STRANGE DEATH PACT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 228, 26 September 1931, Page 3

STRANGE DEATH PACT

PARENTS’ TERRIBLE DEED Amazing letters, revealing the parents to be fanatic spiritualists, and to have made a death pact, were read at the inquest on the victims of the tragedy at Carlisle, Western Australia, in which Roderick Davies, a carpenter, shot his five children and wife and then committed suicide.

“Life holds nothing, death everything,” was a quotation from one of tht remarkable letters, which represented the reasons for the crime.

The coroner, in finding that Davies wilfully murdered hi a wife and children and then committed suicide, said that the dreadful tragedy had been brought about because of an attempt of the man to study spiritualism, a subject that he was not competent to study. “He imagined a short road to an attractive hereafter,” said the coroner. “The mother was completely under his control and aided and abetted him.”

The most astonishing document w r as a letter written to her mother, in Victoria, by the wife, iDorothy Davies. She wrote, “Dear mother, —Before this letter reaches you, I will have passed on. Do not think that Rod has gone insane. You knew that we have been convinced of the continuity of life.

4 ‘l have been writing under spiritual control for months, and have known for a long time that we would be going on soon. Do not grieve, mother; I am beautifully happy, and the only fear 1 know now is that I might have to go on living.

“Life holds nothing, death promises everything,” the letter continued. “We are all the better off out of the world as it is to-day. What docs it hold for anyone? 1 expect you think lam mad or deluded when I tell yov that Rod’s action is justified and was asked of him and that he will be pardoned; but it is so, mum.

“1 know it is so, but I cannot ex plain. Don’t grieve, mum, and I will try to get Maude to use the table with Lorna, so that I can come back and prove to you all that I still live. Do not ever dread going on. It is only transition, not death, and I am so looking forward to it. 1 have seen, and so has Rod, where we are going to, so .1 have not a shadow of doubt.

“So, little mother, try and forgive us for this shock to you. Your baby, ever, Dot,” the letter concluded.