ELSIE WALKER CASE

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 135, 4 December 1929, Page 6

ELSIE WALKER CASE

MINISTER'S STATEMENT

MR. COOJSEY REPLIES AGAIN

(By Telegraph.)

(Special.to "The Evening. Post.")

AUCKLAND, This Day.

■'-'A-young--girl is taken in the dead of night from her home in a quiet little country village and her dead body is found 150 miles away in a lonely spot outside Auckland, and tho only explanation offered by the police is that she, with no previous knowledge of cardriving, drove the car all night over, a range of mountains, past yawning ravines, round hairpin bends, under the shadows of impending cliffs, and through the maze of roads in the Waikato, and having arrived at her journey's end crawled under a clump of bushes and died of exhaustion, or, as one sapient-representative of the police suggested, died of fright when bitten by a rat.'' . /:

The above is an extract from a reply by Mr. Cooney, solicitor, of Te Puke, to the recent statement by the Minister of Justice (the Hon. T. M. Wilford) dealing with the Elsie Waiker case.

Mr. Coouey continues: "Leading police officers have vied -with each other in claiming credit for that explanation and tho Minister looks on approvingly. Mr. Wilford is very welcome to his complacency.

"Mr. Wilford's reiteration of his previous question in. regard to the interview between Mrs. Thomason and Mrs. Bayly renders it necessary that I should reply. He has on his police file an official account of the interview between the two women in Foster's Hotel at Wanganui. This account is supplied by the two detectives who listened in. If the information is not sufficiently exhaustive he has the remedy in his own hands, but why reiterate a question dealing with information which he already possesses? The reason is obvious; driven from his original position, he still wishes to suggest blackmail while admitting there is no evidence in support of such a charge. I had.thought that such methods were beneath one who had achieved 'the silver livery of advised years.'

"I accept his statement in regard to the typist's error, but I say it was. a remarkable error It is truly wonderful that a mistake was made in the very word necessary to constitute the gravamen of the charge he levelled against Mrs. Thomason in Parliament, and it is a matter for comment that the Minister should see fit to hand to the House a typewritten copy of a typewritten copy of a pencilled copy of the original. He led the House to believe he had laboriously perused the original file and that from it he had prepared his statement. The statement was apparently prepared for him by the police. I havo said that the essential point in regard to the statements reviewed by Mr. Wilford.was that these statements should be made on oath."