DETECTIVES MURDERED

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 112, 13 May 1926, Page 7

DETECTIVES MURDERED

MOST ATROCIOUS CRIME. i THE DISMEMBERED BODIES, i WEST AUSTRALIAN HORROR. I (By Cable,—Press Association.—Copyright.) (ReceiTed l_ noon.) PERTH, this day. The discovery of the bodies of Detec-tive-Inspector Walsh and Sergeant Pitman, the missing West Australian police officers, reveals a murder unparalleled in the history of the goldfields. Acting on information supplied by two men who were driving through the bush, the police arrived at a disused mine shaft near the Coolgardie road, at the bottom of which, sixty feet down, the mutilated bodies of the detectives were found. Both the heads were sawn off. The legs were Eawn off below the knees, and again above the knees. The trunks i were also sawn in half, and the bodies were charred. j Evidently the murderers had placed i various parts in a. furnace in an en- > deavour to destroy the evidences of the crime. Apparently the murder was committed some distance away from the mine and the bodies conveyed to the mine in a cart, fresh wheel tracks leading up to and away from the mine. At the bottom of the shaft, covering , the bodies, were found fire bricks, gold '. scales, and fire bars, and a tonga furnace used for smelting ore and sev- • eral other parts of an illicit gold treat- > ment plant. I It is known that the two detectives had been watching the plant somewhere south of Kalgoorlie. The heads of the men were missing, but they were identified by the clothes found with the remains.— (A. and N.Z.) A cablegram from Perth stated that the police v.eru investigating the mv=tcrious dif-sppearance of Deteetive-Tn-spector Walsh and Sergeant Pitman. They left Terth on Aoril 28 to make investigations some miles from Kalgoorlie and had not since been heard of. Both men were employed in the department which handles gold stealing cases, and as the utmost secrecy is observed in this class of work nobody knew their actual destination. Foul play was suspected. Black trackers were scouring the country.