DESERT TRAGEDY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 158, 4 June 1935, Page 8

DESERT TRAGEDY

MAN AND WOMAN PEIIISH. ' > . (United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received June 3, 12.40 p.m. ALGIERS, June 2. Mrs Ronald Knight, aged 20, the widow of an airman who was recently killed in a crash at Agadcs, died of thirst in the Southern Sahara with an English travelling companion, Mr Peyton. Mr Peyton and Mrs Knight, accompanied by a Frenchman, M. Httebert, left Agades on May 22 on a motor trip to the Ell Hogger Mountains. They lost their way, and the English pair, rejecting the wiser French counsels to await a search party, went in search of help, hoping to reach Tamanrasset. A search party found the Frenchman in a ltollow scraped in the sand under the car, where he had taken refuge for five days, almost dead from thirst. Later the searchers found Mrs Knight’s body, with her bloodstained clothing in tatters. Her hands and thighs were covered with penknife wounds, inflicted either with the intention to commit suicide or to drink tier own blood to relieve her thirst. Marks in the sand indicated that she had writhed in agony. The rescuers then found Mr Peyton dead from sunstroke; his clothes were in shreds. The police ordered the exhumation of the victims, who were buried where their remains were discovered.