TRUSSED UP IN A SACK.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17382, 10 November 1924, Page 1

TRUSSED UP IN A SACK.

MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY ON HAWKESBURY RIVER.

By Telcgrrapli.— Press Assn.—Copyright - -Aus. and N.Z. Cable Assn. (Received November 10, 11 a.m.) SYDNEY, November 10. In connection with the Hawkesbury murder, the corpse, on examination, showed a wound on the head made by a blow sufficiently heavy to render a man unconscious, but death was due to drowning. There are no other marks of violence on the body. Suspicion attaches to one patient at the hospital, and detectives are making inquiries on this line, but there is little hope of successful elucidation of the crime, as practically all the patients are in a pitiable state of lunacy and incapable of being questioned. An overnight message said: The body of Harold Besley, aged twenty-seven, who had been mentally defective since Ins birth, was found trussed up in a sack at Hawkesbury River, near Milson Island Mental Hospital, of which he was an inmate Apparently he had been murdered by a heavy blow on the skull, and the police believe that the crime was committed by a fellow inmale, as the thoroughness that characterised the crime is typical of nearly every murder committed by a madman during the past decade.