POLICE BAFFLED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 217, 13 September 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

POLICE BAFFLED.

WHO KILLED AGNES KESSON?

EPSOM DOWNS MURDER,

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW,

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, July 25,

There is no need to buy an expensive 7/6 book to get a thriller. The news from day to day unfolds as exciting a tale as ever was found between the covers of a Conan Doyle, and just now we are reading instalments of one which is still ■wrapt in mystery. Now, more than six •weeks after, the murder of .Agnes Kesson on the Epsom Downs, presumably on Derby Day or early on the morning after, is still as far from solution as ever. All search for the murderer, or the existence of a motive for murdering her, among the people with whom she came in contact, has so far led to an impasse, both Mr. Deats, her employer, and Bob Harper, her "young man," having accounted for their movements to the police. There is no trace of the clothing which she is believed to have worn—aud they were startling enough in colour —a red jersey and a Macdonald tartan skirt, when she left the house in which she was employed at Burgh Heath. One is almost persuaded to believe that suggestion in crime has some sort of mass influence. Another still unsolved mystery is. the death of a woman found without her stockings. The body of Agnes Kesson was found clad only in torn, mud-bespattei-ed underclothes, one garment inside out, and her body had apparently been brought to the ditch, in which it was found, in a moJtor car, for motor oil and cigarette ash were found near. What, in all conscience, can have been the motive of murder of this kind? Is this death due to a homicidal maniac, and is homicidal mania manifesting itself in other parts of the country? ■ The police have, during the last week, reconstructed the crime, a policeman taking the part of the body, taken there in a motor car and strangled—for the medical evidence points to Agnes Kesson having been strangled. But no reconstruction of crime sheets brings the murder home to any murderer as yet known. All the meagre incidents of her leaving her situation as waitress at the Nook, Burgh Heath, known so far are that her trunk was taken away by Garter Paterson .and delivered at Carshalton, but she herself left alone, according to Mr. Deats, between two and three o'clock. She spoke to an unknown person over the telephone shortly before, and when he asked: "You are not going yet, you? I thought you promised to wait for Bob?" she replied, "Bob knows where I am going. Mrs. Young is to keep the box until I writo her from. Scotland," Mrs. Young being cook at the King's Arms, Carshalton.

Dead Girl's Movements. Mr. Deats gave evidence of* all this, and went on to 6ay lioav, on going to the door, he found Agnes Kesson had gone, whether by omnibus or not he does not know. The next afternoon —Derby Day— he thinks he saw her go by riding pillion on the back of a motor cycle towards Tadworth. Mr. Deats' next action was that as he believed she took some £7 that he had missed, he went to the police station at Wellington that night to try —without success—to get a warrant to search her box. He was accompanied by Harper, who, when they found she had not reached Carshalton, became anxious about her. Harper and Deats' son paid a second visit to Carshalton towards midnight, and next day Harper wrote to her sister in Scotland inquiring for news of her. Thene was none.

The ascertained facts of the case proving to'be but blind trails, the character of Agnes Kesson next calls for some consideration. Here one comes up against contradictory evidence. Mr. Deats describes her as reserved, and yet others say she was lively and passionately fond of dancing, while Harper, with whom she was walking out, and who was jealous of other men, says she was quick-tempered, and has described a quarrel over a policeman acquaintance of hers, during which she kicked him and swore at him, and he said "Shut up, or I will choke you." One Possible Clue. One complication 'in the crime—the alleged fact that ehe was seen, on Derby Day just after the big race, walking among the crowds on the ' heath—has been removed from consideration this week, by the discovery that Agnes Kesson had a double, and quite a lot- of excitement which was created by reports that she had been seen on the course at the Derby and elsewhere has flickered out since the existence of a double has been known, and the hunt for the young man with whom she , was supposed to have been seen, who walked in a jaunty, swaggering fashion, and wore a cap, grey suit and brown shoes, has now died down.

But one possible clue lies in the incident described by Mr. Deats when he heard tapping and saw a face at the window. He eaid: "I was squaring up my books for the day, before going to bed. It was a face with small features, and the peak of the cap"—he pulled his own cap slightly askew—"was just like this. I am hard of hearing, but that night was so quiet, one of the quietest for a long time, that I heard the words spoken to me through the window: 'Will you go along to Sutton and pick up Mrs. . Smith, coming in there?' I said: 'Yes, I'll go along,' and I went."

As was revealed at the inquest, there was nobody at the station to be picked up. and Mr. Deats' errand was fruitless. Who was the man?