ACCUSED OF MURDER

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 109, 18 February 1935, Page 7

ACCUSED OF MURDER

A TEAMSTER ARRESTED. , if ' WOMAN’S BODY IN CREEK* (Per Press Association.) HASTINGS, February 17. The Ta Heke mystery came to an unexpected and swift climax on Saturday afternoon, when, following on police ■ investigations into the finding of the dead body of a then unidentified woman, a man named Cnarles \\ imam Edwards was detained, and late on Saturday night was formally arrested and charged with the murder of the woman, who now is known to be Eva Madden, a domestic. Edwards will appear at the Magistrate’s Court, Napier, to-morrow morning. He is a faim teamster, 39 years of age. , The victim of the tragedy was 30 years of age. It is believed that she was formerly of Wellington, and that she has no relatives in New Zealand. It became apparent from the first examination of the body that the police were confronted with a problem or solving a fatal assault, and it is known that the detectives engaged in the preliminary investigations were by no means hopeful of a speedy solution of the affair. In the first'place, they were at a loss to know how the woman came to be in such a remote part of the country, and also they were faced with the fact that no Hawke's Bay police station had reports of any missing woman. It seemed as though identification alone would be a considerable problem. Then matters took a sudden turn. From some detailed description of the victim’s appearance and clothing, a Hastings resident who employed her came to the police with an offer to examine the body to see whether it was the same woman as she thought it was. Then Mr J. N. Lowry, at whose farm both the girl had Edwards had ‘been employed at the same time, came into the investigations, and quickly established the identity of the girl as Madden. The first step in the investigations was the examination of the body in its situation by Detective Farquharson, Plain Clothes Constable Dunne, and Dr. R. Caslimore, of Hastings. The body was then brought into Hastings, where it has now been preserved to facilitate further examination. Within an hour or two, Detective-Sergeant Bickerdike and Detective Coddmgton, of Napier, joined in the investigation, and acting on information received from the Hastings resident who had employed the woman they went to Tikokino to detain Edwards, who was taken to the scene of the discovery and later brought to Hastings. A postmortem examination by Dr. Cashmore and Dr. A. B. S. Whyte showed that the woman received certain severe injuries: It revealed also that her clothing was much disarranged, apparently before death.

A young man named Monk, who discovered the body at a very late hour on Thursday night, was walking along a creek which runs through the Ta Heke settlement, it being his intention to go eeling. He had reached a point almost opposite the junction of two roads when "lie saw a body. It was in a partly hidden spot about 100 yards from the road, and might have lain hidden there till the winter rains came, swelled the waters in the creek, and carriedl the body away.