On the evening of Monday 11 August 1930, taxi driver Charles David Cameron Patterson, 27, was shot dead in his own sedan on a lonely stretch of Hale Road, about ten miles from Perth, near Maida Vale. Patterson had been hired to drive a passenger from Victoria Park Post Office to a rural orchard property beyond the crime scene. He was found slumped behind the wheel, shot at close range inside the cab.
Within twelve hours, police arrested Clifford Wray, a 19-year-old English-born city clerk employed at Bairds Co. Ltd., who had been living with his father on a property near the scene. Wray allegedly made two statements to detectives: the first claimed Patterson was killed by the accidental discharge of a revolver Wray was handling while Patterson attended to a fault on the car. A second statement followed, after which Wray was charged with wilful murder. Police noted the case bore striking similarities to the earlier unsolved murder of another Perth taxi driver, John O’Neill.
