BATTERED TO DEATH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 April 1938, Page 6

BATTERED TO DEATH

* ■ ' **** * ' WOMAN MURDERED IN SLEEP. TRAGEDY ON LONELY FARM. By Telegraph-Press Association. DUNEDIN, April 15. In a solitary farmhouse standing off the main road a mile north of Henley a middle-aged woman, Frances Amelia Lee, was battered to death in her sleep on Thursday night. The murdered woman, who was 48 years of age, was married and was housekeeper for Mr Alexander Smith, farmer, Henley. It was in his house that the tragedy occurred. The Smith farmhouse, which stands about 200 yards off the Main South Road, close to the Taieri River, is one of four rooms. There lived Mrs Lee, who had been keeping house for Mr Smith for some years, her daughter, also named Frances Amelia Lee, aged 18, and Mr Smith;

Miss Lee occupied a bedroom in the front of the house, and her mother had a room at the rear, just off the kitchen. Mr Smith slept in a building behind the home and about 30 feet away from it.

These were the only persons in the house when they went to bed at 9 o’clock on Thursday night. At 6 o’clock this morning Mr Smith rose to go about his work as usual and called Mrs Lee. He received no answer, and, on going into her room to find out why she had not replied, he discovered that she was dead in her bed.

Her head was frightfully battered and she was lying in a pool of blood. Nothing in the room had been disturbed. Mr Smith communicated immediately with Constable Southgate, at Outram, and he notified the city police. Within a short time Chief Detective Young, accompanied by DetectiveSergeant Taylor and Detective McDougall, set out for Henley. The assumption reached by the detectives when they had examined the room where the murder took place was that Mrs Lee had died without knowing anything of the assault. In a porch at the back door of the house they found a sledge hammer, on which were bloodstains. This apparently was the weapon with which Mrs Lee was murdered. About an hour after the occupants had gone to bed on Thursday night, it is alleged, a visit was received from a young man who was not unknown to them. This man is now in hospital, after having been found in a boarding-house in the city in circumstances indicating that he had tried to commit suicide by gas-poison-ing. The body of Mrs Lee was examined today by Dr Wylie, Oiltram, and Superintendent Rawle. who visited the scene of the crime during the morning. They were accompanied by Dr Sylvia Chapman, who has been acting as pathologist at the Dunedin Hospital. An inquest will be held to-morrow.