MIRAMAR TRAGEDY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 June 1938, Page 8

MIRAMAR TRAGEDY

INQUEST ON MOTHER & THREE CHILDREN. THE CORONER’S VERDICT. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) . WELLINGTON, This Day. An inquest on Mary Celia Sandlant, who was found drowned at Worser Bay on June 2, and on her three children, Roger, aged five years; Dennis, three, and Richard, six months, who were found with their heads battered at their home at 76 Para Street, Miramar, on June 1, was. held today before the Coroner, Mr E. Gilbertson, S.M. Colin Oliver Sandlant, manager of the Wellington Cabinet Co., said he returned to his home about 6 p.m. on June 1. He saw his razor on the gas stove, but as everything else was normal and his wife had said she would visit her mother, he went there to bring her home. She had not been there and when he returned to his home he found the three children in the bathroom, with their heads battered and an axe beside them. His wife h/id been in the Porirua Mental Hospital for six months in 1932, as a voluntary patient. She had often talked of suicide, but he did not take her seriously. Dr. Gordon Findlay, who examined Mrs Sandlant on May 30, said she was worried about her baby, but was quite rational. She had weaned the baby a week before. Detective William Ritchie said blood-stained footprints went from the bathroom to the bedroom, where he found blood-stained shoes, stockings and a dress lying on the floor, as if changed in a hurry. He described how Mrs Sandlant had an attache case, containing three stones, tied round her neck when she was found in the harbour.

Dr. Lynch, pathologist, said the children had died from blows inflicted by the axe and the mother had been drowned. The Coroner found that the children had died by blows inflicted by their mother, and the evidence pointed to her suicide when mentally deranged.