PONSONBY MURDER

Hokitika Guardian, 16 April 1920, Page 3

PONSONBY MURDER

GUNN CHARGED WITH CRIME.

(Per Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, This Day. At tbe Police Court, Dennis Gunn was charged with the murder of Braithwaite. Mr Prendergast defended the prisoner. Mr Tole, Crown Prosecutor, said there were thirty or forty witnesses. Of the apparent deliberateness and callousness circumstances of the murder, it was difficult to speak in terms of moderation. At the time of the tragedy Braithwaite was in excellent health and spirits. He went into the Post 'Office presumably to take home the key of the strong room at 7.1-5 p.m. and was seen by a lad to

leave the Post office 35 minutes later, carrying a handbag. He closed the 0 door after him. Before lie entered the post office as he alighted from a tram, the prisoner was only about two yards from him and' he would have seen ©raithwaite enter the Post Office. When Mrs Braithwaite came home from a social function about nine o’clock, she found her husband on the floor, face downwards, apparently unconscious. Shortly after she telephoned for the doctor. The keys of the

strongroom were missing from her husbands pockets. The police subsequentthe post office burglarised, the Hmg room opened, the cash-boxes brqken and £67 odd missing. o|i March 17th the prisoner was seen by the police, who had ascertained that Gunn was seen in the vicinity of the post office on the evening of the murder. It would bo shown that ho was also there earlier in the day. Gunn said he had been at home all the afternoo nof March 13tli. When pressed, he varied the account of his movements. When charged with two crimes, Gunn replied:—You will have a job jto prove it, i Mr Tole described the subsequent find of three revolvers, ammunition and money in a bag in the vicinity of a j section, 100 to 150 yards from the prisoner's residence. Evidence would show that finger prints on one of the cash boxes were from the prisoner’s banc]: that the finger prints on one re- | volver were the prisoner's finger prints; that was the revolver from which it would he shown the bullets recovered from tbe body were fired. j Mrs Braithwaite gave evidence on lilies of Tole’s opening, \