OLD TRAGEDY RECALLED.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 284, 1 December 1925, Page 9

OLD TRAGEDY RECALLED.

rtEMINISCENCE OF WAR DAYS.

MURDER OF MISS DOBIE

« STABBED BY A NATIVE

A detailed account of a tragedy that thrilled infant Taranaki in tne "Maori War days appeared in the "Haw era Star" on November 25, the anniversary of the event, the teller of the story being Mr. J. J. Connell, who was a sergeant at the time, and was in charge of the party that arrested the perpetrator of the deed. Miss Dobie, sister of Mrs. Goring, wife of Colonel Goring, well-known in Auckland, and sister of Mr. H. Dobie, of Auckland, in the early evening of November 2.*), ISSO, went out to sketch on the cliffs near Middh-on's Beach, a little to the north of the main Opunakc Beach. She did not return, and, an alarm being raised, search parties were organised, the men carrying torches made of iiax sticks. After some hours' search her dead body was found hidden in a flax bush. The'only wounds were two punctures in the thron't. Miss Dobie was a great favourite, from the highest command to the men in the ranks, and great indignation and sorrow was felt.at her untimely end. There was not the slightest chic to the murderer. A white man, whoso clothes had bloodstains on them, was arrested, and so high was the feeling that the men nearly lynched him. It afterwards turned out that he had been having a fight with another man, and some blood was spilled on his clothes.

Two days after the dreadful crime, some bloodstained clothes were found in a flax bush, and these were identified as belonging to a native named Tui, who was a sort of pet about the camp cookhouse. A party under Sergeant Connell was ordered, to go to the pa and arrest Tui, and they got their man without much trouble, although at one time it looked as though the affair might end awkwardly. When they were riding back to camp, hi single file, Tui got permission to light his pipe, and pulled his horse alongside a liax bush for shelter while he did so. Apparently it was a ruse to get rid of his knife, but. unfortunately for him, instead of dropping into the flax bush, as he evidently intended it should, it slipped down a stem of the bush and fell out on to the track, -where it was at once pounced on by one of his captors. The trial took place at Opunake. and when the evidence about the blood on his clothes, which had been analysed, was biven, and a doctor showed how the wounds in the throat had been given, Tui broke down. Up to that point he had strenuously denied his guilt. He made a full confession of the crime. He said he met Miss Dobie, and thought it strange to see a white girl going out by herself. Apparently Miss Dobie was alarmed at his look, and, taking out her money, she gave it to the native, saying at the same time that she would tell the soldiers when she got back. Fearing the vengeance of the men, Tui ran back and pushed her into a flax bush. She fainted, and he thought she was dead, but she recovered and screamed. Tui then took out his knife and stabbed her in the neck twice. His victim then bled to death.

An odd thing happened when Tui was being taken out in a surf boat to the steamer, by which he was going to Wellington to be hanged: The steersman fell overboard and the boat, broaching to, capsized. The crew got ashore, and Tui, though handcuffed, also managed to swim to land.

The esteem in which Miss Dobie was held by the men in the camp was shown by the memorial they erected to her memory at the bend in the river, where there is now a lake for the hydroelectric works.