UNSOLVED MURDERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 227, 25 September 1928, Page 10

UNSOLVED MURDERS.

ADDITION TO N.S.W. LIST.

DXTLWICH HUX CASE.

CORONER REFUSES COMMITTAL.

(From Oar Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, September 21

To the rather formidable list of unsolved murders in New South Wales this year was added, definitely, the Dulwich Hill case, when, on Thursday, the city coroner refused to commit for trial John Patrick Reynolds, charged on somewhat slender evidence in connection with the cold-blooded killing of Mrs. Sarah Falvey and Miss Esther Vaughan on June 30. It will be recalled that they were shot dead by a masked gunman in their confectionery shop, subsequent police investigation showing the crime to have been entirely unprovoked and callous in the extreme. Chief witness at the inquiry was Alexander Ross, who lived opposite the shop, and who saw the murderer walk out of the place immediately after the shooting. But, while he positively identified Reynolds in a police line-up when the latter was arrested, he was not at all positive in the Coroner's Court. It was his defection which swung the case in favour of the man accused. In Court on Thursday he was asked if Reynolds was the man he saw leaving the shop on the night of the murder.. "I am not sure, now," said Ross. "He seems different to me." The nearest he would go to identification was to say that Reynolds resembled the man who walked out of the shop and discarded the mask. Another witness, who had even a closer view of the murderer than Koss, was equally vague before the coroner. Police evidence was to the effect that Reynolds was arrested on minor charges of obtaining money by false pretences. He was questioned regarding the murder but denied any connection with it. He said he could not ride a motor cycle, had no firearms and had never seen the mask. Later he admitted he could ride a motor cycle. Most sensational evidence was given by members of the Irwin family with whom he had lived. Mrs. Ethel Irwin said that Reynolds attempted to entice her away from her husband, saying that he would take her husband down one of the back lanes and put a bullet through him. When asked where he would get a revolver he replied: "I have a beauty at my uncle's at Bankstown." Other members of the family gave evidence " that Reynolds often spoke about the revolver he carried, and often suggested that he would shoot if he had the gun with him. A revolver was found in the fork of a tree near the place where Reynolds had been living, but there was no evidence to connect it either with Reynolds or the crime. The coroner returned a verdict of murder against a person unknown. Then, sitting as a magistrate, he discharged Reynolds on the murder counts. And so the most ferocious murder of the year joined the list of unsolved crimes.