Recent Judicial Decisions
| Published date | 01 April 1935 |
| Date | 01 April 1935 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X3500800203 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Recent Judicial Decisions
R. v. Davidson
MURDER-NO
BODY FOUND
THIS case is reported on page 21 of 25 Criminal Appeal
Cases and was referred to in
the"
Notes on Recent
Crime"
in the last
number
of THE
POLICE
JOURNAL.
The
prisoner was charged with the
murder
of his son whose
body had not been found.
It
was proved in evidence
that
on z
rst
December, 1933, the prisoner took away his son,
aged 7, from
the
house where he was living. After 23rd
December there was no trace of
the
boy nor was his body
ever discovered. Subsequently, in July, 1934,
the
prisoner
made three
confessions-the
first in a letter to a police in-
spector, the second in a statement to
the
police, and
the
third
in a letter to his
wife-in
which he stated
that
he had
drowned the boy and placed his body on a refuse dump.
At the trial he retracted these statements, and gave evidence
that he had found
the
boy's dead body in a canal.
The
body had been placed on a burning refuse
dump
in December,
1933, and between
that
date and July, 1934, many thousands
of tons of rubbish had been added to this dump.
It
was
found quite impracticable to locate the exact spot at which
the body had been hidden and even if it could have been
located the chances of finding anything identifiable were
negligible.
At the trial the prisoner gave evidence on his own behalf
and alleged
that
he had
jumped
into the canal with the boy,
recovered himself on
the
opposite side of the canal, and
subsequently found the boy dead in
the
water.
It
was urged
137
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