"DEAD" GIRL RETURNS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 25, 30 January 1926, Page 23

"DEAD" GIRL RETURNS.

SHOCK FOR STEPFATHER. IDENTITY RIDDLE. Miss Beatrice Branscom'be, who was thought by her stepfather to be the bobbedhair girl found dead in a gas-fllled room at Downs Park Road, Hackney, amazed her relations by appearing at her home. The stepfather, "Mr. E. T. Hales, licensee of the Castle, Egbam, told the Hackney coroner at the inquest that he believed the body was that of 'Miss Branscombe, whom he had not seen for three months. Hβ also said that a note written by the dead girl was In the same handwriting as that of his stepdaughter. "I hate writing, and that was the reason I did not write," said Miss Branscombe when she arrived. She is a goodlooking young woman of 18, with a fine head of naturally wavy hair. Though she will not say where she has spent all the three months she has been away, she said she went to the Swan Hotel, Sloane Street, and afterwards stayed with friends at Abbey Wood. "The last three weeks," she added, "I have been unemployed, and living wltU a girl friend in the Borough." The coroner adjourned the inquest for further evidence. The identity of the dead girl remains a mystery.