KARERE TRAGEDY

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 106, 31 October 1931, Page 15

KARERE TRAGEDY

BLAKEWAY'S DEATH

POLICE MAKE ARREST

A LONG SEAECH

(By Telegraph.) (Spocial to "The Evening Post.") PALMEESTON X., This Day. JLnvo.s'.igations regarding tho death of jrfuwiu John Blakeway, a well-known amateur cyclist, whose body was discovered at the side of tho Karcro road, between five ' and six miles from Palmorston North, on tho morning of Monday, the 24th August, have been continued by the police, and to-day an important development took place. Tho Inspector of the Palm.rston North police district advised the "Manawatu Times" at 1.20 o'clock this afternoon that .Senior-Detective Quirke and Detective Doyle had arrested Norman Robert Decke.

Blakcway, who wast twenty-six years of age, was employcd-as a clerk at the Palmerston North railway station, and, when he was found dead by the roadride, bullet wounds wore discovered in his arm and wrist, head and chest, 1-ading to tho opinion that he had been murdered. , , Blakeway was well known m Wellington as a track and road cyclist, and was a very popular young fellow. At the time ho met his death he was cycling back to Palmerston North, after having visited friends in the country, and the position of the cycle and body was road as indicating that lie had been shot by some person from the sido of the road. Wounds^ in_ the hand and wrist were taken as indicating that ho had struggled with his assailant.

Following the discovery of the body by a newspaper runner, and the commencement of an intensive police search, a curious story was told by a mailman, Ihat while he" was handling mail at a wayside box a shot or shots were fired at him.

For weeks following the tragedy thero was probably a record concentration of police and detective brains in the district, and public interest in a mystery with many strange features was intense. Latterly public; interest waned, but not so that of the police, who, it is understood, have been working along certain lines calling for \cry exacting detailed work.