DOMESTIC TRAGEDY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 November 1939, Page 9

DOMESTIC TRAGEDY

TWO FAMILIES AFFECTED WIFE FOUND DEAD IN KITCHEN AT HOME. WOUNDED MAN AND WOMAN IN HOTEL. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, November 6. With wounds in the arms. Francis Leonard Laurie, aged 39. a storeman employed at the Naval Base, and Annie Josephine Laycock, aged 35. wife of David Laycock, employed by the Devonport Ferry Company, were removed from a bedroom at the Station Hotel at 8.30 this morning. Mrs Laycock has a severe wound in the right forearm, and her condition is reported to be serious through loss of blood. Laurie has a wound in the left forearm. His condition is reported to be satisfactory.

When police entered the house of Mr Laurie in Egremont Street this morning, they found the dead body of Mrs Laurie. She was clad in a pink nightdress and cardigan. She was lying on the floor of the kitchen, with her head toward an open gas oven, which had all the jets turned full on. and the room was filled with gas fumes. Mrs Laurie had left a note, which, among other things, directed how certain of her property should bo distributed.

It is understood that Mr Laurie and Mrs Laycock booked in at the hotel about lunch time yesterday, and that when a housemaid knocked at the door at 6.45 o'clock .with morning tea an instruction was called from the inside of the room in a man’s voice to take a breakfast tray to the room at 8.30 o’clock. Returning with the tray at that time the housemaid found the door locked.

She unlocked the door with a pass key and found Laurie on the bed and Mrs Laycock lying on the floor, both bleeding profusely. A doctor and the police were called immediately. MR LAYCOCK INTERVIEWED. David Laycock, husband of the woman in hospital, said today that he knew nothing of his wife’s presence at the Station Hotel till informed at 11.30 a.m. today. Before that he had been to the central police station, as he wished to see Detective Brady, whom he knew well, by reason of the fact that the detective had formerly been stationed al Devonnort. He said he had reported his wife’s absence from home. Detective Brady was not at the station, but Mr Laycock related some of the circumstances of his wife’s absence when Questioned by another member of the detective staff. He also said he had handed to a detective a note in his wife’s handwriting, which he had found on the kitchen table when he returned home last night at 11.40 o’clock from a visit to Hamilton.

Mr Laycock, who is employed by the Devonport Steam Ferry Company as a ticket collector, said that he had lived in Egremont Street for exactly five years, and that Mr and Mrs Laurie had lived in the house next door for the last 10 or 12 years.