MISSING NURSE

Hokitika Guardian, 26 February 1929, Page 7

MISSING NURSE

..HEREABOUTS STILL UNKNOWN. ARTHUR’S PASS MYSTERY. (Lyttleton limes.) Mystery still surrounds the disappearance of the nurse, Dorothy Hamilton ,\l Haflie, who left Christchurch by tin West Coast express on Saturday weei hound for Kumara, and has so fai failed to arrive at her destination. It has now been definitely established that the missing nurse arrived at Arthur’s Pass, and got off the train there. She had a good deal of luggage with her. two wooden boxes, two subcases, and two smaller parcels, which she stored at the Arthur’s Pass station in the left luggage department immediately after the departure of the train at 1.55 p.m: Till last evening the nurse had not appeared, nor had she luggage lieen claimed. The drivers of Lite service car affirm that nobody answering Miss M’flaffie’s description, was carried between Arthur’s Pass and Hokitika hy the cars either on the day of Llit* disappearance or during the week whicTi lias since gone by. Miss M’Haffie has of course, not arrived at the home of her friends, named .Simpson, in Kumara. There is nothing definite to give any inkling of her whereabouts.

A mysterious feature of the case is that early last week two letters addressed to Miss M’Haffie at the Arthur’s Pass Hostel, disappeared from the letter rack in the hostel shortly after they bad been put there. It is pot known who took the letters. Residents in the district are sure that Miss M’Haffie is not there, so the claiming of the letters deepens the mystery of the nurse’s disappearance, A visit of inquiry to every house in Arthur’s Pass by Constable W. A. Colwell, of Otira, on Friday evening, has intensified the interest of the settlement in the nurse’s fate.

M iss M’Haflie’s description is as follows:—She is thirty-nine years of age. about five feet in height, of slight build.and sallow complexion, with large brown eyes and dark brown hair worn in a pla-it over each ear. She was dressed in a jumper suit, a-rose-coloured tweed skirt, crepe de chine blouse, beige shoes and brown tweed coat with a fur collar. She was carrying a dark leather handbag containing two £1 notes and a Post Office Savings Bank book. She had a railway ticket through to Kumara. Since she deposited her luggage at the Arthur’s Pass station on Saturday, February 16th., shortly after 1.55 p.m. there lias been no trace of the missing woman.

The Arthur’s Pass correspondent of tlie “Lyttelton Times” wrote yester day as follows:

“As far ns could be ascertained at 5.30 p.m. oii Sunday, there was still no trace of the missing nurse, Miss M’Haffie, who disappeared last Saturday week. Her luggage is still in the Arthur’s Pass railway station unclaimed. The service car drivers have not carried anybody answering to Her description or name between Arthur s Pass and Hokitika on the Saturday or during the past week.”