Blades case change

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33878, 25 June 1975, Page 2

Blades case change

(New Zealand Press Association)

ROTORUA, June 24.

Searchers will return to Matea Road, 25 miles from Taupo, tomorrow' in a further attempt to find the body of Mona Blades.

The search director, Detective Inspector P. H. Berryman, said the 10 policemen who had been combing areas on the Napier-Taupo Road for the last two days would go to the top end of Matea Road.

This area, about nine miles from the main highway, is past the excavation site and near the junction of the Matea Lands and Survey block and Kaingaroa State forest. The area has been searched before, but the new search w ll be more thorough. Inspector Berryman said the decision to return to Matea Road was not based on any new information but on the fact that five people saw an orange Datsun stationwaggon, believed to have carried Miss Blades, go up the road.

He said it had always been thought possible that the offender might have driven through this area, but it was considered unlikely because of wet conditions and the small vehicle.

“But a desperate man with a body in his car would drive anywhere,” said Inspector Berryman. Two main leads the police are following are the John Walton Freeman link and another check south of Taupo about which they have given no details.

The police today showed a truck-driver from Hastings a “Montana tan” Datsun station-waggon similar to the one hired at Queen’s Birthday Week-end by Freeman, who shot himself dead after shooting and wounding an Auckland schoolgirl on June 13.

The driver still thinks that the station-waggon he saw stop to pick up a girl resembling Mona Blades at Taupo and which he later saw on the Napier-Taupo Road was “Kaji orange.” The two colours are quite different.

The man was also shown a number of pictures to see if he could match them with the mystery driver. Inspector Berryman would not say whether an identification was made.