SUITCASE MURDER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 July 1938, Page 5

SUITCASE MURDER

THE TRIAL OF DOUGLAS ARMSTRONG OPENING PROCEEDINGS IN WELLINGTON. PROSECUTOR’S SUBMISSIONS. (By Telegraph—-Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Further circumstances surrounding the death of Edwin Norman Armstrong, whose dismembered body was found in Picton Harbour, were made public yesterday when the trial of his son, Douglas Alexander Armstrong, aged 21, for the murder of his father at Wellington on May 6, opened in the Supreme Court. The proceedings commenced in the afternoon, and the only evidence presented before the adjournment was formal evidence from a draughtsman, the evidence of accused’s brother and evidence by accused’s mother, who was under cross-examination when the court rose. Accused’s brother recalled several occasions when his father had threatened him or his brother. Expectation that the issue of whether accused was guilty of murder or manslaughter might arise was expressed by the Crown prosecutor. The jury -was empanelled at noon, but the hearing did not commence until 2 o’clock, the jurymen meantime having lunch and making arrangements for staying away from home during the trial. The Crown prosecutor’s opening address\>ccupied an hour and a half, so that only the last hour and a half of the afternoon sitting was given to hearing evidence. The. Crown prosecutor stood down four of the men called for the jury and counsel for the defence challenged five. Mr W. H. Cunningham, Crown prosecutor, is conducting the prosecution and Mr H. F. O’Leary, K.C., who has with him Mr D. Foster, is defending Armstrong.

Opening the prosecution, Mr Cunningham asked the jurymen to put out of their minds whatever they had heard of a case that had created something of a sensation. Their duty was to try the case on the. evidence before the court, and the onus was on the Crown to prove the charge. Giving the statutory definition of murder, he said he apprehended that there would be quite an issue as to whether the offence was murder or manslaughter. He read also the section of the Crimes Act which set out the grounds on which a charge of murder could be reduced to manslaughter. The jury would not be worried about the actual killing. There could not be any doubt about that, for, in fact, accused had admitted it, so the jury would have to consider mostly the points under the law he had mentioned. They would have to judge the intention of accused. His actions were described in his letter to his mother and his frank statement to the police. It was not the object of the Crown to have convicted of murder a man who was guilty of manslaughter only. Outlining the evidence, Mr Cunningham said there was no doubt that accused’s father was not over-welcome in the family home. At any rate, so far as accused was concerned, he resented his father’s presence and, according to Mrs Armstrong, they had scarcely been on speaking terms for a year or two. Mr Cunningham drew attention to passages in the letter’accused wrote to his mother and the statement accused made to the police bearing on accused’s relationship with his father.

Before reading the letter, Mr Cunningham pointed out tnat it contained no suggestion of provocation or selfdefence or of the circumstances of the killing at all, but it indicated the writer’s hatred of his father. It was devoid of compunction for the man he had killed.

After reading the statement accused made to the police Mr Cunningham commented that it stated quite frankly that accused intended to return to the house and have it out with his father about the latter leaving home and that he anticipated the meeting would be unpleasant, for he wished his mother to be absent. TODAY’S PROCEEDINGS s MRS ARMSTRONG’S EVIDENCE WELLINGTON, This Day. The cross exarpination of Mrs Armstrong, mother of Douglas Alexander Armstrong, who is standing his trial on a charge of murder, was continued today. Mrs Armstrong mentioned sums of money she had given or offered to her husband, Edwin Norman Armstrong. When she was asked if he had used physical violence towards her, witness broke down, and replied that he had not done so, but the mental torment had been awful. Witness said she remembered an occurrence about six years ago, when she was ill in bed. She had to get up because her husband was choking Douglas in the sitting room. She saw Douglas on the floor. Her husband was on top of him, and had him by the throat. She intervened to stop it. She remembered an occasion, about two years ago, when Douglas’s hand .was cut by a knife. Douglas put up his hand to reach across the table, and his father slashed his hand with a table knife. The wound was very severe, and had to be stitched by a doctor. Her husband lifted anything near at hand when in a violent mood and sometimes threw things. She had seen him throw books, a poker, a box of cigarettes. She was frightened her husband’s brain would snap at any time after his return from Australia. She based that on his excessive violence, and his obsessions —he imagined he was being followed about by detectives. He considered he knew all about the atom before Lord Rutherford,- and he invented a scheme for getting power from the motion of waves.

“Is that necessarily an obsession?”, asked the Chief Justice. “She thought it was,” replied Mr O’Leary. At the’ conclusion of her evidence, Mrs Armstrong collapsed, fainting in front of the jury box. She was carried from the Court by a police officer and detective. Lengthy evidence was given by a number of other witnesses.