GRIM SECRET.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 255, 27 October 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

GRIM SECRET.

MOORE PARK BURIAL IN SANDPIT. KEARNEY RIDDLE. Crouching in the blackness of night among the sandhills of Moore Park, two watching men see a dark figure against the sky, carrying the form of a woman. The grim silhouette against the stars moves to a "hollow in the sand, and the woman is placed out of eight. A few minutes prior to this the sounds of blows had been heard in the darkness, and the figure of a man could be seen bending over a woman. Changing their position, the watchers, looking through night glasses, saw the man running with the woman to the Band pit. This was the story told to the authorities eighteen months afterwards, when the body of Mrs. Daisy Maud Kearney, then little more than a skeleton, the skull fractured in half a dozen places, was dug up from the epot in the sandhills. The men who told the story of the grim happenings on the night of May 12, 1921, were park touts, a product of the underworld of Sydney. These men, James Ellicombe and Edgar Read, revealing the sordid nature of their calling, which was to prey upon couples in the park, Ellicombe stating that he made a practice of snatching handbags, told a grim narrative of what they alleged they had seen when the woman was buried.

After the nian had placed the body in the pit they went nearer, and saw her crouched up with a black handbag at her feet. The man came out of the pit and handed each of the watchers a £1 note. Afterwards the touts found bloodstains 00 the grass of one of the greens of the golf links, and in a pool of blood an earring and a tiny tortoiseshell clasp. Going back to the spot in the daylight they found the sand disturbed. A day or two later, still prowling about the spot, Read found a spade buried in the sand, and on the edge of the sand pit was blood, and on pieces of manure there were marks of blood-stained fingers. It was not until Ellicombe had been arrested in October the following year that the police were told of what they had seen. Body Duf Up. Digging in the sand at the spot indicated, the police discovered, at a depth of 10ft, the body of Mrs. Kearney. Underneath the corpse was a small basin. Heavy blows with some blunt instrument had split the skull in many directions, knocking one piece of the bone out. On the story told by the touts the police had a line-up of a number of men, and out of them Ellicombe picked John Carl Jenßen as the man whom he said had given them the money after they had seen the woman in the pit; Read picked out the dead woman's husband, Patrick Kearney, as the man. Mrs. Kearney had beeil living apart from her husband for some time, and had been renting a room from a Mrs. Clements in Harris Street, Ultimo. She had been keeping company with Jensen.

It was revealed that Mrs. Kearney had been in the company of Jensen on the night she disappeared. Jensen was committed for trial on a charge of mtirder. In his defence he said she came to where he was staying in Harris Street, and where a friend was having a birthday party. She and he went out together to a restaurant for tea. She left him a little before 9 o'clock, and he saw her go through the gate at Mrs. Clement's, some doors away, and on to the verandah. That was the last he ever saw of her.

She was to have met him on the following evening, but she did not keep . the appointment. He reported her disappearance to the police. Jensen was acquitted by the jury after a retirement of twenty minutes. Cheers in court greeted the verdict.