ALLEGED MURDER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9530, 30 June 1909, Page 5

ALLEGED MURDER.

A WOODVILLE CASE. By Telegraph—Press Association. NAPIER, June 29. At the Supreme Court, this morning, before Mr Justice Chapman, Alice Maud Shepherd, aged 27, and John Cline, aged, 26, were charged with the murder of the infant child of the female accused at Woodville on or about May 12th, 1909. Both accused pieaded not guilty, and were defended.

His Honor refused application fcr a separate trial of the male accused.

The evidence went to show that the woman who was a domestic servant at Mangatoro. in the Dannevirke district, arrived in Woodville accompanied by Cline, who was a roadman in the employ of the Weber County Council. They took rooms at a hotel, and the woman is believed to have giveii birth to a child. The landlady of the hotel saw a man going into the woman's room and ordered them away. They shifted to a boardinghouse, and afterwards returned to Mangatoro. A boy who was fishing for eels in a creek at Woodville, on May a Ist, found a game bag containing thdead body of an infant and :;ther things, and weighted'wil h stones. It was deposed that the male accused had purchased this bag in Woodville. When the child's body was examined it was found that there was a piece of twine tied tightly twice round the neck. The Crown Prosecutor said that he was informed that the string was not taken off the body.

His Honor: Well, it ought to,have been. Dr. Dawson deposed that the body was that of a fully developed male child. He was of opinion that the child had been born alive, and that the cause of death had been strangulation. The evidence was not concluded when the Court adjourned tor the day.