Man For Trial On Attempted Murder Charge

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31001, 5 March 1966, Page 3

Man For Trial On Attempted Murder Charge

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 4. The hearing of a charge of attempted murder against Keith Charles Johns, aged 23, chief steward of the Wellington vessel Durango, was resumed today in the Magistrate’s Court. He is alleged to have shot in the stomach Anthony Thomas McGuire, aged 20, an assistant steward, in a cabin in the ship early on February 4 after the vessel had left Wellington for Panama.

Johns pleaded not guilty and was committed to the Supreme Court for trial. He was represented by Mr M. A. Bungay. Detective Inspector K. J. Hamilton prosecuted. Messrs S. Mather and M. W. Leaman, J.P.s, were on the bench.

McGuire said in evidence that after dinner on February 3 he spent most of his time on deck until the ship left and then had coffee and toast with his room-mate, Eddie Grahams. They read and then went to sleep about 11 p.m. He had not had anything to drink. Johns shook him awake and said: “Come on, come up and have a drink,” said McGuire. He had not been to the cabin before and had not known what to do at first, he said. Johns told him: “You’re O.K. Tony. You can come up and have a drink.” McGuire said he went in to the cabin and was told to sit on the couch. He noticed Forester, a catering boy, asleep in bed. Johns woke the boy and told him to go down to his own room. Johns opened two cans of beer, but did not stay in the room or sit down. He kept going out of the room. He shut the door every time he went out.

He said once: “You’re a good one, Tony. Drink up. You’re not like Lurinski and the others.” He kept opening beers, but they were not being drunk. Lurinski was another steward on the ship usually known as “Alice.” The last time Johns came in he shot McGuire.

“It was that quick I didn’t know it. I was just getting up out of the chair like you do when someone comes into the room when he shot me,” said McGuire. Put On Couch

McGuire said he fell to his knees because of the pain and Lurinski picked him up and put him on the couch. He was carried across to the second steward’s cabin because Johns did not like his being sick on the couch.

He heard Forester in the cabin telling some others to make up a story that he (McGuire) attacked them while they were playing cards with Osborne, the second steward. McGuire said Johns had something in his belt when he was in the cabin. He thought it might have been a starter's pistol, which he knew Johns had, but he had not thought about it.

Shown the starter's pistol and the Bersa automatic pro-

duced at the last hearing he could not tell them apart. Cross-examined by Mr M. A. Bungay, McGuire said Johns had helped him twice when he was in trouble. He could not think of any reason for Johns shooting him. He denied being a homosexual.

“I’m engaged to be married,” he said. “Who to?” asked Mr Bungay.—To a young lady in America.

McGuire told Mr Bungay Johns had been “picking on him” because he had been late for work. Sergeant James Stuart Cromie, a ballistics officer, said the Bersa, unlike most semi-automatics, had an exposed hammer. He identified 22 shells from the cabin and from Forester’s possession 1 as being identical with test shells from John’s pistol. Recovered From Cake The bullet, recovered from Sir Walter Nash’s birthday cake, was the same as test bullets fired through the pistol. Dr. Leo James Walker, parttime visiting surgeon to Wellington Hospital, said McGuire was admitted at 8.30 a.m. with severe internal abdominal bleeding and deep shock.

He had a puncture wound in his stomach and holes in his small and large bowels and a punctured major vein. The bullet was lodged in muscles of the pelvis. His condition improved considerably after an operation and a large blood transfusion. He made an uneventful recovery from surgery. No attempt was made to remove the bullet as it was thought to be hazardous. Cross-examined by Mr Bungay, he said that the shot at close range would have left powder burns.