HUSBAND’S FAKED SUICIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 March 1943, Page 3

HUSBAND’S FAKED SUICIDE

TO SCARE WIFE. A MELODRAMATIC STORY. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, March 30. The melodramatic story of a man who stage-managed his own “suicide” in order to impress on his wife his deep feeling of hurt at the manner in which she had been conducting herself, was told in the Magistrate’s Court this week. It awakened a feeling of sympathy in the magistrate, Mr. J. H. Luxford, who discharged him' on a charge of attempting to commit suicide, and suppressed his name. “You worked a great stunt, but it just missed fire,” said Mr. Luxford. “If what you say is correct, it was quite a justifiable stunt, I think.” The story, as it was told by the police, and in other evidence, was that accused, a young man with two children, had been quarrelling with his wife about her going out at night and returning late. He had followed her on this occasion to the city. She had told him she was going to the pictures, but he saw her, in company with another woman, meet a visiting serviceman outside the Chief Post Office. He spoke to her, in remonstrance, and was told that if he went home without making a scene she would follow him. She didn’t, and as the hours of the night passed he planned to shock her by staging a suicide. He drank some harmless nerve tonic and smoked cigarettes to make himself drowsy, placed an empty bottle, labelled “Poison” beside a couch, made a superficial cut on his wrist with a razor-blade, and dripped some blood on to a newspaper which he laid down to protect the carpet. To make it look more realistic, as there was not enough blood, he took a carving knife, smeared the blade with blood, and put it'with the other “exhibits’ on the floor. He then lay down on the couch, his cut arm hanging to the .floor. His plan went astray when a neighbour entered the open and lighted room before his wife returned home. He was in a dazed condition and she called the police, who in turn called the ambulance. Accused then had a brief stay in hospital. Accused, in a statement, read by the ' police, said that his wife had come to see him in the hospital and that they were now coming to an understanding.