MURDER ALLEGED.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 4 December 1926, Page 5

MURDER ALLEGED.

NEW ZEALANDER CHARGED. ■ WITH KILLING HIS MOTHER. LONDON, Friday. Aftes a lapse of eight months, a New Zealander, John Donald Merrett, 19 years old, has been arrested on a charge of murdering his mother, Mrs Bertha Merrett, aged 50. Both came from a New Zealand station to complete the son’s education for the Diplomatic Service. He entered Edinburgh University, and the mother took a three months’ lease of a fiat in a fashionable quarter of Edinburgh. A week afterwards it was entered and Mrs Merrett was found shot. The son told the poiice that he was seated beside the dining-room lire on March ,17th, when he was startled by a revolver shot. On turning he saw his mother, who was sitting at a bureau writing, fall on the floor bleeding from a wound in the ear. The doctors found a bullet was embedded in her nose. She did not recover consciousness. The tragedy was at first, attributed to accident, but the detectives unceasingly continued their investigations. The son, meanwhile, began studying fdr Oxford. He took up residence at Hugh ende n, Buckinghamshire, where he was arrested. Merrett is further charged with forging cheques for £3OO. He was popular in the village, and played Rugby for Badmington. It is .understood that he received tin allowance from the 'Public Trustee: , John had lately been staying at the vicarage at Hughenden, and was being coached in expectation of going to Oxford. When he was driven off in the police car, he was seen to be crying bitter I v.