ROADMAN MURDERED

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 May 1929, Page 7

ROADMAN MURDERED

“SHROUDED IN MYSTERY”

SHOT AND BATTERED

(Per Press Association.)

GISBORNE, May 11.

Inspector O’Halloran, who is at Opotiki, stated this morning, while the affair at Papamoa is shrouded in mystery, there could be no suggestion that McAlesse had committed suicide, but it was perfectly clear he had been deliberately shot at close range. The Inspector added that he and members of his staff were making every possible enquiry, particularly with a view to ascertaining if any persons other than those already accounted for had been anywhere in the locality at the time. So far the police had only been able to learn that one motor car was passing along the road during the hour McAlesse was separated from his mates, and no report had been received of other persons being in the vicinity. The death was caused by a shot from a pea rifle which passed clean through the heart, and came out near the back of the shoulder. The deadman was severely battered about the face, a cut on the upper lip extending right to the base of the nose. A pea rifle which had belonged to j McAlesse, had been broken and placed in a sack, which was ‘ found lying, in a water table on the opposite side of the road, sixteen feet from the body. \ '

Only one shot had been fired, the examination not supporting the previous suggestion that a' second bullet was responsible for the wound on the face.

YOUTH INJURED.

WAIMATE, May 11.

Two youths, W. Kennard and Lawrence Alexander Lumsden, 18, ■ were out shooting with a repeater rifle, which when beink unloaded discharged a. bullet through Lumsden’s chest under the right armpit. Lumsden is progressing favourably in the hospital. DETECTIVE MURDERED A MELBOURNE HORROR \ Press Association.) (By Cable—Press Assn.—Copyright.) ,

(Recd. May 11, 10 a.m.) MELBOURNE, May 11.

Believed to have been fiendishly murdered, the naked charred body of Frederick Jeffrey, private detective, was found by the police in circumstances suggesting that he was the victim of a diabolical crime.

Stripped of clothes, Jeffrey was lying with his head inside a gas stove. Wires from an electric switch was connected to the body. The head and upper part of the trunk was shockingly burnt.