Beard Case SEARCH TAKES NEW TURN

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32210, 31 January 1970, Page 1

Beard Case SEARCH TAKES NEW TURN

The search for the killer of Miss Jennifer Beard, the 25-year-old schoolteacher from Tasmania whose body was found beneath the Haast River bridge on January 19, took a new turn yesterday.

“We urgently want to get in touch with a man who, on the night of December 30, stayed at the Papanui Sawmilling Company’s hostel at Franz Josef,” Detective Inspector E. T. Mitten, of Christchurch, the officer in charge of the investigation, said at Lake Moeraki last evening. “When he arrived in a car about 5 p.m. he indicated that he had ‘come over the hili’.”

“Come over the hill” is an expression often used by West Coasters when referring to a journey from Christchurch.

The hostel, which bush workers use, is on a road running off the main highway close to a restaurant near the middle of Franz Josef village.

Miss Beard was last seen alive at Lake Moeraki about midday on December 31 as she hitch-hiked down the West Coast to meet a friend at Milford on January 5. She was with a man described as being in his mid-forties,

who was driving a car believed to be a 1954 Vauxhall, painted mid to dark green. There has been a “tremendous” response to police' appeals for information from persons who holidayed on the West Coast about December

,31. There have also been a few who have found familiar the Identikit pictures issued on Thursday by the police. “We have been snowed under with people who want to help, but we want it that way,” a Christchurch detective said last evening. Detective Superintendent F. A Gordon, the regional controller in Christchurch of the Criminal Investigation Branch, said that the response to the appeals for help had been most pleasing. “It shows there are still a large number of people about who want to help us to solve this matter,” he said. “Much of the information we have received confirms information we had, but we must have information before we can decide whether it is relevant

only trivial, but given to us it can be of the utmost importance,” he said. The Christchurch police have checked at least 2516 Vauxhall cars of models between 1953 and 1957 which owners have brought to the police station. Several hundred others have been checked in country centres in Canterbury and the checking has spread to other cities. The police yesterday interviewed 120 persons at the Christchurch Central station who had been on the West Coast over the holiday period. These persons are being asked whether they used a car on the West Coast, whether they saw a dark green Vauxhall, whether they saw a man aged between 40 and 50 similar to the man with whom Miss Beard was seen, whether they were near Fox Glacier between 9 a.m. and 11' a.m. on December 31, whether they were near the Haast River bridge about 2 pan. on December 31 and whether they saw Miss Beard.

The police have also had a good response to their appeal for information from the Greymouth area. Inspector Mitten said it was still not known how long the investigation would continue on the West Coast. Policemen and soldiers searching roads in the Haast area are still moving towards Wanaka and are within 12 miles of Fox Glacier.

“Some person can have information which to him seems