamas, a glove-silk nightdress. They told of Puryear’s frequent visits to Sunshine’s home. Puryear, rod-faced, portly, dapper, gave evidence on his own behalf. For the first time during the trial he broke down and sobbed as he told of Jiis feeling for his wife and daughter. He protested liis complete innocence. Relatives told, too, of the happy relationship between husband and wife. Diabolical Slayer or Loving Father. Then the defence sprang a surprise. The girl named Sunshine Walker was summoned to the witness box. Dressed in the height of fashion, this red-haired beauty hugged an expensive fox fur round her shoulders and denied that she was more than a good friend of the entire Puryear family, including Mrs. Puryear. Reporters, who had interviewed Sunshine on the previous day found her attired in red pyjamas with low, loose neck. Sunshine denied in evidence that she had been given these pyjamas by Puryear, or that lie had given her a nightdress or money. She denied that Puryear was more than a friend. Three days were consumed by attorneys in arguing the case, the State painting Puryear as a diabolical murderer, and the defence picturing him as a loving father. The jury stood six for the electric chair and six for acquittal on the first ballot. Through the night hours the jury argued. After twenty-two hours’ deliberation it returned this verdict: —“We, the jury, find the defendant, Stanley A. Puryear, not guilty of the charges brought in this indictment.” The courtroom rose in a roar of excitement. Puryear threw liis arms about his attorneys in an outburst of joy, and then moved to shake hands with the jurors. But Puryear’s. complete freedom was not to bo gained quickly. He was released on £7OOO bail pending the indictment charging him with the murder of his wife and daughter.