Crime of Passion

The Murder of Dorothy Davies

Forbidden passions turned to cold-blooded murder on a winter’s night in Sydney’s Woollahra in 1944.

The eastern suburb of Woollahra is one of the premiere postcodes in Sydney. It is a very affluent area, just five kilometres from the CBD and not far from world-famous Bondi Beach. An historic Woollahra mansion, St Kevins, is the home of former prime minister Paul Keating (purchased by Keating and his then wife Anita for $2.2 million). Next door to the Keating abode is the former childhood home of the late Australian opera great Dame Joan Sutherland.

In the 1940s, Woollahra had an eclectic scene, filled with artists, professionals and boarding houses.

Dorothy Jean Davies, 22, shared a flat in the area with a female friend who worked for the Transport Department. Miss Davies worked as a delivery truck assistant at the Sydney Towel Supply, but had also previously worked for the Transport Department as a tram conductor.

In August 1944, Miss Davies told one of her three sisters Mrs Enid Poche that she was ‘going around’ with Richard William Underwood, 30. Underwood was a married tram conductor who used to work with Miss Davies.

Mrs Poche told Miss Davies to be careful, as Miss Davies was also engaged to a solider called Colin Dennerley, who was due back soon on leave from the Army. Mrs Poche asked her little sister if she thought she was being fair to Colin by going around with another man. Miss Davies replied, ‘No, perhaps not, but what can I do?’ It was the last time Mrs Poche saw her sister. Three days later, on 25 August 1944, Dorothy Jean Davies was dead.

Miss Davies was found dead on Edgecliff Road, Woollahra, not far from her home at around 8.30 p.m. Medical student Kenneth Rice found Miss Davies lying on the footpath groaning and rocking from side to side. She had been shot in the chest at close range and died soon after from her injuries.

At 11.15 p.m. that night, the police arrived at Underwood’s home in Sydney’s Waverley, not far from Woollahra. They told him that Miss Davies had been shot, to which he replied, ‘Is she dead?’ When told that Miss Davis had died, Underwood said, ‘I half expected something like this,’ and proceeded to weave a story of his own making for detectives.

At first Underwood told Paddington Detective Sergeant Aubrey Keating that he had arranged to meet Miss Davies at 8 p.m. but she hadn’t arrived. But then, acting nervous, he quickly changed his story and told police that while he didn’t shoot Miss Davies he was with her.

‘I was there when she was shot. I will explain it to you,’ Underwood said. He said he met Miss Davies at Wynard, near the CBD and was walking her home when a man rushed up and shot her. Underwood said that Miss Davies fell to the footpath as her attacker ran away and that he knelt down on his knees to try and lift the dying young woman.

‘That is how I got blood on my clothing,’ he told Keating.

This tale quickly unravelled and Underwood finally said to Keating, ‘You win, I shot her.’ He then claimed it was accidental when the pistol he was showing Miss Davies ‘went off’. When asked where the murder weapon was, Underwood told police that he had thrown it over a bridge into the water.

The true motive for Miss Davies’ death became clear when detectives kept pressing Underwood, who admitted he was jealous of her soldier fiancé. As with so many affairs, the relationship between Miss Davies and Underwood was complicated. While she had declared her passion for Underwood, Miss Davies still wore an engagement ring from Mr Dennerley. And while Underwood had told Miss Davies that he was divorced from his wife Olga, he was in fact only separated.

Newspapers at the time lapped up the sensational nature of the crime with headlines such as ‘Former connie “terrified” of suitor’ and ‘Shot girl who loved him; left her writhing on ground’. One report on her murder in Fairfield newspaper The Biz described Miss Davies as ‘a tall, attractive brunette’.

It was a love letter that sealed Underwood’s fate and exposed his motive for murder. While police were searching his home on the night of Miss Davies’ death, Underwood ripped up a ‘Dear John’ letter she had written to him.

In the letter addressed to ‘Dearest Rick’ (and pieced back together by the detectives) Miss Davies said she could not continue with the relationship. Extracts were published in newspapers during his murder trial in November 1944, and they revealed a tormented young woman: ‘You must surely know that every tiny moment with you hurts like the devil because I know I can never really be yours for always.’ Miss Davies was breaking up with Underwood:

God, Rick, darling, will you ever realise how much I love you, and understand how unfair you are to me when you expect me to just keep on going on and on as we have been. I am afraid I just can’t take it any more. Now you know why I want to break it off … I also hope you know now how much you really mean to me, so please help me – yours, Jean.

At a coronial inquest into Miss Davies’ death, which came before the murder trial, the dead woman’s three sisters all gave evidence in court about their sister’s fear of ‘another suitor’. Mrs Thelma Cowie said while she did not know Underwood, her sister had told her she was afraid of a man called Dick who worked on the trams.

‘He had put it to her that he was divorced, but she found out different, that he was not divorced, but separated,’ Mrs Cowie told the court.

Another sister Mrs Edna Everingham described a conversation she’d had where Miss Davies described Dick as very persistent. ‘He told her that if he didn’t get her, no-one else would,’ Mrs Everingham told the coroner.

There was one witness to the crime, law clerk Mr Roy Shostak, who said he was on a tram in Edgecliff Road at 8.29 p.m. and saw a man and woman on the footpath. He told the coroner he heard a sound ‘like a cracker or a tyre blow out’, then saw the woman scream and slump to the ground. Mr Shostak said he could not see the man’s face as his back was to the tram.

Underwood’s guilt was compounded when a tram driver and friend of Underwood, Colin Campbell, said the accused had called at his home on the day of the shooting to get a Colt revolver, which he had left there.

Richard Underwood was sentenced to death for the murder of Dorothy Davies but this was commuted to life imprisonment on 7 March 1945.

Underwood’s wife, Olga, was granted a divorce from Underwood in 1954. By that time Underwood had served 10 years in Sydney’s Long Bay prison. Mrs Underwood, asking for the judge’s discretion, said she had been living with another man since 1950 and was expecting a baby. The judge granted Mrs Underwood a quickie decree nisi in 21 days, rather than the usual six months.