Body In Closet; Man Arrested

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31144, 22 August 1966, Page 1

Body In Closet; Man Arrested

(New Zealand Press Association

AUCKLAND, August 21.

A police party investigating the disappearance of a Ponsonby woman, found her body in the bottom of a clothes closet in a boarding-house in Paget street on Saturday night.

The police think the woman, who had been missing for several days, was throttled to death.

“We cannot be certain of this until we receive a report from Dr. Doyle,” he said. It was thought she had been dead some days. A man found in a city hotel was taken to the Auckland Central Police Station and charged with murdering Mrs Barraclough. He will appear in the Auckland Magistrate’s Court tomorrow morning.

A man who lives at the same address, and who occupies the room in which the body was found, was later arrested and charged with murder. The dead woman was: Nancy Olivena Barraclough,

aged 41, married, a factor}’ worker, mother of three children who lived at 5 Paget street Ponsonby. Mrs Barraclough, who had not been seen since Wednesday, was reported missing by a fellow tenant about midafternoon on Saturday. Uniformed police from the Newton station visited the boarding-house and the Criminal Investigation Branch was notified. A police team headed by Detective-Inspector J. A. McCarthy and accompanied by the acting head of the detective branch, Detective-Inspec-tor W. T. Cook, went to search the house.

The team found the fully clothed body of Mrs Barraclough in the closet of a male tenant’s room about 8 p.m. Other occupants of the house were questioned and house-to-house inquiries started by the squad were finished today. A post-mortem examination of the body was made late on Saturday night by Dr. D. J. A. Doyle.

The head of the Auckland police, Assistant Commissioner E. W. Mahood said late today that it was believed Mrs Barraclough had been strangled.