The Gun Alley Tragedy: Record of the Trial of Colin Campbell RossBrennan, T. C. (Thomas Cornelius)
History
The Gun Alley Tragedy: Record of the Trial of Colin Campbell Ross
Brennan, T. C. (Thomas Cornelius)
Ross, Colin Campbell, 1892-1922 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Trials (Murder) -- Australia -- Victoria -- Melbourne
Did your brother go to the front door and ask Ivy Matthews to come to
the front gate?—I do not know.
In your presence?—He did not.
Did Ivy Matthews come to the front gate and did you tell her if she
went on with this case she would have her lights put out?—No; I did not.
You would admit it if you had done it?—Yes; I am here to tell the truth.
One brother was out of Court while the other was giving his evidence.
It was again perfectly clear that neither brother had the slightest
knowledge of any such interview. It would have been competent for the
Crown to have called evidence to prove this conversation if it had
taken place, but no application was made to call the evidence.
There is an importance—indeed a tremendous importance—about this series
of questions which, as they led to nothing, may not be appreciated by
the layman. According to the rules of cross-examination, Counsel may
not ask random questions. His questions must have a basis of knowledge,
or at least of information, to rest upon. Before the Crown Prosecutor
could ask these questions, he must have had information to the effect
indicated by his cross-examination. It is impossible to conjecture
anyone who was in a position to give such information but Ivy Matthews.
If that be so, then Matthews absolutely invented the stories. There is
not a scintilla of truth in either of them.
But in still another way Matthews’ story can be shown to be, if not
false, at least highly improbable. She said that at 3 o’clock on the
Friday she was standing at the door of the wine saloon, talking to
Stanley Ross. “I was at the wine cafe door,” she said, “but not in
the saloon.” She came to the door, she said, because Stanley beckoned
her up from lower down the Arcade, where she was talking to a friend.
Stanley, of course, denies this absolutely. But if it were true, then
Stanley, in order to see her standing down the Arcade, must himself
have been standing flush with the building line of the cafe, and could
not have been in the recess by which the door is entered. When she
came to Stanley, she said she saw Ross come out of the cubicle, and as
he did so she saw the little girl sitting on a chair in it. When Ross
got the drink and went back, she says he must have spoken to the girl
because “she parted the curtains and looked straight out.”
[Illustration]
Now if Ross had taken that little girl into the room, one would have
thought that he would have been very anxious not to reveal her presence
unnecessarily. According to Matthews, he seems to have been at pains to
disclose it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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