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The Trials of Eric Mareo

Chapter Two — 'Canned': Mareo's Defence

page 33

Chapter Two
'Canned': Mareo's Defence

Mareo did Not Take the witness stand during the trial. According to his junior counsel, (later Sir) Trevor Henry, this was in large part because he could remember very little about the events of the fatal weekend. In light of that fact, it appears that Mareo's senior counsel, Humphrey O'Leary KC, decided to take advantage of the procedural rule that permitted him to address the jury last where no Defence witnesses were called. O'Leary's decision to call neither Mareo nor any other witnesses perhaps indicates his assessment of the strength (or rather weakness) of the Crown's case. O'Leary's strategy seems to have been to attempt to raise doubts about Mareo's alleged motive, the Crown's interpretation of his guilty behaviour, and the scientific veracity of the Crown's medical witnesses. He also attempted to present a plausible alternative explanation of Thelma's death.

Mareo's Motive

In his final address to the jury, Johnstone maintained that although the Crown had shown that 'the accused had tired of his wife' the jury were 'not bound to assign any motive'.1 Yet, while it is true that the Crown does not need to prove motive, it may logically have some bearing on the question of whether the accused intended to kill (which is murder) or was reckless as to the consequences of his or her actions (which is manslaughter). It is easier to prove that an accused intended the consequences of certain actions if they can also show that he or she had some kind of motive for achieving those consequences.

However, even the Prosecution seems to have been confused about Mareo's possible intentions on the weekend in question. page 34As we have seen, they argued that the letter Mareo gave Betty revealing that he was not her 'legal' father demonstrated that he 'intended to do away with himself. But why would a man intending such an action also be planning at the same time to murder his wife and replace her with his mistress for financial gain? It is possible that Mareo could have been both suicidal and coldly plotting his wife's death, but this seems rather unlikely.

Yet, even if he had not been intending suicide, the nature of his relationship with Eleanor Brownlee remained unclear. Both Brownlee and Mareo firmly denied that they were having an affair, the latter, according to Stark, rather unkindly telling his wife that 'he couldn't possibly be in love with Eleanor as she had no personality and looks'.2 Stark also testified that Thelma had objected to Brownlee doing some of Mareo's washing and cleaning his room at the theatre but Mareo maintained to the police that Thelma had said about the washing '"[o]n second thoughts I think it will save me a lot of trouble" or words to that effect and there the matter ended'.3 Brownlee even said that on the first occasion Thelma had actually asked her to clean Mareo's ties and evening vest since she did not understand how to use starch.

Of course there was the bathroom incident after which Brownlee had written at Mareo's request:

Dear Thelma,

Mr Mareo told me tonight that you are still upset over what occurred on Saturday evening. I am very sorry if I was partly the cause of your distress. May I assure you that if I appeared to intrude it certainly was quite unintentional, and I very much regret having caused you any annoyance.

Believe me, yours sincerely,

It is telling that Brownlee only apologised for intruding into a domestic dispute and did not feel it necessary even to allude to any suspicion of an affair between herself and Mareo. Indeed, O'Leary maintained that when Stark and Thelma left the house after this dispute 'the presence of Miss Brownlee there was just page 35an excuse'. According to the Herald's summary, '[h]is Honor interposed to say there was no evidence to bear out that suggestion. The evidence showed, on the contrary, that the cause of the quarrel was Miss Brownlee's going into the bathroom'.5 However, this assertion of Mr Justice Fair's does not precisely accord with the evidence of either Stark or Brownlee. According to Stark, Thelma initially said that Eleanor could not stay the night because, presumably, 'Freda was staying here' to which Mareo responded, 'Oh, she can sleep anywhere.'6 Thus Thelma's initial problem with Brownlee was that she would inconvenience their sleeping arrangements. And, according to Brownlee (whose account differs significantly from Stark's), she only went into the bathroom after she had heard Thelma call out hysterically.

