Search For Weapon On Pukekawa Farm

Press, Issue 32333, 26 June 1970, Page 24

Search For Weapon On Pukekawa Farm

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, June 25. The police have ideas about what type of weapon was involved in the disappearance of a Pukekawa farmer and his wife last week. But intensive searches of the farmhouse and property have failed to reveal any trace of a weapon or the couple.

The police know the blood groupings of the missing pair, Mr David Harvey Crewe, and his wife, Jeanette Lenore, but they would not say tonight what type of blood was found in the house last Monday afternoon.

Asked if he thought the couple were dead, the officer in charge of the investigation,

Detective Inspector B. T. N. Hutton, said; “As each day passes when we have no information about their being alive, we are becoming in cerasingly concerned.” Inspector Hutton said that as a result of reports on the blood in the house, and police inquiries, he could no longer discount the possibility that a third person was involved in the disappearance of Mr and Mrs Crewe. Inquiries at present did not indicate that someone had a grudge against Mr Crewe. Mrs Crewe’s father, Mr L. W. Dernier, a widower, who lives on his own on an adjoining farm, found the couple’s 18-month-old daughter, Rochelle Janeane, starving in her cot in the bloodspattered house about 1 p.m. on Monday. Drag marks through blood on the lounge carpet and on the front doorstep indicated that someone or something had been removed from the house.

The national head of the Criminal Investigation Branch (Assistant Commissioner R. J. Walton, of Wellington), who spent two hours and a half tonight at a conference with the squad of 20 detectives at Pukekawa, said later: “We have grave fears for the safety of both of them. We are treating it as a homicide.”

Mr Walton, who will return to the farm this morning, said: “We hope we find them very soon. We will carry on the search as long as neces-

. sary. There is a lot of work ' to be done.” In heavy fog today more ! than 100 men, including police, soldiers and farmers, searched Mr Demler’s 400- ‘ acre farm and a neighbouring ; property. 1 Six launches, each with a [ police officer on board and j two of them accompanied by .an army radio operator, searched the Waikato River from a tributary not far from 1 the back of the Crewe farm 1 toward the Tuakau bridge.