The Peace Corps Murder Case

The eerie screech of water birds sounded through the open-ended courtroom in Mwanza, a dusty little Tanzanian town on the shore of Lake Victoria. Solemn in his red robes and white wig, British-born Judge Harold Platt, a member of Tanzania's High Court, stepped up to the bench. Ededem Effiwatt, the ponderous, coal-black prosecutor, made ready to represent the state. And an unarmed African policeman stood guard by the prisoner in the dock. Everywhere he looked, Peace Corpsman Bill Haywood Kinsey, 24, a North Carolinian who had been charged with the murder of his wife, was reminded that he was a stranger in a strange land.

Even the local legal ground rules were strained by Kinsey's trial; under Tanzanian law, the verdict is rendered by two assessors before it is either accepted or rejected by the presiding judge. Assessors are supposed to be familiar with the customs of the accused's tribe, and Kinsey had to settle for one U.S. citizen, Soil Conservationist Gail Bagley of Elsberry, Mo. The second assessor was a bespectacled Tanzanian economist, Fred Mugobi, who was at least American-educated. The defense counsel was a British-trained, Kenya-born attorney of Greek parentage--Byron Georgiadis.

Loved Wife. There, in that alien atmosphere, Kinsey, of Washington and Lee University, faced a prosecution case that seemed overwhelming. On March 27th, he and his auburn-haired wife Peverley, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, had bicycled to rock-strewn Impala hill, two miles from the village of Maswa. Prosecutor Effiwatt told the hushed court that in that lonely spot, Kinsey had taken an iron bar and beaten the young wife he had met and married in December 1964, during their Peace Corps training in the U.S. The assistant medical officer at the local hospital, who had performed the autopsy on Peverley Dennett Kinsey, also testified that she had been beaten about the head by something blunt, like an iron bar. There was an eyewitness, an African farmer who had seen the girl struggling to defend herself. The farmer had summoned his neighbors, and when Kinsey came down from the hill, the Africans attacked him with clubs.

A motive had been discovered, too: an entry in Kinsey's diary, made "on or about March 26," indicated that he thought his wife had been unfaithful. Things looked bleak indeed for School-teacher Kinsey.

Then he took the stand in his own defense, and suddenly the case against him began to look remarkably flimsy. Guided by Georgiadis, Kinsey explained that he had loved his wife, had never suspected or accused her of infidelity, nor had he ever wanted to harm or hit her. He testified that since they were both teachers, they had spent most of the day of her death at home grading papers, then they had left to cycle to Impala hill. Kinsey had intended to take his camera equipment along to photograph birds and wild life, but, as it was so late in the afternoon, he left it behind. The iron bar in the picnic basket, he said, was simply a part of his camera tripod accessory that he had overlooked.

Smashed Head. On reaching the hill, he and his wife read and drank beer for a while, Kinsey said. Later they climbed to the top of a higher rock for a better view of the countryside. While he was gazing in a different direction, Peverley apparently slipped and plunged 20 ft. to the spot where they had been sitting earlier. When he scrambled down to his wife, Kinsey said, she got to her feet, even though blood was gushing from her head. He said that she was screaming his name and crying, "Oh, my God!" over and over. Before he could reach her, she fell on her face and flailed around on the ground.

Kinsey insisted that he had tried to hold her still to prevent further injuries --it was this appearance of struggle, he claimed, that the African eyewitness saw. Kinsey finally had to sit on his wife while he cradled her head in his arms to stop her from smashing it against the rocks. He tried to carry her downhill, but, after falling several times, he placed her in the shade with her head elevated to lessen the bleeding. He then ran down the hill in search of help; what he found was the African farmer and his friends, who gave him a beating.

As for the diary entry, Lawyer Georgiadis disposed of that by introducing into evidence copies of Ceremony in Lone Tree, a novel by Wright Morris, in which specified sentences proved to be almost word for word the same as the lines in the diary. The novel was part of a selection issued to Peace Corps members in Tanzania for their book lockers, and Kinsey testified that he had formed the habit of jotting down excerpts from books while majoring in literature at college. Dr. Gerald C. Dockeray, a pathologist who appeared for the defense, told the court that Peverley's head wounds were so severe that a "colossal force" must have been used. In his opinion, the multiple fractures were far more consistent with a 20-ft. plunge than with blows by a blunt instrument.

Ducky Chat. If Kinsey began the trial a lonely stranger, by week's end he knew that his case had been handled by a sharp and knowing criminal lawyer. Georgiadis even produced a surprise witness: Mrs. Charlotte Dennett of Riverside, Conn., the mother of the dead girl. "It's good to see you, Bill," she said, as she embraced the defendant. Mrs. Dennett, ex-wife of the late Raymond Dennett, a former director of the World Peace Foundation, took the stand to give evidence in a quiet voice. While she fought back tears, she identified a letter that her daughter had written on the morning of the day of her death. Peverley had spoken of the planned picnic, chatted about some ducks they had as pets and about beautiful African violets she had found. She added that Bill was applying to graduate schools in preparation for their return home. In Mrs. Dennett's opinion, the marriage was "happy and comfortable"; she said that she never had any reason to think her daughter unhappy.

Though the court was not expected to render its decision until this week, it was clear that the mother of the dead girl, at least, had cast a personal vote of "not guilty."

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