"MURDERED," BUT ALIVE.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 11977, 21 September 1906, Page 7

"MURDERED," BUT ALIVE.

LONDON, August 11. Some three years ago a woman was brutally murdered in a lonely farm outbuilding near Minster, in Kent. The body was fully identified as that of Charlotte Turkz, a woman who was well-known to many in the district as a fruit and hoppicker and field worker, and in the name of "Charlotte Turk" the victim was interred. The police failed entirely to find any trace of the murderer, and the crime had been forgotten when one day last week the supposed murdered woman turned up at a Minster farm house and asked to be employed at fruit-picking. The shock to those who had known her, and who had believed they had seen her buried three years before, can be imagined. Some of the poor ignorant woman pickers took her for a ghost, and fainted on catching sight of her, and others of more robust temperament insisted on handling her to see if she were really flesh and blood. Then the police got wind of the startling reappearance. At first they refused to credit the story and asked their informants whether they "saw any green," or words to that effect. However, the police at length consented to look into the matter, and having interviewed the woman, were completely satisfied that she was the real Charlotte Turk. She told the police that she had not been in the Minster- district for nearly six years, and that for the past two years she had been, in service in London. Asked why she did not come forward at the time of the murder, Charlotte said that the first she heard of that tragedy was the statements made to her by her fellow-workers on the day of her reappearance at Minster. As it is now perfectly certain that the woman murdered three years ago was not Charlotte Turk, the question arises, "Who was she?" Probably her identity will never become known. Exhumation would serve no useful purpose after a lapse of three years, especially as the face and head of the murdered woman was cruelly knocked about, and the clothing she wore ha« long ago been destroyed. Moreover, the probabilities are* that the woman was one of the friendless creatures who wander about the country seeking field work, and in whom their relations and friends have long ceased to take any interest. Probably, indeed, the only person who could identify the remains is the man or woman who killed "Charlotte Turk."

Some genius in mischief has lotely been at work on bicycle lamps, his modus operandi being to first select an unguarded machine, and then to wrench the glass face off the lamp. One owner has had two lamps so treated within the last fortnight, while during a similar period one bicycle shop has had four lamps Bent in for repair whic.h have been damaged in the same way. The culprit may perhaps take notice of the intimation that he io being looked for.