LOVE’S TRAGEDY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXX, Issue 53, 29 October 1914, Page 2

LOVE’S TRAGEDY.

PECULIAR MURDER AND SUICIDE. Melbourne, October 20. The Coroner to-day investigated tiro circumstances attaching to the death of Herbert Leslie Matthowman (3o) and Priscilla Warwick (12), whose bodies were found in some scrub at Mordialloc, on October 11. Evidence was given to the effect that Matthowman had boarded for nearly wo years with the widowed mother of the girl Warwick, Mid that he had on other occasions taken the girl out with him. The medical evidence showed that the girl had been injured in no other manner than by bullet wounds, of which there were four through the body and on© in the arm. Any one of the wounds in the body would have proved fatal. Sydney White Brunsden, stated that the man Matthewman and the girl Warwick called at his place at Mordialloc on the, afternoon of October 10 and stayed till 10.15 p.m. During conversation with witness, Mutthewman said that during the past two years he had spent £lO3 on “Prissie” Warwick. Witness said, ‘You must be cranky.” Matthewman replied, “You are like other people; you don’t understand. She is the idol of my heart. I have waited two years for her. If 1 can’t have her, nobody else will.” He added that the girl was going to tell him something on the way back to her home, and that the people were jealous of him. Witness thought the man was rather erratic at times.

Further evidence showed that shortly after leaving Brunsden’s, Matthewman and the girl walked into the scrub, and there the shooting took place. The Coroner said that the extraordinary part about the tragedy was that there was no evidence leading up to it. There was ample evidence that the man was friendly with the girl, and there was only the slightest evidence to show mental deficiency. There was no proof of intimacy between him and his victim. It seemed that the man had given way to fury. No man in his senses would d<j, such a thing. He found that death was due in each case to gunshot wounds, which were inflicted by Matthewman.