DECAPITATED A HEIFER

Taranaki Daily News, 15 August 1929, Page 8

DECAPITATED A HEIFER

MAN ROAMS WITH A SLASHER

HAUNTING OKOKE-URUTI COUNTRY

KEEPS MOSTLY TO BUSH LANDS.

With a slasher on his shoulder, his mind apparently deranged, a man has been roaming the bush country and farm lands between Okoke and Uruti during the past two or three weeks. Latterly lie has visited several homesteads while the men folk were absent, and it is reported that women in the locality are terrified.

A yearling heifer was found slaughtered yesterday in a gully on the property of Mr. A. B. Jones. Its head and a hind leg had been completely severed and ns liver cut out. It is assumed the man cornered the beast and attacked it with the slasher, afterwards using some of the meat for food.

All efforts to apprehend him had been unsuccessful up till last night, though it is understood that the settlers have been keeping a vigilant look-out. The indications are that he has been spending some of his time in a disused hut in the hilly country, but he has always disappeared on the approach of any searcher. On one occasion he was seen lying on the banks of a. stream, his clothes being wet through. Not many days ago one of the settlers’ wives was away at a neighbour’s place for lunch. When she returned to her own house she found the man wandering from room to room. He was looking for matches, lie said. Could she sell him any’

It is said that the man is about 30 years of age and of medium build and that he had been employed as a farm hand by Mr. P. Darke, of Okoke, for five or six months.

Constable Mills‘and Mr. Tom Wright traversed the bush country between Okoke and Uruti on Tuesday, a reporter was informed yesterday. It was stated that Mr. McClelland saw the man entering a patch of bush yesterday morning. The settlers expected Constable Mills to go out again from Waitara last night, in order to commence an organised search of the district this morning.