In reality the only evidence that Mareo and Brownlee were having an affair was the fact that they spent so much time together. Yet while it was rare for men and women to work so closely together during the 1930s, at least as equals, some workplaces — such as theatres — were obvious exceptions. On the vast majority of occasions, Mareo and Brownlee were simply working together, either on the scenario for the film or on theatre business. They had first met because of Brownlee's desire to learn orchestration, and she had initially paid Mareo for his tuition. No one ever suggested that they met in secret, and after Thelma's death they still continued to meet openly. Mareo and Brownlee might have thought that the best way of keeping their affair secret was to conduct it as publicly as possible. Yet, while in one of Edgar Allan Poe's stories a character conceals a letter by using it to visibly plug a hole in a wall, it is rather unlikely that they would have chosen to conceal their relationship in such a manner. Betty's response to O'Leary's inquiry about noticing 'any signs of undue relationship between Mareo and Eleanor Brownlee' seems spontaneous and therefore probably reliable: 'Good heavens, No.'7

Of course there is nothing in the trial that definitely rules out the possibility that Brownlee was in love with Mareo and that he knew it. Since Brownlee was the daughter of well-off Aucklanders, it might have been that the bankrupt and page 36unemployed Mareo was anticipating a large dowry. Nevertheless, it is a courageous or extremely desperate man who would risk being hanged on the assumption not only that a woman seventeen years his junior would marry him, but also that her parents would approve of the marriage and dispense with some of their fortune accordingly.

Besides, Stark's evidence that the Mareos' marriage was all but over was contradicted by other testimony. Some degree of tension or conflict in their marriage was only to be expected: both were out of work, one was visiting a doctor for a nervous condition, the other drinking heavily and taking veronal, and they were living in an unusual household. Mareo's daughter and son were respectively only eight years and twelve years younger than their stepmother. Thelma and Betty did not get on because Thelma objected to Betty doing the housework and usurping her position as 'mistress of the house'. Thelma's 'bosom friend' had taken up almost semi-permanent residence and there were often, according to Betty, other 'theatricals in the house when the shows were on'.8 In their different ways, both Mareo and Thelma would have been difficult to live with. Thus it is not surprising that they quarrelled. However, Graham could only remember his father and stepmother quarrelling on two occasions and on both of these they were drunk. Stark even told the court that after Thelma had gone to see Dr Walton, Mareo

and his wife seemed to be getting on quite all right. The weekend before she died I went out on the Saturday night and we played cards-that was the Saturday night, it would be 6th April. Mr Mareo, Thelma, Graham and I were there. We played cards.9

Later Stark would also remember that Mareo had been teaching them all German.

In addition Mareo stood to lose something by replacing his wife with Brownlee. On the weekend of Thelma's death, Brownlee was writing a letter on behalf of Mareo to the J.C. Williamson Theatre Company in Australia proposing that they page 37fund a light opera company in which Thelma would be the leading lady. Mareo was also promoting his film scenario to potential financiers on the basis that she would be its main star. As O'Leary pointed out to the jury, Thelma 'was a necessity to him if his programme was to be carried out. What use would Eleanor Brownlee, not suited for the stage, have been to him in this connection? Thelma, on the other hand, was essential for the work.'10

Mareo's Guilty Behaviour

Perhaps the most telling aspect of Mareo's guilty behaviour was his apparent repeated reluctance to call a doctor. The Attorney-General at the time of the trials, Mason, would later claim that this was the 'hub' of the case.11 However, while such behaviour might be seen as irresponsible and even reprehensible, it does not indicate that Mareo was a murderer. The jury would have had to reject two possible explanations for his delay: that he was used to seeing Thelma 'Canned', and that he was concerned about the nature of the medicine he had purchased from the chemist because of Thelma's anxiety about her delayed period. The first of these explanations is quite plausible (as we shall soon see), and the second not only accounts for his reluctance to call a doctor but goes some way towards proving his innocence.

