IRISH MURDER

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 14 February 1930, Page 7

IRISH MURDER

TEX PERSON'S ACCUSED SEARCH OF A MINE SHAFT. (Un/tec Press Association —By Electric Telegraph Copyright.) LONDON, Feb. 12. Irish Civic Guards unsuccessfully dragged a disused mine shaft 600 feet deep in search of the body of Laurence Griffin. The shaft is situated on the wild and lonely coast of Bonmahon Bay. The only dwelling house is a cottage, the occupant of which reported hearing a car draw up on Christmas night. It is now suggested that Griffin may not have been murdered, but spirited away. A big legal battle is expected over the police attempt to prosecute the ■charge against the 10 accused without producing the body. A message from London, dated February 7, stated: Laurence Griffin, a Free State postman, disappeared at Stradbally, County Galway, on Christmas night. A police search for the body was unsuccessful in a neighbouring mine shaft. A sensational allegation that Griffin was sewn in a blanket while still' alive and thrown over a bridge or down the mine shaft was made by the State Prosecutor, ■Mr Finlay, in the Waterford Police Court when ten inhabitants of Stradbally, including Thomas Cashin (a school teacher), Edmund Morrissey (labourer), Patrick Whelan (hotelkeeper), his wife, son and daughter, and two civic guards were charged with murdering Griffin and conspiring to dispose of the body’. The prosecution asserted that the missing man was knocked down ,by Cashin during a quarrel in a hotel bar. His head hit a stove, after which lie neither moved nor spoke. The injured man, it was alleged, while still living, was sewn in a blanket brought by Mrs Whelan, placed in Cashin’s car and disposed of. There were a number of persons present, but no one thought of sending for a doctor. The thought uppermost in their minds was that they must get rid of Griffin. The accused pleaded not guilty and were remanded.