NOT TO HANG

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21227, 25 September 1940, Page 8

NOT TO HANG

WAIKINO MURDERER SENTENCE COMMUTED IMPRISONMENT FOR LIFE (By Telegraph.—Press Association) WELLINGTON, Wednesday At a meeting of the Executive Council this morning the death sentence on Douglas Herbert Cartman, who was convicted of the murder of Mrs Elizabeth Hamilton at Waikino, was commuted to imprisonment for life. The charge of murder preferred against Cartman was the culmination of weeks of work by the police force to discover the cause of deaths of Mrs Elizabeth Hamilton, aged 27 and Lloyd Moran, aged 15, of Waikino, who were found dead on April 3. It will be recalled that Mrs Hamilton, who was employed at the Waikino Hotel, and Lloyd Moran, who was a son of the proprietor, were last seen alive on the night of April 2, when they were out for a walk. The boy’s body was found down a bank near Waikino early in the morning of April 3 and some time later Mrs Hamilton’s body, badly battered, was found in some scrub four miles away After one of the largest police hunts for many years, Cartman, a miner of Waihi, was arrested on May 2 and charged with the murder of the woman, the authorities stating that possibly the boy was killed when both were struck by Cartman’s car. The doctor’s evidence, however, showed that the woman was still alive after being hit and that the immediate cause of her death was blows on the head by a tyre lever. The jury found that Cartman, after hitting both with his car, carried Mrs Hamilton away in the vehicle, assaulted her, and then inflicted the head wounds with the tyre lever.