NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 15 October 1929, Page 6

NEWS BY MAIL.

TYPHOON HAVOC. HOXG-KONG, August 26. Hong-kong is now experiencing the worst tyhoon that has struck the island for six years. It is being swept by terrific gales and torrential rain, .ciuch damage has been done. The velocity of the wind was at one time 120 miles an hour. The Blue Funnel liner Tyndareus (11,347 tons) and the Chinese steamer Apoey (2,790 tons) have both drifted from their anchorage. HEADLESS BODY IDENTIFIED. ‘ • PARIS, August 26. The Paris police believe that their inquiries in the case of the woman whose mutilated body was found a fortnight ago in a sack in the River Marne, near St. Maur, are leading them to a solution of the mystery. The body, which was in pieces, and from which the head and a portion of the right hand were missing, was very much disfigured by prolonged immersion, but a surgical scar was visible on the right thigh. The difficulties of the police task may be gathered from the fact that more than 6,(100 young women have been reported as missing during the past year and that the records of each had to be searched. Twenty of them were generally found to have had a scar on the right thigh. One, however, a 26-years-old woman called Jeanne Coudert, who had previously associated with criminals, had also two mutilated fingers on the right hand—which seemed to explain why the right hand of the body had ben cut off. She lin'd not been seen, moreover, since her lover was sent to prison for theft a year ago. , Thirteen women named Jeanne Coudert were next successivly interrogated, but none of them was the woman in question. Now the police feel certain that they can identify the body, and their investigations are now centred on ascertaining the last person with whom she was associating before she disappeared.