Response to sketches

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33870, 16 June 1975, Page 18

Response to sketches

(New Zealand Press Association) ROTORUA, June 15

Identikit sketches of a man the police are seeking in connection with the Mona Blades inquiry have drawn a steady flow of reports to police stations since they were published yesterday.

Details of the reports had not reached search headquarters in Taupo by this evening but Detective Inspector P. H. Berryman, officer in charge of the search, said checks would begin almost immediately.

The sketches were made up by a police expert, Detective R. Worthington, from descriptions given by two men who saw a man driving an orange Datsun station waggon on Matea Road near Taupo on May 31, the day Miss Blades was last seen. The police believe she was in the vehcle.

Inspector Berryman cautioned that the sketches might be slightly different from the facial features of the man they were intended to depict.

He said the man was viewed by people in different circumstances. One witness saw the man at the wheel of a moving car and another saw him looking out from a car parked in Matea Road. It is now thought the man might be aged between 35 and 50 instead of 45 and 50 as earlier believed.

House-to-house inquiries have unearthed a fourth sighting of the station waggon on Matea Road on May 31.

A farmer who has been away for the last week arrived home yesterday and told the police he had seen a station waggon and driver, both matching the given description, late in the morning. The vehicle was moving inward on Matea Road and was in about the same area as other sightings. In spite of wind and rain, search parties have continued a pattern search of the road. A third team searched the main road between Matea Road and Taupo but without any new developments.