Because Thelma had her period while still in a coma, her fears about being pregnant had been unfounded. Furthermore, as we have also seen, Mareo believed that Thelma could not have been pregnant and the chemist who supplied him with the drugs concerned, David Morgan, testified that he had told him that 'his wife was slightly overdue and wanted a corrective mixture'. Morgan supplied him with a mixture described as 'a general tonic' to correct 'general debility' and 'satisfy the mind' suitable for both men and women. The 'corrective mixture' was not, Morgan testified, an abortifacient. Morgan also supplied Mareo with some apparently harmless Burroughs-Wellcome Varium tablets.12

page 38

However, at a time when the penalty for administering an abortifacient was life imprisonment, a man expressing concern about his wife's delayed period might either be misconstrued or he might subsequently believe that he had been misconstrued. In some circumstances it might have been difficult to tell whether an understandably vague husband was requesting a medicine to calm his wife's nerves and therefore induce her period or whether he was asking for an abortifacient. Significantly, Morgan contradicted Mareo's story that he had initially charged him '£2/10 – or £3', but agreed to let him have the medicines for £l because he was out of work. The price of the medicines, according to Morgan, was only '5/- or 6/-'.13 Assuming that Stark's testimony is accurate and Mareo had no discernible motive to inflate greatly the price of the medicines (because that would make them appear more likely to be abortifacients), why would Morgan lie? Presumably, he either did not want to appear as the kind of man who charged exorbitant prices for placebos or did not want anybody to know that the reason why one of the drugs was so expensive was that it was an abortifacient.

It is likely, then, that Mareo believed that Morgan had misinterpreted his request and supplied him with an abortifacient. When he visited the Mareos at home, Dr Dreadon testified that Mareo had told him that Thelma 'had taken some medicine three days previously - he said that she had been several days overdue with her menstrual periods and thought she was pregnant and she had taken this medicine to try and put it right'.14 And according to the resident doctor at the hospital, Dr Keenan, Mareo had said

that Thelma his wife had a horror of pregnancy, that she had obtained some medicine from a chemist and he had thought her condition was due to the taking of this medicine. He made it quite clear who had obtained the medicine from the chemist — that she had.15

Dr Keenan had then sent Mareo to have his blood tested. According to him Mareo 'expressed every willingness to give page 39blood for his wife — to do everything that was possible'. In short, Mareo behaved as though he wanted the doctors to guess the nature of Morgan's drugs in order that they might save her life, but as though he feared prosecution for administering an abortifacient.

After Thelma's death some time probably passed before its cause was confirmed. Although the government analyst received portions of her body the day after her death, he was still receiving parts of her bedding (in which veronal from her urine was present) about six weeks later. Immediately after listing the dates on which he received various 'exhibits', the government analyst testified that 'I examined the organs for poison' which seems to imply that he did not begin his analysis until all the 'exhibits' had been received.16 Immediately after Thelma's death Dr Gilmour did conduct a post-mortem examination but he did not testify as to whether he came to the conclusion that Thelma had died of veronal poisoning. In court he testified that he had 'heard the evidence given by Kenneth Massy Griffin [the government analyst]. Having heard that evidence I come to the conclusion that death was due to veronal poisoning'.17 This implies that he was unable to ascertain the cause of death without Griffin's analysis. In other words, it may not have been until after Mareo had given his various statements to the police that the cause of Thelma's death was confirmed.

Certainly on the evidence of his lies about Morgan's drugs, it seems that Mareo was uncertain as to the cause of her death. Significantly, before her death he lied to the doctors only about who had purchased the drugs from Morgan. However, after Thelma's death Mareo denied to the police on several occasions not only having purchased this medicine but also even being aware that his wife had taken it just before she died. Presumably, he feared that he would now be charged with killing his wife with an abortifacient.

