Detectives Seek Attacker

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32274, 17 April 1970, Page 1

Detectives Seek Attacker

Sixteen detectives last night were still seeking a man who attacked and robbed a young woman in her Armagh Street flat yesterday morning.

The woman, Mrs Marie Wright, aged 23, of 278 Armagh Street, was hit on the face with a bottle of milk and about the back of the head with a metal electric jug as she lay asleep.

“While I was half awake I can remember this arm going up and down as I rolled over on my face.” Mi’s Wright said her assailant took $5 from her purse but left in it a 50c piece and her engagement ring. “I don’t think he was an ordinary burglar. He must have seen my husband go to work about 7.55 a.m. and then come in. Maybe he thought nobody was here. If he had been just an ordinary burglar he could have taken everything out of the flat without waking me. I’m a very heavy sleeper.” It is thought that the bottle with which Mrs Wright was first hit was taken from the milk box of an adjacent house. The jug was taken from Mrs Wright’s kitchen. The detectives, four of whom have been investigating the death of Miss Jennifer Beard at Haast, were sent to the area immediately after Mrs Wright’s neighbour had called the police.

She suffered cuts and bruises. Cuts on the back of the head required 12 stitches.

Mrs Wright said that she was attacked about 15 minutes after her husband had left for work. She had stayed in bed and gone to sleep, “I woke up and felt this pain,” she said. “It felt as if somebody was pouring water over my face. I woke slowly and called to the person to stop it and whoever it was ran off. I jumped out of the bedroom window and rushed round to the only door to the flat, hoping I could lock him in. He had gone, so I ran next door and woke my neighbour.