ALLEGED THEFT OF SHEEP

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28255, 17 April 1957, Page 20

ALLEGED THEFT OF SHEEP

Three Men To Stand Trial ! (New Zealand Press Association) ROTORUA, April 16. Bloodstained wool was an exhibit in the Rotorua Magistrate’s Court today when three men were committed to the Supreme Court at Hamilton for trial on a sheepstealing charge. The accused are Neil Stewart Fergusson, a bushman. of Mamaku; Athol James Edwin Patterson, a driver, of Ngongotaha; and Owen Wells, a bushman, of Mamaku. They were charged with stealing one sheep, the property of Watkins Brothers, at Mamaku on October 21, 1956. All pleaded not guilty. Eleven witnesses were called by the prosecution, and the defence was reserved.

When interviewed by the police. Patterson and Wells denied any knowledge of a sheep being in the boot of the car in which they were travelling. Fergusson allegedly made a statement which was tendered as an exhibit but which was withheld from the press and the hearing of witnesses.

A Mamaku farmer, lan Linton Sharland, was the chief witness. He told of finding a pool of fresh blood behind a hedge after a car allegedly containing the accused had passed him. Dr. F. J. Cairns, an Auckland pathologist, said he had found on a knife handed to him by the police evidence of pigs’ blood and sheep’s blood. There were traces of sheep’s blood in scrapings taken from the boot of a car.

Justices committed the three accused for trial, bail being fixed al £lOO each.