THE MAUNGATAPU TRAGEDY.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 8, Issue 398, 30 July 1866, Page 4

THE MAUNGATAPU TRAGEDY.

{From the Xelsou Examiner, 19th July) The examination of tiie witnesses in these cases will be proceeded with to-morrow, but the evidence of Sullivan will not then be taken, as was once intended. There are nearly thirty additional witnesses to be examined, so that a further remand of the prisoners will be necessary. It is not, therefore, at present decided when Sullivan will be called upon to give his evidence. The papers received yesterday from the -■-■West Coast inform us that two bodies Lave : been found at no great distance from the place where.the murder of Mr Dobson took place, and Burgess and his gang naturally “ got the credit of being the cause of these deaths. One of the bodies is that of a storekeeper on the Arnold, named Watts, s who was missed some little time , ago, and who is supposed to be the “ other store- . keeper ” mentioned by Sullivan in his confession, as having been made away with by the gang he was associated with, The head

of Mr Watts was found in a shallow waterhole ; there was no money on his person, although it was supposed by those who knew him that, at the time of his disappearance, he had about £3O in his pockets. On one of his fingers was found a ring, which bore the initials of his name.

The second discovery, mentioned above, was the body of a man floating in the Grey, near the Arnold junction. The body had evidently been in the water a long, time. It was without a head, and both legs were broken. There was nothing about it by which it could he identified.

The discovery of the body of a man named Cook, in a water-hole near Saltwater Creek, and a body washed up by the surf on the beach near Arahura, complete the catalogue of horrors. We know not that there is any reason to suppose that' the two latter men lost their lives unfairly, but in the present state of the public mind, and with the stories which have been circulated of Sullivan’s confessions, it is natural that for some time at least every dead body found on the. West Coast, of which no account can be given, will be set down as one of the victims of the gang whose further chance of -committing crimes is now for ever, we trust; put an end to.