STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE AT TIMARU.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 10483, 7 December 1895, Page 2

STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE AT TIMARU.

Sojie excitement was occasioned in Thnaru on Sunday and Monday, says the Lyttelton Times, by the nows that a man named James Murray M Naughton, a farmer and drover occupying a farm on the Rakaku, not far from Temuka, was missing. It appears that he had gone out for a bathe in the sea on Saturday evening and had not returned, and that clothes with to'Naughton's papers in the pockets, and the towej lent to him, had been found on Sunday morning on the rocks near the Waimataitai Spit. Naturally it was at first supposed that M'Naughton had been drowned. An element of uncerfcainiy was introduced by the discovery that the clothes found were not those that he had been wearing. It was then supposed that someone had offected an exchange, taking a suit of good clothes and the money in the pockets, and leaving a more soiled outfit in its place. Nothing further could be ascertained on Sunday, but on Monday a different) complexion was put upon the facts by information that a person recognised as M'Naughton had been seen to put a dog on the steamer Omapcre(bound north) early in the evening, and that later ho had been seen goingdown to the wharf. Someone unknown at the shipping office had taken a ticket for Taranaki under the name of John Murray, and said that he had a dog to take up. On these facts becoming known, it was recognised as far more probable that the clothes had been planted for a " blind " than that an absent and probably drowned batnor's clothes had been stolen and others substituted. The police telegraphed to Lyttelton on Monday to have enquiries made on board the steamer.