PUKEKAWA MURDER.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 46, Issue 14281, 14 December 1920, Page 5

PUKEKAWA MURDER.

NO REPRIEVE FOR THORN. (By Telegraph —Press Association.) AUCKLAND, Monday. The Executive Council decided this afternoon that there was no reason to interfere with the sentence of death passed on Samuel John Thom oil December 3rd for the murder ot Sidney Seymour Eyre, at PukelcaWa, on August 24th. A NOTABLE TRIAL. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. The trial of Thom was specially notable for the remarkable network of circumstantial evidence drawn around the affair as tho result of the police investigations. Sidney Seymour Eyre.-was a farmer at Pukekawa, and the value ot his property was assessed at over £l<,000. Owing to illness he went to Canada and when the' war broke out, he enlisted with the Canadian forces, returning to New Zealand upon his discharge. The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Eyre, several children, and there had also been several farm hands, including Thorn, who had been employed for two years during Eyre’s absence, and for some period after his return. It was these people who had a knowledge of the house and household. On the night of August 24th, Mrs. Eyro retired to bed about 9 o ’clock, and was later awakened by dogs balking under the house, and she called out to them to lie down. She then went to sleep, and some time after midnight was awakened by hearing the repot t of a gun. Getting no reply when she called out to her husband, she lit a candle and found that he had been murdered, practically the whole of his head being blowu off. _ ' , It was shown in evidence given before the Supreme Court that Thorn was it left-handed man, and that the fatal shot must have been fired by a left-handed man. He possessed a 12bore shotgun, and used a peculair kind of shot, siiiilar to that fired at Eyre. It was further proved that ilicit relations -had existed between the condemned man and Mrs. Eyre during Eyre’s absence. One strong point in the police evidence w r as the tracing of peculiar I - shaped hoof marks from Eyre’s farm towards the property of James Granville (Thorn’s employer), who commit* ted suicide yesterday. Tbe hoof marks corresponded with the shoes worn by Granville’s horse Micky, and the deduction made was that Thorn rode Micky on the night of the murder. Thorn is 34 years of age. GRANVILLE’S SUICIDE. DELIBERATE DEED. j A Press Association telegram referring to the suicide of James Granville states that it appears that Granville got into bed, tied one end of a piece of cotton to the triger of a double-barrel-led gun, and the other end to his right foot” the muzzle of the gun resting in his rnoutli when the 'trigger was pulled. It is stated that Granville was married, his wife residing at Nelson, and Thorn worked for Granville after leaving Eyre’s farm' six weeks before the murder occurred. He was an important witness at Thorn’s trial on the question as to the identity of one of his horses. Granville left a letter addressed to his solicitor, in which he stated that financial difficulties had been the- cause of his suicide. He had also been drinking heavily. Mr. Stringer, counsel for Thorn, brought the fact of Granville’s suicide under the* not ice of the Executive Council, which, as stated above, saw no reason to interfere in the matter.