DREAM REVEALS CRIME.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2559, 24 March 1923, Page 1

DREAM REVEALS CRIME.

ATTIC MXJRDER VERDICT. Aii exceptionally pathetic story of a boy epileptic’s crime was related at Winchester, when Leonard Kerrigan, aged fourteen, of Portsmouth, was charged with the murder of a three-year-old child named George Robert Smith, fie was found guilt" but insane. Kerrigan and the victim were playmates, and although Smith disappeared on July 20, the body was not discovered until September 3, when Kerrigan’s father turned out a box in the attic of his house. The child had died of suffocation. Kerrigan is an epileptic and was actually undergoing treatment in the infirmary when he was questioned about the murder. He was asked: “When did you last see Georgie Smith? and replied, “I have not done anything to Georgie Smith.” The next day lie sent for the inspector and said: — “I have had a dream, and some of it has come back to me. I put him in a box, covered him with clothes, and shut the lid up. 1 put an old bed on the box. 1 did not know I had done it till last night, when I had the dream.” At a later date Kerrigan sent for the inspector and said: —-“I have had another dream. I put him in the box alive. I tied him up when he was alive.” Dr. Risk said it was a fact that epileptics did things unconsciously which came back to them in dreams. Dr. Clark said he had treated accused during June and July for major epilepsy. It was known that the unconscious acts of epileptics came back to them in dreams.

The Judge ordered defendant to )c kept in custody as a criminal unatic during the King’s pleasure, iddiiig: “Of course that means hat you will lie taken away and lie a ken care of.”