THE TRAGEDY IN DUNEDIN.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2182, 16 March 1880, Page 2

THE TRAGEDY IN DUNEDIN.

[By Telegraph.]

The inquest on the victims of the Cumberland street tragedy will take place to-morrow. Yesterday the police at Waikouaiti arrested a man named Butler, alias Donnelley, charged with the murder of Grant, his wife, and child. When arrested he drew a revolver, but did not use it. He had recently been discharged from gaol, after serving a sentence for burglary at Bishop Moran’s residence. Butler was brought before the Bench to-day, and remanded till Monday. Besides the charges of murder and presenting a loaded revolver at Constable Townsend’s head, he will be charged with burglary at Mr Stamper’s house. This place was found to be on fire under suspicious circumstances early on Saturday morning, and some of Stamper s property was found on Butler when he was arrested.

The Dunedin “ Herald ” thus describes Butler’s career: —He was in Pentridge when a boy, and was known to the police of Yictoria for 13 years. He came to New Zealand and turned respectable, and having a good address and his antecedents being unknown, he was employed as Catholic teacher in one of the country districts. He rewarded the confidence which they had placed in him by robbing the priest of £6O. He then came to Dunedin and broke into a number of houses, and his career was ultimately checked by his being arrested, and he was sentenced to, we believe, five years imprisonment. He was liberated a few weeks ago, and appeal's, from the fact of having a loaded revolver in his possession, to have prepared himself for another career of crime. Butler was arrested about five miles on the Dunedin side of Moeraki. He was armed with a six-chamber revolver, and had in his possession thirty or forty cartridges. When he saw the police ho ran behind a flax bush and presented his revolver at them, but be3 T ond tnis he made no attempt at x’csistancc. Butler is known to be a desperate criminal.