"HAUNTED BY DEVIL”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 874, 18 January 1930, Page 26

"HAUNTED BY DEVIL”

WIFE-MURDERER’S STATEMENT That he had been haunted by- the devil before murdering his wife was the statement made by the father of ten children to the prison medical officer while he was in custody awaiting trial. When the man was brought before the Liverpool Assizes the theory that he had been impelled to crime by a hideous vision was developed, while the defence attempted to prove that he was the victim of a mild form of epilepsy-. The jury found him guilty of a murder which the judge described as “brutal,” aud while the death sentence. was being pronounced there were pathetic scenes. The tragedy aroused enormous public interest. Three hours before the trial was due to open a crowd had gathered outside the public entrance. The central figure in the drama, John Maguire, a fruit hawker aud an exsoldier, pleaded not guilty in a clear voice to murdering his wife; Ellen Maguire, by stabbing her and cutting her throat.

| The story- of the crime was tragically simple. Unhappy Home The domestic life was not happy at (times, and there were frequent quarj rels. “I will he hung for you one day,” accused had been heard to say i not once, but, according to one wit- ; I ness, “generally when the couple were ■} quarrelling.” ! An aunt of the dead woman, who i lived below the rooms occupied by the ! Maguires, heard a scuffle. A minute ! or two later Maguire knocked at the j door of a neighbour, in the same block iof tenements, named Kennedy. Mrs. i Kennedy opened the door and Maguire j startled her by saying, “Come and see | what I have done. I have done her | in.” Both Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy went i with Maguire to his fiat, the door of j which he opened. On the bed lay- Mrs. ; Maguire, stabbed in the back and with | a terrible wound across her throat. ! Maguire said, “She is dead. I am j sorry. May the Lord have mercy on | me. I am going to give myself up.” In the court Maguire said:—“You might think I am mad, but I saw a devil at the foot of the bed in the air. I told my wife about it the next day. About seven devils must have got hold of me when I did this lot.” He heard the death sentence apparently unmoved.