Slyfield legally free: wife waits in fear

Press, 16 April 1979, Page 6

Slyfield legally free: wife waits in fear

PA Dunedin Denzil Slyfield. the man who escaped from Sunnyside Hospital in Christchurch three months ago, is now legally a free man. Slyfield. aged 48, who has been known as the “Waldronville Gunman” since his conviction in 1974 for shooting a farmer, has managed to escape detection by the police. Under the Mental Health Act. a hospital patient gains his freedom if he can remain at large for three months. Slyfield had been kept at Sunnyside as a committed patient after serving a four-

n i year prison sentence. He escaped early in January and n jhas not been positively sighte | ed since. hl Legally he was free from '• yesterday, and his wife exIpects him to go to the family s home at Waldronville. HowI- ever, he has not been in s touch with her yet. :- Mrs Slyfield. who was o! granted a decree nisi in dielvorce in January, says that I she is frightened he may reh turn home against the wishes s of herself and her five childn ren. Slyfield. who was once a it psychiatric nurse at the d Cherry Farm Psychiatric Hos- •- pital. north of Dunedin, is

familiar with the provisions of the Mental Health Act. His escape, Mrs Slyfield said, was planned well in advance, and he had written to her indicating his intention to escape and asking her to help hide him.

“I refused to give him any help, and warned the authorities of his plans,” she said. The police were asked if they believed Slyfield was dangerous, but a spokesman said that they could only rely on the opinions they had formed before he'was sent to prison.

“We can only be guided by the doctors at Sunnyside — some say yes, some sav no,” he said. “Our last dealing with him was in 1974.”

Slyfield is not the first mental-hospital patient to gain freedom by managing to remain at large for longer than the expiry time stated under the Mental Health Act, but it is believed that he may be the first to do so since the act was revised in 1969.