BURWOOD MURDER

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 17 June 1927, Page 5

BURWOOD MURDER

MESS SCARFF’S MOVEMENTS.

YESTERDAY’S INVESTIGATIONS.

A MAN’S STRANGE ACTIONS. (II.Y TELEGRAPH—riIESS ASSOCIATION.) CHRISTCHURCH, June 17. In connection with the Burwood murder case, it has oeen estabKshed tnat Miss Scarff stayed at Hotel Federal from June 9 to June 14. r . Air T. \V. Lewis, the proprietor, was approached, but he stated that lie was unable to give any information at the moment.

From other sources it was learned that Miss Scarff had. registered, under an assumed name at the hotel. She left- oh Tuesday evening, having pre-

viously communicated with a takidriver with whom she. was accjuainted. -lie informed certain female members of the staff that she was going to Wellington. Nothing more was seen of her until 'the discovery of the body on \Ved nesdo v afternoon. The police have so far not recovered two suitcases which Miss Scarff had v'th her at the Federal’ Hotel. The suit-cases were removed from the hotel on Tuesday evening, it is with the intention that they would he taken to the ferr' - boat. Yesterday afternoon thei polio© interviewed the driver of a taxi which, called at the Federal Hotel for Mis® Scarff on Tuesday evening, -and took a statement from him.

The only developments reported yesterday were the finding, of a heavy blood-stained spanner, about ten inches-' long, in a gor-se bush 23 yards from the scene of the.murder, and the discovery by Schoolboys of the fragment of a man’s shirt, heavily blood-stained, in Bottle Lake Road,” 300. yards from where the body was found. The pieee of shirt may 'not prove important, but the spanner was undoubtedly the weapon with which the murder was done. The woman’s damaged wristlet watch had stormed at 12.30. just an hour before the bov Eric Mugford (not Mumford) made his grim discovery. There is little doubt that the man he saw running away was the murderer. It is uQSsible also that the same man

•> f>c ®een bv Alfred Hawtin. who was on his brother’s baker’s cart in North New Brighton on Wednesday, when he saw a. strangely-garbed man rush, out from the lupins which cover the sandhills in the vicinity, stop,' and rush hack into the lupins again. The man wore pyjama, trousers ‘or underpants. He wore no hat and shirt. It- was said that the man 7 ® behaviour was that of a person partly demented or much agitated. It would have been possible for a man to tnake his way across country from the scene of the murder to the spot where Hawtin saw his man. It is suggested that this fugitive was the murderer, who, having found his trousers to be bloodstained. discarded them.. Mugford’® discovery of. the body was a pure chance. He was bringing in the cows, and these, . excited by the smell of blood, were difficult t*> manage and running about wildly. But for this he would not have been in the locality where lie saw the body.