A REMARKABLE STORY

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1043, 14 September 1911, Page 4

A REMARKABLE STORY

A remarkable story was told to the Brunswick (Melbourne) police last week by a boy named Joseph Painter, who visited the police station at midnight. Painter, who is sixteen years of age, stated that he was apprenticed to Dr. Hunter, dentist, of Bendigo. He remembered leaving Dr, Hunter's surgery at six o’clock in the evening and walking homewards to Buller street, where his people resided. Before he reached home it occurred to him that he had not closed the back door of the surgery. He returned to the doctor’s premises, and saw a light-coloured motor car standing outside. The surgery was lighted up, although it was in darkness when he left it an hour earlier. He opened the door and entered. His memory failed him at that point. He recovered conciousuess to find himself walking along a street in Richmond at eleven o’clock. He was then speaking to two men, who told him to go to town and get a bed. Continuing his story, the boy said he walked into the city, and as he had an aunt at Brunswick he took the train to that suburb. At that time he had in his possession a brief-bag belonging to his employer, and containing an overcoat and about £8 or worth of gold filling and other articles, the property of Dr. Hunter. Arriving at his aunt’s place, he related his story, and was sent by her to the police station, accompanied by a neighbour. One of the constables to whom the boy told his story had had some experience with anaesthetics, and he was satisfied from the odoi of chloroform and the boy’s general appearance that he had been drugged in some way. The boy stated further that he remembered that it was 6.50 p.m. when he reached Dr. Hunter’s surgery. The last train for Melbourne had left Bendigo five minutes earlier. The suggestion, therefore, was that the boy was drugged and brought to Melbourne in the motor car.