Frenzied By Her Indifference

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 150, 15 September 1927, Page 15

Frenzied By Her Indifference

MAN ATTACKS GIRL END OF OCEAN ROMANCE WHILE travelling on the Maheno between South Africa and New Zealand toward the end of last year a young ship’s engineer and a girl passenger, who left her husband m Africa, became friendly. The young man fell deeply in love with the girl, but she had no kind answers for him. To-day at the Police Court the young man, Milroy Thomas Smiliie, aged 23, was charged with assaulting the girl, Sophia Shepherd, and causing her actual bodily harm. In her evidence the girl said her age was 19, and she was married in Wellington 18 months ago. She and her husband went to South Africa, but in November or December of last year she left him and came back to New Zealand on the Maheno. She met accused, who was an engineer on the ship, and they, had several conversations and dances together. After they parted in Wellington they corresponded regularly, but about a fortnight agd she wrote to Smiliie saying that she did not think any man could make her happy. About five months ago she was staying with accused's relatives at New Plymouth, and she was known to them as Fiona Shepherd, which was her stage name. In the meantime Smiliie left the sea and she next met him when she was i on tour with the Stanley McKay Opera Company in Taranaki. MARRIAGE PROPOSAL REFUSED On September 2 accused called on witness at her mother’s home, 56 Wellington Street, and she told him that she did not wish to see him again. “He asked me if I’d like to marry him,” she said, “and I replied that I did not want to marry again.” “Then he said I only wanted him because I thought he was rich.” Witness then said: He called on other mornings and he tried to make love to me, but I told him that I wanted to have no more to do with him. The next day when he called he helped witness’s mother hang up some glass. “I went into my mother’s room,” said Mrs. Shepherd, “because I thought he might follow me if I went into my “When I had finished dressing he did come into the room and asked me if I had seen a hammer. Then he asked me why I did not speak to him. “I put my head down and did not answer, but he then got into a terrible temper and waved his arms about. “He struck me on the head with a hammer, but 1 think it was accidental, because he had said he would never hurt a hair of my head. “I felt dazed, but when I looked at him he had a sheath knife in his hand.” Violet Jones, mother of the complainant, said that accused threatened to commit suicide after he had hit her daughter. In a statement to the police, Smiliie said he had been worried by the girl’s indifference, and losing his head, he struck her with the hammer. He had purchased two sheath knives intending to kill himself when the girl refused to get a divorce and marry Dr. L. K. Crew said that Mrs. Shepherd had been admitted to the hospital on September 7 with a wound in the head. The occipital bone was bared, but the injury was not serious. Smiliie pleaded not guilty and was committed to the Supreme Court for trial. Bail was allowed only on condition , that he left Auckland to-day,