Mareo's confessions about the veronal confirm this interpretation. Dr Dreadon testified that Mareo immediately denied that Thelma took 'dope' of any kind, confessed to taking veronal himself and willingly fetched the bottle in which he kept his page 40supply. According to Dr Dreadon, Mareo seemed 'genuinely surprised' when he discovered that the veronal bottle was empty.18 He was just as forthcoming to Dr Keenan at the hospital and later he gave long and detailed accounts of all his veronal purchases and his consumption habits to the police on several occasions. The only time he was ever evasive about the veronal or behaved in a guilty fashion was in revealing the names of the chemists from whom he had purchased the drug. However, this can be explained by the fact that sale of the drug had been restricted a couple of weeks earlier, and Mareo was concerned that he would get these chemists into trouble for selling a drug illegally. Thus, when he took the detectives out to the washhouse to show them the empty veronal bottle, Mareo exclaimed, 'Oh, you'll get the chemist's name from this,' and, 'Oh, please don't take it.'19 When the police asked him a few days after Thelma's death where he had purchased the veronal, reassuring him that '[w]e are not concerned with prosecuting a chemist for any offence', Mareo replied, 'I will if asked to do so on oath.'20 Furthermore, as O'Leary pointed out to the jury,

[Mareo] went to chemists who knew him, and the purchases he made could be easily ascertained… Was that the action of a guilty man? Would he not have gone to the 80 or 90 chemists in Auckland who did not know him?21

Yet despite such apparently compelling evidence that Mareo had not poisoned his wife with veronal, there was a crucial problem with O'Leary's case. According to the Herald's account — on which we have in part to rely since transcripts of the final addresses to the juries either were not made or do not survive — O'Leary told the first jury that '[t]he reason Mareo did not get a doctor earlier was the reason he had given, that he had given her medicine to prevent childbirth'. This would indicate that O'Leary believed that Mareo had asked Morgan for an abortifacient. However, in the same address, O'Leary had said that 'instead of letting her continue to fear childbirth and possibly destroy herself, Mareo went and got medicine to save her from page 41this fear' [our emphasis], the implication being that the medicines were merely for her mental condition or possibly to induce her period.22

Similarly, as we shall see, O'Leary was vague about Mareo's lesbian accusation. O'Leary could have said that Mareo was lying about his wife's sexual preferences because he felt guilty about giving her an abortifacient. If he could convince people that his wife was a lesbian then it would be unlikely that anyone would believe that she would be in need of an abortifacient. However, if O'Leary had argued that Mareo was lying, this would have played into the hands of the Crown who made much of the fact that he was the kind of man prepared to 'blacken' his wife's name in order to save his own skin. Besides O'Leary had reminded the court that the senior detective involved in the case had testified that when Mareo told the police that his 'wife was fonder of women than of men' he had also demanded, 'I don't want this to go down.'23 His 'accusation' was in fact only recorded in a much later statement after police had questioned him about this off-the-record statement. Moreover, while he probably did repeat both the lesbian and alcholic charges after Thelma's death in order to exonerate himself, Mareo had first made these charges, according to Dr Walton and Stark's testimony, not only before Thelma's death but before he could reasonably have been expected to have formulated any plan to murder her.

Alternatively, however, if O'Leary had argued that Thelma really was a lesbian, then he would have seriously damaged his case that Mareo felt guilty about Morgan's drugs not the veronal. O'Leary was caught on the horns of a dilemma. It seems that rather than attempting to resolve it, he chose to fudge things. This may have been because his analytical skills were not up to the task or, as we think more likely, because of his attitudes towards women. Although O'Leary was one of the leading criminal barristers of his day (he is reputed never to have lost a jury trial in his first nine years of regular criminal practice), and in 1946 was appointed Chief Justice, it was later noted by another Chief Justice that '[f]or such a personable man he was page 42curiously shy of women (it is doubtful if he ever employed a woman typist) but he loved the company of men and, best, his fellow lawyers of all ages'.24 A case concerned so much with the intimate physical and sexual lives of two women was perhaps not ideal for such a man.

