A Horrible Murder.

Hastings Standard, Issue 309, 29 April 1897, Page 3

A Horrible Murder.

|A YOUNG GIRL BUTCHERED, (i'.r 7 V** Association.) Cm:i>Tiiri!c*n, This day. A girl named Alice Lawcock, 10 years of age, whu-e parents live near Amberley, was murdered yesterday. She went to the township in the morning for letters and parcels, and as she did not return a search party flgwas organised, and her body found under a heap of gore in a plantation with the throat cut from ear to ear. A man was seen on the road about the time the murder must have been committed. The police think they have a clue. LATER PARTICULARS. AN ARREST MADE. Miss Lawcock. the deceased, was a quiet, unassuming young woman, and lived with her mother, who is a widow, and occupies a farm at Douglas road, about a mile or a miie and a half west from Amberley. It had been Miss Lawcock'- custom daily to go into Amberley for letters and papers, and at 11 a.m. yesterday sbe left her home for that purpose. As the distance was not great, and as Mrs Lawcock knew of nothing likely to detain her daughter, she became very anxious about her when at 8 o'clock in the afternoon she had not returned. Mrs Lawcock made enquiries among her friends and neighbors, but the result only tending to increase her anxiety, she next communicated with Constable Rook'.-, and he immediately organised a search party of six men, and at 4.80 p.m. they commenced operations. An hour later they found the young lady's broken para-el among some briars near a thick gorse fence, about five chains on the west side of Kawai river, but on searching the fence they discovered the body, rigid in death, the deed having been committed some time previously. The throat was very deeply cut. The body was placed in- charge of the police, pending an inquest, which will be held to-day. Up to the present the perpetrator of the deed is unknown, but suspicion attaches to a stranger who was seen in the district during the day. A strong party of police went to Amberley from the adjoining districts. The C'hristchurch police were notified of the affair, and at about 9 o'clock last night Inspector Broham, with Detectives Benjamin, Madden, and Marsack and Mounted-constable Sheppard, left by special train for the scei:e of the tragedy. A close search is to be made for the supposed murderer. Latest. Constable Rocke arrested a man at Waikari last night on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of Miss Lawcock. The man's name is Hugh Eraser, 22 years of age, a native of Reefton. He was seen in the neighborhood of the scene ol the murder an hour befor the crime was supposed to have been committed.