Jean Batten search proves fruitless

Press, 4 February 1987, Page 15

Jean Batten search proves fruitless

By

PETER O’HARA,

NZPA staff correspondent London A three-month search for the vanished aviatrix, Jean Batten, by the London "Sunday Times" has ended with no clues as to her whereabouts. The New Zealand solo flier, famed for her 1930 s exploits, would be 77 if she were still alive. But

she has not been sighted in four years, since she was last seen on the Spanish island of Majorca. A reporter of the “Sunday Times,” who went looking for her admitted she had disappeared “leaving no more clue than a small plane's vapour trail tattered and dispersed by the wind.” Tim McGirk asked: Had

she vanished “for the sheer, lonely challenge of it?”

Did the woman who In England was a flamboyant figure, and yet a recluse at her retirement home on the Canary Islands, “find the burden of sustaining two personalities too much to bear?" Her publisher, Robert Pooley, said she had warned him she intended to “go to ground.” He added: "It would have been a great game to her.” The “Sunday Times” said: "It is hard to believe that the number of the inquiries about her should have been rewarded with so little, had Jean Batten simply met with an accident” The newspaper said she did not say goodbye to anyone, but hired a taxi and was driven to the airport at dawn. Mr Pooley, said he thought she had left by a regular flight for Malaga en route to Gibraltar where she hoped to settle. Miss Batten had a strong feeling for Britain, and it mattered a great deal to her that Gibraltar was in the British Empire, he said. ZL__