The Medical Evidence

The only facts not disputed by O'Leary were: (1) that Mareo had purchased the veronal that (2) killed Thelma. At issue was whether he had administered the veronal to her and, if he had, whether this had been done either recklessly or with murderous intent. Unlike the infamous Munn trial of 1930, where the accused was charged with and convicted of murdering his wife with strychnine, an obvious obstacle the Prosecution had in Mareo's case was that veronal was a medicinal drug which Thelma might have come to take herself in any number of ways. As the prominent Auckland prosecutor Vincent Meredith (who was later to become involved in the case) was to point out in another context, it was extremely difficult to prove that someone had been murdered with veronal because 'veronal could be bought freely [at least before 1 April 1935] and it was impossible to establish that the deceased had not himself had veronal and self-administered it'.25 Indeed, in 1933 there had been another famous criminal trial in Auckland where a nurse, Elspeth Kerr (who would today be a clear candidate for a diagnosis of Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy), was accused of attempting to murder her adopted daughter with veronal. Although there was clear evidence that the only way in which the child could have taken veronal was through the auspices of her mother, the juries in Kerr's first two trials could not agree. It was only after she had endured a third trial that she was convicted of attempted murder. Although after investigations by the real-life prototype of Georges Simenon's fictional Inspector Maigret, the young Parisian woman Violette Noziere, who killed her father with veronal in 1934 (after he had lain in a coma for about thirty page 43hours), was convicted of murder and sentenced to the guillotine, no one living under British law had ever been convicted of murdering someone with veronal. Thus O'Leary (who was unlikely to have known of the Noziere case) could inform the jury that 'a conviction of murder… would make history'.26

As far as the medical evidence was concerned, there were three main questions.

Firstly, how much veronal had Thelma consumed over the weekend? This was crucial because O'Leary raised the possibility that Thelma might have been 'susceptible' to the drug and therefore killed by a relatively 'normal' dose. Obviously, it is unlikely that a man such as Mareo, used to taking the drug frequently, could have intended to murder her with a 'normal' dose. One of the Crown's three doctors, Dr Gunson, denied that Thelma displayed the symptoms of a 'susceptible' patient suffering from veronal poisoning, but he neither explained why a normal dose for a susceptible person did not produce the same symptoms as an overdose for a normal person, nor described how susceptible patients behaved after they had taken a medicinal dose.27 Nevertheless, on the authority of the overseas expert toxicologist, Sir William Willcox, all three doctors agreed that Thelma had taken a total of about 100 grains of veronal. The authority of Sir William was crucial because Thelma's body did not contain all the veronal, unknown amounts having been excreted in her urine both before her final period of sleep and later on a nightdress that had been washed either by Stark (according to Brownlee) or by Brownlee (according to Stark). However, O'Leary was able to point out to the doctor who had conducted the post-mortem, Dr Gilmour, that

Sir W. Willcox was unable to say how much veronal was taken in those cases [of veronal poisoning to which Dr. Gilmour had been referring] – It isn't recorded [conceded Gilmour]. Q. If it had been obtained it would have been recorded? – In one case he says 'probably about 100 gr. were taken'… Q. That is the only case in which there is an estimate of the amount taken? – The only fatal case in this series.28
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Somewhat later Dr Gunson also admitted that he could not say why Sir William had estimated the amount of veronal in only one fatal case. Clearly, the Crown's doctors were considerably more certain than the authority upon whom they relied.

Secondly, how much veronal was in the milk and was it the fatal dose? As we have seen, Stark testified that Thelma drank at least half the cup of milk without the aid of a spoon. In contrast, Graham claimed that Thelma did not drink directly from the cup and drank '[o]nly a very little' from several attempts to give her the milk from a spoon.29 Since a few spoonfuls of milk could not have contained a fatal amount of veronal (due to its lack of solubility), Thelma could not have been given a fatal dose if Graham's testimony is to be believed. Thus Dr Gilmour testified that at the preliminary inquiry he had formed the opinion on the basis only of Graham's evidence that it was 'impossible to say' that the last dose of veronal was in the milk. O'Leary then asked:

In this Court you are in the same position with regard to the evidence except that you read Graham Mareo's evidence? – Yes. Q. Are you in any better position to form an opinion as to whether the last dose was taken in the milk? – No. Q. Worse I suggest? – Yes, possibly. Q. Why worse? – Based on the estimate of the quantity of milk taken.30

