Wife Murder.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 3540, 29 June 1905, Page 3

Wife Murder.

GHASTLY CRIME AT INVERCARGILL. Invercargill, June 28. Daniel Swan, a labourer, attacked his wife t»-night in her house in Esk street, and killed her. The couple had not agreed well for years, and latterly the murdered woman got a separation from the husband, and she and the children got a home of their own. Swan was afterwards received as a boarder. The murder was ghastly in every detail. Its savagncss almost baffles description. The assault was sudden, and the struggle brief. A flat iron covered with blood seems to show that. Swan snatched this up, threw his Wife on the floor, knelt on her, and using the point of the iron with great force almost severed her head from the body. There is a gash the chin, and a gaping wounc} ;, n sic ] e 0 f the head which , ;he bmln , There was no Q f a smuggle. /V doctor was summoned immediately, Mid found life extinct, the immediate cause of death being hemorrhage. After committing the deed Swap rushed from the house, but one of his daughters had preceded him, crying that her mother was killed. She called on some men standing at hand to hold her father, and ho was seized and the police sent for. At the Police Station, Swan was calm and collected. He told the police that when he did the deed he did not know what he was doing.

Swan was before the Court some years ago on a charge ot cruelty to his family. The case excited a good deal of comment at the time.