THE POKENO MURDER.
Auckland, Yesterday. It is apparent the murder was com- i mitted about noon yesterday. Two sons i left the house about noon for the District School Sports, and as the accused was in a public house at Pokeno about two in the afternoon, on his way to Mercer, it is ' plain the deed must have been done shortly after his sons left the house. The accused was at Mercer yesterday afternoon for some hours, and attracted attention by his extraordinary behavior. He was in a state of intoxication, besides laboring under high excitement, and was speaking and drinking wbh everyone who would join him. He talked a good deal of incoherent stuff, and in the course of his conversation asserted several times that he had shot his wife. He loudly boasted that the whole of Mercer belonged to him, but that the title deeds had been lost while he was in the Asylum. He intended, however, to go and see Superintendent Thomson and get them recovered. He entered a house, and while there a boy threw a stone on the galvanised iron roof. Prendergast came out, saying, ‘' You have come to shoot me because 1 shot the old woman. Yes, I shot her; she has been chopping me for forty-seven years, but she won’t chop me any more.” Th.jse who heard him concluded he was raving, and of course the majority of them knew be had been about two years in a lunatic asylumn, from which he was discharged two years ago. They therefore paid no attention to his assertions about having murdered hia wife, and he was allowed to leave the township unmolested. The deceased was about the same age as her husband. They came to the district twenty years ago, having four sons, the eldest of whom has since married and settled at Pokeno. The second son John was employed at'Newmarket on the railway, and on receiving intimation of the tragedy this morning, at
once took train for Pokeno. The two younger sons have, as already stated, resided with their parents. An inquest is to be held to-morrow.
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Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1470, 21 February 1885, Page 2
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353THE POKENO MURDER. Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1470, 21 February 1885, Page 2
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