Police seize Datsun hired by gunman

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33875, 21 June 1975, Page 1

Police seize Datsun hired by gunman

(New Zealand Press Association) ROTORUA, June 20. Police heading the search for Mona Blades in Taupo think there is only “a remote possibility” of a connection between the disappearance of Miss Blades and the man who shot a girl and then killed himself at St Cuthbert’s College in Auckland on J une 13.

The possibility arose today when Auckland detectives checking orange Datsun station waggons, the type of vehicle the man believed to be associated with the Blades mystery was driving, were told that John Walton Freeman had hired such a vehicle in Auckland over Queen’s Birthday week-end.

Detective Inspector P. H. Berryman, officer in charge of the Blades inquiry, said the man police were seeking was aged between 40 and 50 and was balding. Freeman, the man found dead in Auck-

land, was aged 26 and had fair hair. Freeman had the vehicle between May 30 and June 3, and the mileage recorded on the vehicle’s clock when it was returned was 187 kilometres. Miss Blades , has not been seen since May 31, when she was hitch-hiking from Hamilton to Hastings. The police in Auckland have seized the vehicle, which had traces of blood in the luggage compartment. D.S.I.R. scientists will examine it over the week-end, and Inspector Berryman expects to know details about the blood on Monday. “Till I have ail details from the D.S.I.R. I am not in a position to say with certainty whether the two cases are connected.” he said. The officer in charge of the Auckland inquiry, Detective Inspector W. H. Shanks, said: “For all we know the station waggon might have been used by someone who went deerstalking.” Inspector Berryman said a! girl who had been hitchhiking from Auckland to Hamilton had told the police she had been given a lift by the driver of an orange station waggon. She said they had arrived in. Hamilton just before noon. That timing would have! given the vehicle n.o chance; of arriving in Taupo at 11 a.m,. when a girl resembling Miss Blades was seen to get! into the suspect Datsun. However, the girl has not been able to ,match the driver of the vehicle either! with pictures of Freeman or! the identikit of the man the! police want to interview: about Miss Blades.

Inspector Berryman said Freeman, in his Datsun, could have been in Taup.o at 11 a.m. But he believed that there was more than one of that type of station waggon passing through Taupo on the holiday week-end, when traffic was heavy. “On the law of averages there could have been a number of Datsuns in Taupo over that weekend,” he said. Mr Berryman said he thought the connection a remote possibility because Freeman did not match the description given by two witnesses of the man driving the vehicle believed to have contained Miss Blades. Mr Berryman believed Freeman may have been travelling to Te Awamutu, which was his home town till 1972. when his parents returned to England and he went to Auckland. “I would be interested in hearing from any person or

any friend of John Freeman who saw him on that Saturday, May 31, or at any time during that w'eek-end, so that we can clarify whether or not he was in the Taupo area when Miss Blades disappeared,” he said. According to Inspector Berryman Freeman had made a number of visits to Te Awamutu since 1972. Checks of all owners of the Datsun model are continuing, and some names are being put aside for further investigation Search headquarters last night decided to reduce the number of field teams to two, each of five men. Till today, 35 men had been combing areas on the Napier-Taupo road. Inspector; Berryman said he was well I satisfied with the thorough- j ness of the search. He could i not say if articles of clothing i found" belonged to Miss | Blades..