MOVEMENTS OF MISSING MAN

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27664, 21 May 1955, Page 6

MOVEMENTS OF MISSING MAN

Car Journey From Dunedin POLICE INQUIRIES CONTINUE (New Zealand Press Association) DUNEDIN, May 20. John Joseph Hughes, the 34-year-old freezing works butcher into whose disappearance the police are inquiring, was in Dunedin on March 14, three days after he was last seen at Makarewa, where he was employed. Leading detectives who are at .present in Dunedin have obtained this information......,- . .... Suspicions that Mr Hughes has been the victim of foul play have arisen through the finding Of bloodstains on the upholstery of a Rover car, owned by Mr Hughes. The Government Analyst (Mr O. H. Keys) has been asked -to assist, and the police are waiting the return to Dunedin of Dr. E. F. d’Ath, professor of pathology at the University of Otago, who is now in Wellington. Inspector F. _N. Aplin, of Auckland, who is in charge of the investigations said tonight it had been ascertained that the last trace of Mr Hughes’s movements was in Dunedin on March 14. Mr Hughes was known to have left the city with another person in his Rover car, in the expectation of returning to work at Makarewa the next day. It is believed that the car may have stopped on the road at Edendale, where the occupants may have had a sleep. Inspector Aplin appealed to any person who had information about the car, particularly after it left Dunedin, to advise the police. As a result of earlier appeals, the police had received much information from the public, and each single piece was being thoroughly scrutinised, he said. There was a vital necessity that any information should be received by the police promptly. . Intensive inquiries had already been made in Dunedin, said Inspector Aplin, and tomorrow he would take the obvious step of shifting his headquarters to Invercargill. He would leave Dunedin with a party including members of the Criminal Investigation Branch from the city, SeniorDetective Macdonald Brown (Christchurch), and Detective-Sergeants W. H. Cromwell (Wellington) and F.*W. C. Pine (Christchurch),