MOTU RIVER MURDER

Evening Star, Issue 17921, 17 March 1922, Page 5

MOTU RIVER MURDER

FURTHER EVIDENCE,

At the Motu River murder trial yesterday Charlotte Cooper, housekeeper at Saxby’s, deposed that accused was there between 4 and 5 in the afternoon of the murder, and bought an axe handle and cigarettes. His brother Recti was there on the 10th, and overheard a telephone conversation from the police at Opotiki which referred to No. 6 cartridges. Peeti told her that his cartridges were No. s’s. Victoria Milner, residing near Omaio, stated that in November last she had been engaged to accused, and they were to have been married that month. Accused paid her a visit on November 5. To counsel for accused: She came from the East Const, but did not know if Zambukka (the murdered man) had a reputation for gambling, nor that ho had been mixed up in a row' with another Asiatic. The trial was continued this morning. Evidence was given by James Mansell, a telegraph linesman, as to the Natives who wore on the road about the time of the murder, as to the purchase of goods from Zambuldca by Harieta Tangaire, and as to seeing a. bundle of notes in deceased’s possession; and also by Tuhoromona as to the search for Zambuldca and the finding of the pack,?. Witness said he was present at the arrest, when accused (Ruteno Topi) asked him to sec We-he Brown and tell her to say what she had said to him. Witness added that about weeks ago he was on the road from Suxoy’s to Marcum, when he saw fungus on a tree stump, and on going to gather it ho saw a shirt underneath a log. He identified it as a shirt which Ruteno owned. It was a very uncommon shirt, the only one of the description in the locality. The shirt had some bluish-black spots on the front and sleeves. These spots were not part of the pattern, but were foreign, to the shirt, which he put back under the log.