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Gisborne Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1810, 17 July 1906, Page 2

MUKDEES IN AUSTRALIA. Several cold-blooded murders have been reported from Australia within the past two days. A supposed “ welcher ” was kicked to death on Tlnnington racecourse, in daylight, in the presence of thousands of people, and there is no information of anyone having yet been arrested for the crime. Another report comes of a Frenchman having had his head battered in while he was in his own camp, and for which murder four men have been arrested on suspicion. But those crimes, terrible as they are, pale into insignificance as compared with the butchery at Ballina, a small town in the north of New South Wales. Husband, wifo, and a farm laborer were ruthlessly slaughtered, and it is said that an attempt was also made to murder the son. The atrocity looks like the work of a madman. Suspicion points strongly to an eighteen-year-old youth whose whereabouts have not yet been discovered. How he could have succeeded in tho triple murder is sn for a mystery, hut it seums probable that efioh viotirn was foiled separately and rendered nnoousoious before an alarm was given. Tho strangest part of all is that the son and daughter of tho murdered oane grower slopt in the bouse on tho night of tho murder without being aware that anything unusuai hud hoppenod. They give a fair ozplana tion of this hy stating that they thought their parents had gono to stay with soma friends, but tho peculiar part of this explanation is the omission of any reference to what the young fellow did when the other youth tried to kill him with tho oxo. In the absenoe of his father and mother it would he thought that bo would have at least sought the hired man So relate what bad happened. Instead he seems to have gone off to bed without bothering ebout the oruek on tho head. Most peoplo in like circumstances would have raised a storm of soma kind. The startling affair has some mysterious phases,