Thirdly, was any veronal in the milk at all? The evidence that it was in the milk was completely circumstantial and therefore based on the principle allegedly derived from Sir William Willcox that someone could not relapse back into a coma without a further dose of veronal. However, according to Dr Ludbrook, Thelma was not even initially in a coma but 'sleeping naturally', albeit from what O'Leary described and he agreed was a 'slight overdose of veronal'.31 But even if she had initially been in a coma, it is by no means clear that she ever came out of this coma before taking the milk. O'Leary had discovered a case of veronal poisoning documented by a Dr Durrant in which a man had roused from an apparent coma, page 45been able to take liquids only by a teaspoon, and then relapsed back into a coma from which he never recovered. Dr Gilmour maintained that this case did not apply to Thelma's because '[h]e could be roused by effort—but not of his own accord'.32 However, Thelma only roused of her own accord according to Stark's evidence. Although Stark testified that Thelma had called out just before Graham went to the Dispensary for the sal volatile, Graham said, 'I didn't hear her.'33 Stark maintained that Thelma chewed and swallowed the bread whereas Graham remembered that '[t]hey forced a bit in between her teeth but I don't know if she swallowed it'.34 Furthermore there was the following exchange between O'Leary and Graham:

During the time that you were giving her the milk wasn't it that she was just trying to go off to sleep — Yes. Q. And she had to be roused when the attempt was made? – Yes. Q. She couldn't sit up herself and take it? – No.35

But the really telling evidence that veronal may not have been in the milk was the never disputed fact that Thelma began to fall back to sleep or relapse back into a coma while she was being given the milk (according to Graham) or immediately afterwards (according to Stark). O'Leary asked Dr Gilmour:

[t]he evidence was that she went back into the coma within five minutes of the administration of the milk? – Yes. Q. If that coma was induced by a… dose of veronal that dose must have been administered by an earlier dose of veronal? – All I can say is… [ellipses not ours!] Q. It couldn't have been administered in the milk — if those facts are correct? – If it is correct that she was slipping into a coma at the time the milk was administered then in that case the veronal could not have been in the milk. [our emphasis].36

Although Dr Gilmour would later qualify this testimony by saying that for a variety of reasons the veronal would have been 'absorbed with great rapidity', he did not confirm that its absorption must have been — as Stark's evidence suggests – page 46virtually instantaneous. Instead, he told the court that 'I think my point was that it must have been given within half an hour of her going to sleep'37 – which means that it may have been taken before the milk.

The Alternative Case

Thelma was clearly in a poor physical and mental state in the months before her death. Several witnesses confirm that when the curtain went down at the interval of the final performance of a play in which she was performing she took a considerable time to get to her feet. According to Mrs Bransgrove, everyone assumed she had had an attack of appendicitis (of which she would frequently complain) and was a 'heroine' for going on with the show. Stark testified that Thelma 'practically collapsed when she got home',38 either because of 'the influence of liquor' or of 'nerves'. A few weeks before her death, Dr Walton examined Thelma on two separate occasions and found that she had been vomiting every morning in a way consistent with alcoholism (but not pregnancy), and was in a 'condition of nervous exhaustion'. O'Leary asked him whether 'you would have been surprised if you had heard she had committed suicide?' and Dr Walton answered, 'No, I wouldn't.'39 Several witnesses, including Stark, also stated that Thelma had a dread of pregnancy and on more than one occasion confessed that she would rather die than have a child. The Mareos all claimed that Thelma would frequently spend long periods of time in bed because of illness. Stark did testify that on these occasions she was quite capable of looking after herself. However, when O'Leary asked her to confirm that Thelma had not been 'confined to her bed for two or three weeks continuously' she could only reply, 'She was in bed so much I can't really say.'40

