MYSTERY SOLVED

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 14 June 1935, Page 8

MYSTERY SOLVED

Otago ‘ Chocolate” Murder Inquiry at an End POLICE DROP CASE NEW FACTS REVEALED (By Telegraph—Press Association.) DUNEDIN, June 13. Ever since Margaret May Smith, the 22-vear-old daughter of Mr ahd Mrs RL Smith, of Blackball, died in September of last year, allegedly through eating chocolates impregnated with strychnine and sent anonymously by post to two other girls, detectives have pursued ceaseless inquiries. The fact that Miss Smith was the innocent victim of a cruel plot apparently aimed against the.’lives of Ethel Bragg and Jean Clark, also of Blackball, made the circumstances even more tragic, and it was only pure chance which saved a whole household from an untimely end.

Eight months of searching investigation with only the slenderest, of clues on which to work brought Inspector James Cummings, of headquarters staff, Wellington, and Detective-Ser-geant T. E. Holmes, of Christchurch, to the Otago district last month. A man who. was in Greymouth at the time of the tragedy and later left for the southern lakes district was interrogated. hut the police officers returned north without making an arrest. The chief clue on which the detectives were working was the handwriting on the fateful parcel received at Dumbleton’s bakery, and caligrapliists available were to have been called to compare the handwriting on the parcel with that of the suspect. The man who the police believe was identical with the mysterious “Jim” was in South Otago, where he had obtained work on a coalmine, but his mind became unhinged and he was taken, to a mental asylum. From inquiries made by a reporter to-day it appears that the man was brought to Otago from the West Coast to undertake the work of vertical rock drilling on a quartz face at a ! mine in the Queenstown district. He 1 had an ungovernable temper and was accompanied by a friend who, it is believed, had some mental control over him and was able to subdue him when he became ovcr-cxcitcd. The work in Central Otago concluded, the pair came to Dunedin, where they applied to the ■ manager of a South Otago coalmine for work. The manager said to-day ■ that he gathered the man was of a fine type and appeared suitable for the work. He told the pair to apply to the mine manager. They travelled south on May 17, and the man who later became insane remarked to the mine manager that he would not be very good for a week as lie had had hardly any sleep lately. He was to have started work on the following Monday, hut during the week-end he became unbalance, and, despite the protestations of his friend that he could look after him until he became well, the man was removed to an asylum. The suspected person, it is further understood, became engaged to a girl while in Dunedin,, and it was only when she received no reply to letters to her fiance that her brother, on interviewing the manager of the mine, learned the truth. So convinced are the police that the suspected inan was the author of the tragedy that the investigation is believed to have been finally discontinued.