Portraits of a murder - PHOTO

Blood trails across the floor and smears a door, indicating the 34-year-old wife staggered a short way before succumbing to the two bullets shot into her head from her pilot husband's revolver.The scenes captured inside a cramped Sydney flat on an Autumn evening in 1944 are of disarray.Other signs of the struggle that must have occurred in the final minutes of the couple's murder suicide can be seen in the photograph of the flat's main room, where a cabinet is tilted on its side and a chair has been knocked over beneath portraits of the pair on the mantlepiece.The last images of the tragic Anderson couple were only recently identified among photographs uncovered from a vault of police evidence pictures.Police photos of crimes scenes and accidents, and mug shots of criminals and suspects dating back to 1920s Sydney, were found in a chest submerged in water in the late 1980s.Donated to one of Australia's premier government historic trusts, Sydney Living Museums, the collection of 130,000 black-and-white images of 20th century forensic records have gradually been restored and identified.The Anderson murder- suicide crime scenes were among a series of negatives found in an envelope labelled 'Murder of Alice and Morris Anderson, Waverley'.The story of what happened before police forced their way into the dead couple's flat, near Sydney's famous Bondi beach one Wednesday night after neighbours heard sounds of a disturbance, can now be told.And as reports in Australian newspapers at the time attest, the young wife had a premonition of her death, telling a relative a day earlier, 'Don't be surprised if you see in the papers that I have been shot'.Alice and her husband, 40-year-old Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) officer Maurice Reuben John Anderson, had only moved the week before into the furnished two room flat, one of six couples and other single renters crowded into a three room house, for which the couple paid £3, 5 shillings a week.Flying Officer Johnson was not well, and was suspected of having suffered 'war neurosis' during his service overseas in the RAAF's 11 Squadron in World War II.The 11 Squadron carried out bombing attacks against the Japanese ships in Papua New Guinea, in Port Moresby, carrying out an intense series of air raids on enemy targets in the latter part of 1943.At the end of the war, 11 Squadron dropped food and medical supplies to prisoner-of-war camps across south-east Asia and flew survivors back to Australia.On May 4, 1944, Officer Anderson was due to go into hospital for abdominal surgery.In the days leading up to their deaths, the couple had seemed well enough, and despite Mrs Anderson's dramatic disclosure to her relative, they were seen hanging out the washing together on Tuesday, May 2, apparently in 'good spirits'.Neighbours described them as affectionate couple who nevertheless kept themselves aloof.Around 7.30 pm on May 3, noise of a confrontation above the sound of a wireless playing came from the flat, which blazed with light, and from which wafted the smell of burning potatoes.At 7.40pm, Mr PJ Kennedy, who lived in an adjoining apartment, became suspicious and peered through a window. He called another neighbour, a Mr H Phillips, from the rooms above and they telephoned police.Two police inspectors and two detective sergeants arrived at the Birrell Street, Waverley address and climbed in through the window to discover the couple lying on the bedroom floor, shot through the head.Piecing together what had happened by the position of the bodies, the detectives formed the opinion Mrs Anderson had been sitting on a dining chair in the lounge room when she was shot twice through the head.A blood trail indicated she had jumped from the chair, knocking it over as she staggered to the door of the flat.The police believed Anderson then caught hold of his wife, dragging her into the bedroom and, as she slumped dead to the floor, he shot himself.He then fell across his wife's body and his revolver was found beneath him. A bullet was found lodged in his brain.Although police said they could find no motive for the tragedy, a news report later said Maurice Anderson may have been haunted by the fear his wife would not properly be cared for while he was undergoing a serious operation.Sydney Living Museums' series of forensic photograph exhibitions have generated wide public interest and now include the collection of retired police photographer, Walter Tuchin.Tuchin photographed murderers, car crashes and a variety of crime scenes for the New South Wales Scientific Investigation Bureau between 1952 and 1957.(dailymail.co.uk)ANN.Az