What was contested, however, was Thelma's alleged alcoholism. This was crucial not just because it might have accounted for Mareo's delay in calling a doctor but it may also have called into question her general mental condition and therefore page 47propensity to suicide or carelessness with other drugs, as well as the credibility of Stark. Although the autopsy indicated that Thelma showed no signs of alcoholism, that does not exclude the possibility in someone only twenty-nine years old. A number of witnesses who knew Thelma rather more casually than the main protagonists — Mrs Evans and Miss Bransgrove from the theatre and the various other visitors to the house — all reported that they had never seen her drunk. With the possible exception of the last night of the play, in which she collapsed, Stark maintained that she had never seen Thelma 'under the influence of liquor'.41 Interestingly a number of witnesses confirmed that when Thelma did drink alcohol she would hold her nose. Stark maintained that she did this because '[s]he didn't like the taste of it very much',42 although later under cross-examination she admitted that Thelma nevertheless 'liked the effect [of alcohol] – Oh yes, it made her feel better'.43 However, in his statement to the police on the Tuesday after Thelma's arrest Mareo claimed that he was 'used to seeing my wife in an unconscious condition through alcohol' and that since the play Thelma had consumed 'on average two bottles of sherry every day'.44 Betty and Graham confirmed their father's testimony.

On balance it seems that the case for Thelma's alcoholism was much stronger than the case for her relative sobriety for four main reasons. Firstly, while Stark's repeated denials that Thelma drank excessively were clearly crucial, when Mareo had asked her in front of the police only a few hours after Thelma's death whether she knew that 'Thelma used to drink a lot', Stark had replied, 'Oh yes, I did, Mr Mareo.'45 Secondly, not much weight can be given to the evidence of those witnesses who knew her only casually and said they had never seen her drunk because it was precisely from such people that a heavy drinker could be expected to conceal their drinking successfully. Thirdly, Dr Walton's evidence should have been given considerable weight because he was the only witness professionally qualified to comment on Thelma's alleged alcoholism and the only witness who could not have had any reason to lie. Indeed, by stressing the seriousness of her mental and physical condition, Dr Walton page 48may even have laid himself open to the suspicion that his treatment of her had been less than adequate.

Finally, and most tellingly, there is the sheer detail of the evidence given by Betty and Graham. Betty could remember an occasion towards the end of January when Thelma had been in bed for three weeks because 'she had been drinking';46 being told by Stark on another occasion that her father hadn't drunk before marrying Thelma; a Saturday evening when Thelma had asked her to purchase some brandy and she had gone next door to 'the Wakeham's' and then been prevented from purchasing the alcohol by Mareo; and another occasion before Christmas when she had twice tried to prevent Stark from giving Thelma a bottle of colourless alcohol, the second time hiding it behind the piano. As well as claiming that Thelma was drunk after the Dixieland party and during the bathroom incident, Graham claimed to remember an occasion on which Thelma had given £1 of grocery money to Stark to buy liquor and he had called his father at the St James to tell him about it. The even more detailed evidence given by Mareo to the police on several occasions corroborates Graham's and Betty's testimony. Obviously, while the jury could not have been expected to treat Mareo's own children as impartial witnesses, they would nevertheless have had to credit the 17-year-old son and 21-year-old daughter with a considerable capacity for deceit. Interestingly, the autopsy revealed that Thelma did not suffer appendicitis or any kind of disease that might be confused with appendicitis. The Attorney-General, Mason, would later suggest that she feigned appendicitis to cover up her drinking.

O'Leary, then, proposed that Thelma had taken the veronal herself, although not necessarily with suicidal intent. He put it to the jury that

On Saturday morning she was out of bed obviously searching for something, and either then or in the two hours when she was alone [between about 11.30 a.m. and 1.00 p.m.] she got veronal and swallowed it, and that was the veronal from which she died.

