WAS BURR MURDERED?

NZ Truth, Issue 1303, 4 December 1930, Page 7

WAS BURR MURDERED?

; No jGkiie To Mystery * ; GOIVfRADES SEARCH , I (From "N.Z. TruthV'Special ßepresentative.)

THE dark, forbidding silence of the ; bleak Marsden hills remains unbroken? and while police and civilian searchers continue to comb the bush fastnesses, m a last forlorn hope, the sinister; mystery ; that, surrounds the disappearance of the young Marsden 'mill-hand. Ernest Manafield Burr, re-

I mains as impenetrable as ever. Will the dark bush hiding-places hold their secret, or will s the dogged persistence of the searchers have its reward and reveal the mystery that lurks m their shrouding silences? A month has passed since Burr dis-, appeared from his. home m Marsden, leaving a bloodstained space of wall- I paper above his bed as a significant j message that all was not well with his going, and a disordered room alone to tell the secret of .the night. .But since that fateful night of November' 8, Burr has . disappeared as completely as though he had be.en spirited away by some malign influence, and although an alarmed and fearful neighborhood has sought him without respite, a blank wall of silence and mystery has confronted the searchers, at every turn. . Did Burr leave his house of his own accord, or was "some -dark

crime of violence perpetrated m those early."; rh.qrn.i-ng. hours while Marsden slept? - : , The dues are 'slender, ,but with a- > grim significance"^that cannot be ig- ■ nored, they point tb one terrible solution—murder. The condition of the houge, Burr's kno\yh habits and dls- '

position, everything, m fact, suggests that some unseen intruder crept upon him m his sleep and foully did him to death while he lay m bed. The nature of the country around Marsden is such that the bleak hills might still guard their secret after a search of years, and as each day passes without* further light upon the mystery, the possibilities of any discovery become more remote. In their every action so .far, the police have admitted the remote possibility of any other solution thaCn murder, and as the trail has been clearly laid upon this course, so must it be followed. Human life cannot be taken cheaply, and the- police should prove, by calling m further assistance, ifnecessary, that iio stone has been left unturned to 'clear up this gruesome mystery. . "