Winnipeg Free Press
June 4, 1960 Page 20
Woman, 28, Accused of Murder St. Jerome, Quebec. (CP)
Mrs. Beverley Ann Weary, 28, the great grand-daughter of Sir William Van Horne, Friday was charged with murder in the rifle-slaying of a man at a drinking party in her Laurentian home May 16. Judge Omer Cote set preliminary hearing for Monday. The victim, Clifford Bruce Bridger, 33, was shot with a .22 caliber rifle after he and another man accepted Mrs. Weary's invitation for a round of drinks in her home at Ste. Adele, 45 miles north of Montreal. The twice-married Mrs. Weary's great-grandfather was the first general manager of the Canadian Pacific Railway. She was divorced from her first husband and is estranged from her second, Martin T. Weary.
Husband in Court The 30-year-old estranged husband is also before the court, charged with assaulting photographer Marvin L. Aitken, 26, who was with Bridger at the time of the shooting. He faced trial July 19. As Mrs. Weary was being led from the courtroom to a cell pending Monday's hearing, she said: "Isn't it awful, Martin and I having to appear in the same court. And we aren't speaking either." At a coroner's inquest earlier this week, when a jury found Mrs. Weary criminally responsible for Bridger's death, she testified she fired the shot accidentally.
Says She Slipped She said she slipped when she went out to the balcony of her home to investigate a noise and the rifle discharge. Mrs. Weary said she had borrowed the rifle for protection against prowlers who had been lurking near the house for some weeks. As a 17-year-old before her first marriage, Mrs. Weary was the object of a month-long search after her grandparents in Montreal reported her missing. She had stayed with them after the death of her parents.