Lack Of Information Puzzles Police

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32214, 5 February 1970, Page 1

Lack Of Information Puzzles Police

“I just can’t understand why nobody has come to us and said. ‘We know that man and he has a car just like that’,” Detective Inspector E. T. Mitten, the officer in charge of the investigation into the death of Miss Jennifer Beard, said last evening.

The investigation was being hampered because information was not being offered about the j man with whom Miss i Beard was seen at Lake Moeraki on December 31. Inspector Mitten said that : the police had received no ! information about a man who called at the Papanui Saw- ! milling Company hostel at Franz Josef on December 30 and said he had just “com«| over the hill ” The police parties in the Haast were still carry-1 ing out ground searches and' other policemen were still! interviewing residents. ■ Information from through-; out New Zealand was still' flowing into the search head-! quarters and there was still'

some work to be done to finish the necessary local inquiries. * He had yet to receive the pathologist’s final report on his examination of Miss Beard’s body. Inspector Mitten added that the police were also interested in hearing from anyone who could tell them of persons who had a 1953 to 1957 Vauxhall which had been disposed of or altered without apparent reason since the beginning of the year. Inspector Mitten agreed that the police had to consider three main possibilities: that the man they sought was still in New Zealand, that he had left New Zealand, or that he had committed suicide. “We have no suggestion that he has either left the

country or that he has committed suicide, so naturally we are concentrating on finding him in New Zealand," he said.