WANGANUI MURDER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 990, 5 June 1930, Page 18

WANGANUI MURDER

MANLEY TO BE CHARGED TOMORROW DEATH OF GLADYS CROMARTY Prom Our Own Correspondent WANGANUI, Wednesday. Herbert Frederick Manley is to be charged in the lower court on Friday with the murder of Gladys Cromarty on May 9. The police case will be conducted by the Crown Prosecutor, Mr. N. R. Bain and 21 witnesses will be called. Rumours have been in circulation that Manley has been seriously ill, but the police deny this. He has suffered extensively under mental strain, however. The case will occasion widespread interest in this district as It centres round one of the most shocking occurrences the city has known. It is alleged that Manley murdered the girl while she was resting on a bed in her mother’s home, by cutting her throat with a chef’s knife. He is then said to have dashed out of the house, coming down the stairs behind the girl, who had just sufficient life to stagger to the kitchen door, where she died in front of her mother and sister. Manley later gave himself up to the police. No trace of a weapon was found until 3 a.m. on the following morning, when Senior Sergeant McLean found a chef’s knife in a cattlestop in the yards of the "Wanganui Sash and Door Company’s yard which is not far distant from the Cromarty home.