MYSTERY OF MACLEANS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27150, 21 September 1953, Page 9

MYSTERY OF MACLEANS

Papers Offer Rewards (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, September 19. Two London morning newspapers— Lord Rothermere’s “Daily Mail” and Lord Beaverbrook’s “Daily Express” —have offered £12,000 in rewards for information leading to the whereabouts of Mrs Melinda Maclean, wife of the missing British diplomat, Donald Maclean, who, with her three children, disappeared from Geneva last Friday. The “Daily Mail” offered £lO,OOO to “encourage those who may know and who are reluctant or afraid for one reason or another to speak about her whereabouts. “There is a widespread fear that this young family has been either forcibly kidnapped or induced to travel to a point near or beyond the Iron Curtain ... to bring pressure to bear on her husband,” the “Daily Mail” added. The “Daily Express” in offering £2OOO said that it would pass all the information it received to MIS at Scotland Yard, and the Foreign Office. The paper added that its offer made in June, 1951, of a £lOOO reward for information which would trace Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess was still open. Reuter’s correspondent in Paris says that Mrs Melinda Dunbar, mother of Mrs Maclean, arrived in Paris tonight by air from Geneva and went to stay with friends. The mystery still baffles the security police of five nations—Switzerland, Italy, France, Austria, and West Germany—and the British Foreign Office. Late tonight there were still no hard clues as to whether Mrs Maclean had gone behind the Iron Curtain, possibly to join her husband.