MURDER AT ST. KILDA.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 461, 9 April 1890, Page 5

MURDER AT ST. KILDA.

A YOUNG MAN SHOOTS HIS UNCLE. At 20 minutes past twelve o’clock on the morning of the 20th ult., two men reported to the St. Kilda (Victoria) police that, when passing the end of Valestreet, oil High-street, St. Kilda. they had heard a cry of murder and the report of a pistol. Sergeant Irwin and Constables Slater and Byan went to the spot at once, and found a young man named George Thomas May, son of a nurseryman at St. Kilda, with a bulletwound through his right breast, quite dead. The body' was conveyed to the house of May’s father, close at hand, in which were the father, Mr May, his daughter, Mrs Bennett, who is a widow, and her son John Henry Bennett, seventeen years of age. Mrs Bennett stated that soon after the murder must have been committed she heard someone come hurrying into the house, but on being pressed she said that, being suddenly aroused from sleep at night, she could only have imagined it. Her eon was in bed when the police arrived, apparently asleep, which they regarded as a very unusual circumstance. Mrs Bennett explained that when she found her brother past all hope, she advised her son nob to get up as ne could do no good. Detective-Sergeant Causey, on being informed of the fact, questioned the lad, who at first denied all knowledge of the maatter, but after a severe crossexamination, he inquired whether it would be better for him to tell all he knew. He was advised to make a clean breast of it, whereupon he confessed to having murdered his uncle, adding that he did so because he had illtreated his mother. He said he threw the revolver into an ad joining timber yard, where the police found it. He was then arrested for murder. About a fortnight ago the deceased and Mrs Bennett had a quarrel, when May took her by the shoulders and shook her, and young Bennett imagining hfs mother was badly treated, determined upon revenge. On Saturday, in company with a friend, he purchased a revolver. It was the habit of May to go out on Monday nights, returning lace. Bennett, knowing of this habit, awaited his uncle’s return shortly after 11. As the uncle opened the back gate Bennett presented the pistol, and fired point blank, the bullet, striking May- in the right hreasb. May staggered, and turned to run, calling “ murder 1” He then dropped dead. Bennett threw away the pistol and went hone to bed. He has been working for some time at an iron foundry in St. Kilda, and was regarded as steady and industrious. He expressed no regret when taken to the police station. He had been remandod for a week. The deceased was a single man, aged 29.