INQUEST OPENED

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 230, 27 June 1944, Page 6

INQUEST OPENED

Victim Of Christchurch Tragedy

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, June 26.

More definite knowledge of the man who was found on Saturday morning hacked to death in a house at 115 Aidwins Road was gained by detectires during the weekend. When an inquest was opened this morning before the coroner, Mr. Levvey, Albino Durante, a relative of the dead man, identified the body as that of • Frederick Albert Brazier, aged GO. Brazier was a pensioner and single. The inquest was then adjourned sine die. Mr. R. Twyneham appeared for Mrs. Helen Lewis, aged 32, occupant of 115 Aidwins Road, when she was brought before Mr. Dewey, S.M., at a special sitting of the Magistrates’ Court on Saturday afternoon charged with the murder of Brazier.

When the police received a telephone message from a relative of Mrs. Lewis, to whom she had reported a tragedy in her home, Sergeant S. Holder and Detective E. G. Ward went to Aidwins Road and, finding the doors locked and the blinds drawn, forced an entrance. In a bed in a small -back room they found Brazier’s body with the face and head hacked about, apparently with an axe. Smashed crockery and broken furniture littered other rooms of the house. Shortly afterward Mrs. Lewis was arrested at her relative’s house. Investigations by Sub-Inspector J. B. Young and Detective-Sergeant J. J. Halcrow revealed that the dead _ man had been boarding with Mrs. Lewis for only about a month, though he had lived in Christchurch for many years. He is believed to have worked formerly at Belfast freezing works.