Unable To Explain Actions In Search

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31167, 17 September 1966, Page 1

Unable To Explain Actions In Search

(New Zealand Press Association)

BLENHEIM, September 16

He could not explain why it was he had gone from Picton to such a remote area as the Waikakaho Valley, several miles away, to look for a neighbour who was missing and find her body, a witness told the Coroner (Mr F. Noble-Adams).

The Coroner was completing the inquest into the death of Mrs Betty Boyce, aged 53, of Picton, on June 9. The witness, Hugh James Cook, of Picton, said he had been asked by Mrs Boyce’s husband to help look for her and after a search in the Picton area he had driven along the State highway towards Blenheim, turning off at Tua Marina for the rarely-used Waikakaho Valley road. There he had found the car and, in the stream nearby, the body of Mrs Boyce. The Coroner: Why did you go to the Waikakaho Valley?

Cook: I’d like to know, too. It was just one of those things. Boyce had suggested the possibility of Mrs Boyce being involved in a car accident and it was thought this

would be most likely to occur along a road such as the Tua Marina track.

But the fact that he had turned up the Waikakaho Valley road was ‘lextraordinary,” Cook agreed. The Coroner returned a verdict of death from drowning.