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Throughout the Saturday she had no food or drink and her digestion was practically at a standstill, and the veronal would take hours to dissolve. She was aroused on Saturday night. She did not admit [sic] that she roused of her own volition. She was given sal volatile, which would greatly hasten the solution of the veronal remaining in the stomach [since it contained alcohol]. Then, in spite of the efforts of Miss Stark to keep her awake, she lapsed into unconsciousness and died. Death was due to the veronal taken on the Saturday morning, and it was not necessary for her to have taken it on Saturday night.47

There were several problems with this alternative account. No veronal was found in the bedroom, although of course that may have been because Thelma had consumed it. Alternatively, it may have been difficult for someone in her apparent condition to have gone to the laundry and reached up to the shelf where it was hidden, even though O'Leary told the jury that 'Poor little Detective Meiklejohn [who testified that he was "6'½" in [his] stocking"!] even had to get a chair to get up this shelf 5ft 7in. high! It was quite clear that Mrs Mareo could easily have got to the shelf.'48 Finally, because of his decision to call no witnesses, O'Leary had no medical testimony to verify that the veronal would have remained reasonably inactive in her stomach until being dissolved by the sal volatile.

Nevertheless, all three doctors called by the Prosecution testified that Thelma must have had a dose of veronal on the Saturday morning. Dr Gilmour maintained that when Graham found Thelma swaying, incoherent and apparently looking for something, earlier on the Saturday morning, she may have been 'recovering from a dose taken on Friday night', or she may have been showing the 'preliminary symptoms from a dose taken on the Saturday morning. If they [re]present recovery from a dose on Friday night, then it is necessary to assume another dose on the Sat. morning'.49 Dr Ludbrook thought it 'possible' that these symptoms may have 'immediately' followed the taking of a toxic dose, while Dr Gunson testified that Thelma took a dose of veronal on the Saturday morning, although he did not specify if this was when she was found by Graham swaying or somewhat page 50later when Mareo was awake.50 Not only did the three Crown doctors think that Thelma must have received a dose of veronal on the Saturday morning, but that this dose may have been taken just before or just after Graham found her swaying in front of the dresser. Since Mareo was not in the room at the time, according to the undisputed evidence of Graham, all three doctors had effectively testified that Thelma may have taken a dose of veronal by her own volition.

Thus the Crown had the seemingly impossible task of convincing the jury that Mareo had killed his wife with veronal when the evidence was entirely circumstantial and based on rather dubious medical testimony, when the dead person seems to have been quite capable of either endangering or taking her own life, and when by the Crown's own admission the deceased may have voluntarily taken somewhat earlier the same drug that later killed her. O'Leary's alternative account of the events had some problems but these paled into insignificance beside those of the Crown's. Moreover, the onus was on the Crown to convince the jury that its version of events was certain 'beyond reasonable doubt'.

It is of course easy for us more than half a century later to reconstruct painstakingly the complicated sequence of events. The jury could only be expected to take at most a few days to come to their decision. In recent years it has become clear that juries are usually confused after a long trial in which there is difficult and complex evidence. For example, one expert has found both that fewer than forty per cent of jurors in trials lasting two to three weeks claimed to have understood all of the trial and that there is a clear correlation between the length of the trial and the capacity of jurors to maintain concentration.51 However, if the jury was confused then it had no alternative but to acquit Mareo, even if it had serious doubts about his innocence. Although the jury did apparently have some doubts, it seems that they were only about whether or not Mareo had intended to kill Thelma. A little over an hour after having retired to consider their verdict, the Foreman came back into the jury room and asked the judge whether or not there was a possibility page 51of a manslaughter verdict. Mr Justice Arthur Fair, who would become known for the firmness with which he held his views and for the importance he attached to the dignity of his court, was conducting his first criminal trial as a judge. Perhaps for that reason his direction to the Foreman was ponderous and confusing, and completely failed to define what manslaughter was. Several hours later the Foreman came back into the court with the verdict 'Guilty, but with a strong recommendation for mercy'. Had the Foreman — who was a known opponent of capital punishment — convinced the others to recommend mercy? Or did the jury feel that in the light of the medical evidence they had no alternative but to deliver a guilty verdict about which they were nevertheless apprehensive? We can never know. Justice Fair, however, had no alternative by law but to don his black cap and sentence Mareo to be hanged.