STATION TRAGEDY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 May 1944, Page 3

STATION TRAGEDY

END OF HUNT FOR MAORI BOY BODY FOUND IN GULLY (By Telegraph—Press Association.) GISBORNE, May 21. A two-day search for a 15-year-old Maori boy, Tai Matu, who has been missing from Bexhaven Station, Tokomaru Bay, since Thursday night, when the body of Mrs Lois Rosamond Mill, aged 39, was found under her bed with her head battered and a belt tight round her throat, concluded late yesterday with the discovery of the youth’s body in a scrub-covered gully 300 yards from the homestead. There was a gunshot wound in the boy’s head and a shotgun beside the body containing an exploded cartridge. Several live rounds were found in his hip pocket. More than 100 settlers were organised, and night and day they had been on the alert, concentrating their efforts on the bush within a 15-mile radius of" the Bexhaven homestead. Some were on foot and others on horseback. The search party was well armed, for the missing employee was known to be in possession of a shotgun and several cartridges. The police were armed with rifles and automatic revolvers, and settlers had brought whatever, shotguns and rifles they could muster. The country being searched was most difficult, being rugged hill country covered with bush and scrub.