MURDERED?

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 129, 3 June 1935, Page 3

MURDERED?

UNKNOWN WOMAN." BODY IN RIVER. ROPE ATTACHED TO LEG. IDENTIFICATION PROBLEM. The discovery of a young woman's body in the Tamaki River, under the Panmure wharf, yesterday afternoon, has given Auckland police and detectives an exceptionally difficult task. The first difficulty is that of identification, for the body had been in the ■water about a month. The second is the problem of ascertaining how the woman met her death. Various circumstances connected with the discovery lead the police to suspect that she was murdered. The body was almost covered by two cornsacks and an irregular piece of canvas—possibly part of a sail. They were attached to a rope 2 the other end of which was round the girl's leg. The body was naked except for a white open weave singlet with shoulder straps. The singlet was round her armpits. It is estimated- that the body had been in the water a month. It was badly decomposed. XThe nose, and the right hand from the wrist, were missing. It is thought that the woman was between, 25 and 30 years of age, a European, sft 2in in height, with straight black hair, some of which was Sin lon<*. She had an excellent set of natural teeth. Under The Panmure Wharf. Two men who were working on their launch on the Panmure shore of the Tamaki River, made the discovery about 12.30. Mr. Reuben Neels, of Panmure, and Mr. Horace McDonald, of Portland Road, Remuera, noticed a strange object under the Panmure wharf about' 11 o'clock, but thinking it was the body of a sheep, they dismissed it from their minds. The tide fell quickly in thi next hour, and about 12.30 they were attracted again by the strange-object. They investigated and found the body of a woman hanging head downwards into the water, with one leg over a stringer. They quickly summoned the police, and in answer to their call came Sergeant Claasen, of Newmarket, and Constables O'Donnell and Davies, of Ellerslie. They took the body to the morgue at Auckland.

Detective Sergeant J. Walsh and Detective H. C. Murch were dispatched to the scene by car, and although they worked busily until late last night they were no nearer establishing identification than When they started. Corns on the woman's feet, which were intact, and her perfect set of teeth will probably be the only means of identification. Keports of missing women have been carefully studied, but it has been found that only two are missing from Auckland, one a full-blooded Maori and the other a half-caste. A description of a missing Wellington girl has been found to tally in some respects, but details have not yet been checked. Whence Came the Body? Apart from the big problem of identification, many other features are puzzling the detectives, chief of which is the manner in which the body came to be in the water. It may have entered the water at the Panmure Bridge, a few hundred yards distant from where it was found, or from the wharf itself. On the other hand, there is the possibility that it entered the sea in any part of the Auckland Harbour and was then washed up the Tamaki River. There is a possibility that the sacks and rope became tangled up with the body as it was washed by the tides of a month, but that is discounted by the fact that the rope was so firmly attached to the right leg that it had to be cut off.

Currents, tides and channels have to be studied by the investigators in their efforts to unravel the mystery. At the Panmure wharf this morning Mr. E. Lake, an A.B. on the scow Jane Gifford, advanced the theory that the body had been washed up from the sea. He explained that he had ihad many years' experience on the river and knew it intimately. There were, he said, two channels, and he had noticed recently, after heavy easterly blows, the last of which was on Thursday, that heavy pieces of seaweed floated in, and on the ebb became entangled on the wharf stringers, where the body was found.

An alternative theory was put forward by a man. who has lived in the district for 38 years. He was convinced that the body entered the water inside the estuary itself. He believed that if it had at one time been in the Auckland Harbour it would have been washed into Buckland's Beach, where, he said, the channel is deeper and the currents are stronger. Captain H. H. Sergeant, harbourmaster at Auckland, said the distance from the mouth of the river to the Panmure wharf was seven miles. The channel was a winding one, in the form of an "S." Abreast of Point England a long sandbank extended, and although at low tide the water in the estuary was shallow, there was a fairly strong current at full tide. After an .inquest had been opened by the coroner, Mr.' W. P. McKean, S.M., at nine o'clock this morning, a postmortem examination in an endeavour to establish the cause of death was conducted by Dr. Walter Gilmour, pathologist at the Auckland Hospital.