GHASTLY TRAGEDY IN SYDNEY SUBURB

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 260, 2 November 1928, Page 7

GHASTLY TRAGEDY IN SYDNEY SUBURB

FOUR DEAD MURDERER SHOOTS WHOLE HOUSEHOLD (By Telegraph—Per Press Assn.—Copyright) L Australian Press Assn. ] Received Nov. 1, 8.55 p.m. SYDNEY, Nov. 1. A sensational shooting affray occurred this afternoon in Harrow Road, Rockdale suburb, wnen a man, entered a house and blazed away With a revolver. He shot three women and a man, and then turned the weapon on himself, with fatal results. The three women were killed, the other man being in a serious condition. The dead are: Alex. Robb, aged 40, a returned soldier; Airs C. Palmer, aged 30; Mrs Edith Palmer jun., aged 42; and Mrs Elizabeth Ashley, housekeeper. St.ll another man, Joseph Palmer, aged 80, is critically injured. Hitherto an invalid and blind, he was just able to utter something about a murder in the house. The crime was apparently committed by Robb, a nephew of Mrs Palmer. He is deesribed as a religious maniac and spiritualist, and the Palmer family were known to be trying to get him out of the house. He recently came from his farm at Nimbin.

The tragedy was discovered by a woman friend of Mrs Palmer, who found the house in great disorder, \yith corpses here and there. Airs Edith Palmer was lying on a soft, not dead, and was just able to give brief details.

The police were immediately summoned. They found Robb dead upstairs on a bed with a bullet wound in the chest. There were two rifles, with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, also a long knife, sharpened to a fine point. The police ascertained that the family was sitting at lunch when Robb entered and shot one after another. He then went upstairs and shot himself, manipulating the trigger with the toe of his boot. The sole survivor, Palmer, was formerly a railway employee. There are twp bullets in his abdomen. Airs Edith Palmer died about half an hour after admission to hospital. There wore two bullet, wounds in her chest. She was well known in musical circle* Mrs Ashley had been with the Palmer family for many years.