Manhunt in Wairoa for Murderer

Grey River Argus, 20 December 1948, Page 4

Manhunt in Wairoa for Murderer

NAPIER, December 19. Following the discovery of the battered body of a pensioner, Herbert William Brunton, aged’ '69, in a oneroomed hut near the Wairoa railway station early on Friday morning, a post mortem was held on Saturday by Dr. M. G. Somerville, pathologist at the Napier Hospital, following which the body was removed from the hut to the Wairoa morgue. It was revealed this morning that the deep gashes in the victim’s head could have been inflicted with an axe found in the hut by the police. There were no bloodstains on the axe, but the presence on the, floor of the hut of several balls of bloodstained paper suggests that one of these could have been used tej wipe the axe blade clean. It is still not. certain, however, that the axe was the murder weapon. Further bloodstains were found in a small outhouse. * An intensive manhunt In the Wairoa district is proceeding, in which police officers from Wellington, Napier, Hastings, and Wairoa are co-operat-ing. Little is known about Brunton’s movements the night before the body was found, although a neighbour Charles French, saw a light burning in Brunton’s hut about midnight.