It was a hot Friday night in October 1979 and a construction crew were well into a session at the Adelaide River Inn, 100 kilometres or so south of Darwin in the Northern Territory, then as now a very comfortable pub set in roomy tree-shaded grounds.

Most of the building crew were relaxing with a feed and a few beers after a long hot week on the tools.

Most of them that is except for Lionel Curtis and Murray (Mo) McNaught, between whom tensions had been rising like build-up season cumulonimbus clouds over the tropical floodplains along the river that flows through the town.

As Curtis later told Senior Constable Harry Cox, officer-in-charge of the Adelaide River police station, McNaught had ‘Thumped me twice in the past eleven days.’

Then last night he walked up to me, dropped his trousers and farted in my face. What would you do if a bloke farted in your face?

Senior Constable Cox replied that while he’d be upset, ‘I wouldn’t shoot him.’

At his trial for the murder of McNaught in the Northern Territory Supreme Court in February 1980, prosecutor Peter Tiffin told the jury that when McNaught passed wind that night it had generally been regarded by those present as a bit of a joke.

He raised his leg and put his backside fairly close to the face of the accused, Curtis, and passed wind. He then moved on.

Curtis couldn’t see any humour in McNaught’s nauseous spray and, according to Crown witness Reg Hackett, Curtis said, ‘I’ll fix Mo. I’ll give him a fart in his face,’ then threw his can of beer on the table, left the hotel and drove off to collect Hackett’s .22 rifle.

Curtis returned to the hotel with the rifle and fired one fatal shot into McNaught.

Barman Lawrie McIntosh told the Court that Curtis looked ‘angry and determined‘ when he re-entered the hotel: ‘”I heard him say as he pointed the rifle: ‘I am going to kill you, you cunt.'”

Curtis fired and McNaught died ‘almost immediately.’

As reported by venerable NT News Court Reporter Ken White, in a brief unsworn statement Curtis told the jury:

I didn’t mean to shoot this man.
Gripping the edge of the dock, he continued: He jumped up. I was drunk. I don’t wish to say anymore as I’m frightened.

After four days of trial hearings, the jury of 10 men and two women took just three and a half hours to find Lionel Curtis not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

Presiding NT Supreme Court judge Mr Justice Gallop took the unusual step—for the NT at least at that time—of “polling” the jury to ascertain the reason for their decision.

As Ken White reported, “The forewoman told the judge that the main basis on which the jury considered the case was that Curtis had not gone to the Adelaide River Inn with the intention of killing anyone.‘He was obviously influenced by the amount of alcohol he had consumed,’ she said.”

In sentencing Lionel Curtis the following Wednesday, Justice Gallop told the Court that, “The killing of Murray McNaught was a crime of great magnitude,” and that McNaught had gratuitously insulted Curtis in front of his friends.

Addressing Curtis, Justice Gallop told him that: “It seems to me the insult caused you to suffer an enormous loss of face, at least you thought so. You told your closest associate you were going to kill the deceased.”

You then killed him with one shot as he sat in a chair. He did not have a chance … The killing of Murray McNaught was a crime of great passion.

After considering Curtis’ “unenviable record” of criminal offences Justice Gallop sentenced him to eight years jail with a non-parole period of four years and six months.

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