HORRIBLE DOUBLE MURDER AT FORBES.

Evening Star, Issue 3287, 2 September 1873, Page 3

HORRIBLE DOUBLE MURDER AT FORBES.

A Forbes correspondent of the Sydney Hominy Herald , 14tb inst., writes that “ Mr Walter Howell and a young lad named Palbrooke came to town for station supplies, and having loaded bis team started for home on Friday evening, Bth inst., accompanied by the lad Palbrooke. They camped at night at a spot about seven miles from here. Mrs Howell, mother of the unfortunate victim, had intended driving her buggy along with the team and to have camped with her son, but owing to his persuasions she remained in town, starting from hero at about nine this morning to overtake her son, little dreaming of the dreadful sorrow awaiting her. As far as I can ascertain, Mrs Howell passed the dray ; but seeing no one about, and not being answered when she called out, she concluded it was not her dray, and therefore she drove on till she reached the creek, about a mile distant. Here, not seeing any track of a team having passed, she determined to return to the dray she had seen, now thinking it must have been her own, but wondering why it was her son had slept so long. On again reaching her dray, and raising the tarpaulin with which it was covered, she beheld the form of her son and the lad apparently sleeping ; but when the called, and they did not answer, she drew the blankets from their faces, disclosing to her agonised sight the two victims, with gashed heads and throats, quite dead—murdered apparently as they were quietly sleeping. The bodies of the murdered men have just been brought in. The heads are nearly chopped from the trunks, bloody gaping gashes covering the the throat, face and head, presenting altogether a sight of horror never to be forgotten. Walter Howell was about thirty, the lad about fourteen years of age. The cause of the murder is generally ascribed to a bloodthirsty revenge. The murders were accomplished by means of a new Amercan axe, which must have been previously abstracted from the dray, and which, with fiendish coolness, the murderer cut short in the handle, in order the better to enable him to reach under the dray and effect his bloody end. None of the property on the dray appeared to have been taken, so that robbery was nob the cause of the murde-,”