Air Force Nurse Found Dead

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31222, 21 November 1966, Page 1

Air Force Nurse Found Dead

'New Zealand Press Association' AUCKLAND, November 20. Detectives rushed to the Air Force base at Whenuapai yesterday morning after a nursing sister was found dead in her bed with a deep neck wound.

Police are treating her death as a murder.

She was: MISS RAEWYN KATHLEEN JOY PETLEY, aged 40, the charge sister at the base. Another nursing sister found Miss Petley in the women officers’ quarters about 9.40 a.m. on Saturday. Detective-Inspector B. Wilkinson, officer in charge of the inquiries, said Miss Petley was thought to have died early yesterday. It is believed that a surgeon’s scalpel may have been used to make the wound in Miss Petley’s neck. No weapon was found in the room—a single bedroom. There were no obvious signs of a struggle Three other

nursing sisters were sleeping in the same building. Miss Petley, who had been stationed at Whenuapai since February, 1964, had been with the Nursing Corps for about 12 years.

Nurse In Hospital

(N.Z. Preus Association) AUCKLAND, Nov. 20. A critically ill nurse was taken from her quarters at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base at Whenuapai to Auckland Hospital on Saturday. Her condition tonight was described as “still very sick.” The nurse, a member of the Royal New Zealand Nursing Corps, is suffering from a suspected overdose of sleeping pills.