ROMANTIC CONCOCTION

Southland Times, Issue 19123, 15 December 1923, Page 5

ROMANTIC CONCOCTION

KIDNAPPING A GIRL. “CERTAIN MYSTERIOUS REASONS.” (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) SYDNEY, December 14. Miss Watson has confessed that the kidnapping story was not true. She now states that when she went to bathe, she put on men’s clothes over her bathing suit and went on a walking tour, staying at various places, one night sleeping out. Meantime, she changed again to women’s garb. All her money having been stolen, she raised sufficient upon her brooches to return home. Miss Watson said that she had certain reasons for her action, which the police consider it unwise to disclose. The story alleged that Miss Watson, keeper of a beauty parlour and a writer of movie picture stories, went for a bathe on the morning of November 27. Iler clothes were found on the beach, and it was supposed that she had been drowned,’ till Wednesday night, when she reappeared at her house in Sandgate, wearing only a gown over her bathing suit. She then stated she had been spirited away by a welldressed man and a woman in a motor-boat, and kept closely confined below; otherwise she was well treated, though her hair had been cut short. After several days’ cruising, she managed to escape when the boat reached Sandgate. Naturally, the police efforts to discover any trace of the kidnappers, their motor-boat, dr the boat in which Miss Watson alleged she escaped to the shore failed.