ELSIE WALKER CASE

Hokitika Guardian, 8 April 1929, Page 2

ELSIE WALKER CASE

AUCKLAND COMMENT. ONUS STILL ON THE POLICE. AUCKLAND, April f>. Tn tho course of a lengthy editorial on the police inquiry the “New Zealand Herald” states:—

“Mr Wilford evidently expects it to to criticised. He is at pains to anticipate criticism by saying that the inquiry was not instituted for the purpose of finding who murdered Elsie AValker (if she was murdered), but for the purpose of finding whether memhers of the police force entrusted with the investigation failed in their duty The caveat he thus enters is effective. “The onus of finding out how Elsie Walker came by her mysterious death lay on the police. It still lies there The circumstances of her death werp such that whether she was, or was not murdered they were set at a task in which, the inquest showed, they had failed, and there were then raised questions as to whether they had diligently and capably performed their duty and whether the instrustions laid down for their guidance in such cases were adequate. “In the Commissioner’s judgment all is well with the force and the instructions. Careful reading of the report, however, must lead to the conclusion that his judgment is not as fully sustained by it as its readers could wish. Is it rasonable to imagine that a girl proved to have been unsophisticated, with marvellously conceived secrecy, travelled alone through the night a long distance in a motorcar that there is no proof she could efficiently drive unsupplied at the outset with j,ufficiont petrol and so deliberately and successfully covered her tracks from her distant home to the place where she was found dead that she could baffle a police, force than which, the Minister says, there is no finer in the world This is supposing a very great deal. “The medical report indicated, it should bo noted, in connection with alternative that some male person had associated with her. The feasibility of the alternative is thereby further dminished and the admission of the police that they had been baffled in spite of their herculean efforts is correspondingly amazing. They must be left to prove that the quality of their subsequent work in this case can improve on the level revealed in the Commissioner’s report. “So long as the Elsie Walker mystery remains a mystery there is a blot on their ’scutcheon, which they will be more than ever on their mettle to remove. The more thoroughly all duties detailed were done the less mental alertnss was left for solving this pathetic mystery r •' “The system is’wrong. It asks too much of the men engaged. It must tend to inefficiency when a great and grave task is suddenly set them. The remedy is to have a highly skilled detective unit untroubled by heavy routine work and petty duty and untrammelled by red tape, free to devote itself at a moment’s notice to major tasks of this sort, a kind of ’flying squadron’ ready in reserve for such emergencies. “This would be good strategy against crime and for the handling of mysterious events within the police purview and for the organisation of its means ought to be foud. Its cost would not be regarded by a community alive to social requirements.’’