Verdict and Judgement

The jury retired for only two-and-a-half hours, during which time they took dinner. At the first trial the jury had deliberated for three times as long even though the trial was half the length. Like the first jury, this second jury returned the verdict of guilty of murder, except that this time there was no recommendation for mercy.

The scene in court when the verdict was announced was dramatic. The Auckland Star reported that Mareo 'stepped back a pace as though stunned. Then he turned to the girl, murmuring, "Betty… Betty…"'³³The registrar then asked if the prisoner page 63had 'anything to say why the sentence of death should not be passed', and Mareo replied

[I]t is very hard to say anything under the circumstances, because it is the second time I have been through this terrible ordeal. I can only say that it seems to me, from a logical, clear-minded man's reasoning, from the way the whole of this case has been conducted by all the counsel, and after your Honor's, may I say, marvelous summing-up, I have been sentenced on the lying word of Freda Stark. I ought not to say that, but what can I say? Nothing more.³⁴

After the judgement of death had been pronounced, the Star observed that

[B]ending low over the table, his head in his hands, sobbing audibly sat Mr Humphrey O'Leary, a tired, disillusioned man. Behind him sat Betty Mareo, trying hard to choke back the tears. A woman consoled her.³⁵

One commentator was to say some thirty years later (and sixteen years after his death) that O'Leary's 'greatest disappointment was, I think, his failure in 1936 to secure the acquittal of Mareo on his second trial for the murder of his wife by veronal poisoning'.³⁶ As for the prisoner, the Star also reported that

[A] warder touched Mareo on the shoulder, an indication that he was to go back to prison - back to he knew not what. With tragic appeal his lips twice formed the word 'Betty' as he looked across at the girl who had know him as her father. She tried to smile through a flood of tears. Mareo turned, and as though in a daze, moved towards the dock staircase which leads to the cells. He had walked down three, when he turned and tried to go back.

A warder quietly urged him down. 'I want to see Betty,' he said. Then he disappeared.³⁷