RECAPTURED

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 33, 8 August 1921, Page 7

RECAPTURED

MATTHEWS,AGAIN IN CUSTODY

"1 WISH I HAD A GUN."

(IV ,m£S!HPH.—PRESS ASSOCIATION..)

OAMARU, 7th, August/ -Reginald Matthows, the Timaru. murderer, who escaped from Seacliff Asylum on Fi'iday morning, .was iecaptured on the Oamaru foreshore, near the gasworks, at 8.30' o'clock this mormngi Matthews offered no resistance, and was 'returned to tho Mental Institute by car in the charge of pr. M'Killip and a posse of police. He is supposed to have dropped on to a railway.. wagon from an. overhanging tree about Hampden. Before the police arrived on the beach, Matthews was accosted early this mom- 1 ing by two fishermen named Boustridge and Wardle, and bailed up. He grabbed a stoiie, but did not throw the missile.

Once in custody, Matthews remarked : ''I wish I ha*l a gun; I would have shot some of you."

He was clothed in four singlets a.nd dark trousers and boxing boots, and was ,a conspicuous figure, and easily recognisable.

One of tho Oatnaru fishermen was Accompanied by his wife, and it was she wlio first recognised the escapee. _ She gave a start atuj' Screamed. By this time a party of police from Dulledin and elsewhere were, closing in on Oamatu, they having heard that Matthews had boarded a goods train at Hampden at 1 o'clock in tlie morning, and got off at Oamaru.^- When he saw he was recognised, i Matthews started to run along the beach, and was chased and caught by Constable Aitcheson, who was assisted by the two fishermen.

It appears that Matthews went aboard the Home liner Kaiapoi, which is lying at the Oamaru Wharf, ■ but when .he found sh? -was calling at Lyttelton he, went ashore again, and was given a loaf of bread, a quarter of a pound of tea, 'and two pounds of sugar.