ANOTHER RIPPER?

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 414, 24 December 1932, Page 5

ANOTHER RIPPER?

a Correspondent)

SYDNEY HORRQRS BODIES OF WOMEN FOUND MURDERED IN PARKS MYSTERIOUS CRIMES

(From

Sydney, December 16. Last Sunday morning a hoy walking through Queen's Park, Weverley — -the eastern extension of the great Centennial Park — came ' upon the dead body of a woman. The corpse, almost entirely denuded'of clothing, was lying half concealed under some bushes, and the head had been battered. The police took the fingerprints of the victim and by their help she. was identified as May Miller, aged 30, one of the "unfortunate" class, convicted at various times since 1928 of offenees against the law. The detectives searched the locality for stones that might have caused the wounds, or for other possible weapons, but they found nothing of im1 portance — except that fragments of 1 hlood-stained clothing were discovered concealed in some bushes a little way off. The C.I.B. officers then "rounded up" a number of the hapless derelicts who, to the number of a hundred or so, regularly haunt Centennial Park and Moore Park, holding periodical drinking parties at which "Hyde Park eocktails" — horrible mixtures of methylated spirits and milk, or "metho. and hoot polish" — are the favourite beverages. Men and women of this type, maddened by "metho," are capable of almost any crime; but so far the investigations of the police have been entirely without result.

Maintaining Her Child The tragedy is sordid as well as horrible, but the story of May Miller is in itself pathetic enough. Some ten years ago, she loved a man who deserted her and flew to America. She did not take to the last refuge of helpless womanhood till her child was born and she had to support it. She placed it in a eonvent and never visited it — "she thought she was not good enough" — but she sent regularly all the money she could find for its maintenance — "negleeting herself to an amazing extent," — that her child might be safe. Her "record" details such offenees as are almost inseparable from her tragic manner of life; apart from this, the police say, she was quite hax'mless and inoffensive. She had no enemies, and nothing in her story, sad as it is, suggests any explanation of the ghastly end.

On Thursday morning one of the unemployed, camped in National Park, reported to the police. that he had come upon the nude and battered body of a girl, lying under some bushes near Loftus railway station, about 16 miles from the city. The police rushed a car to the spot and found the girl still alive. She was taken to St. George's Hospital, and the surgeons did what they could. But her skull had been fiactured with heavy blows, and though she seemed partially conscious, she was unable to speak and died on Friday morning, without giving any indication of what had happened since she left her home. She was identified as Bessie O'Connor, aged 17, living in Redfern. Her people are poor but respectable — the word is odius, but it conveys some meaning. The girl was a good swimmer — her brother is one of the State's champion diving team — and she had been swimming in races at Coogee after 6.30 on Wednesday evening. She came home a little after 9 o'clock, left her wet costume, told her mother that she would be back shortly, and disappeared — never to be seen again alive, but hy her murderer. Ride In Motor Car How could this child — for she was nothing more. — quiet, well-conducted, happy in-h-er home, have met this evil fate? She is described by all her friends as "good," "nice," "well-be-haved" — ^the words have a real meaning — she had actually won a medal as the best conducted girl in the Rand-wick-Coogee Swimming Club. It is therefore vastly improbable that she had knowingly involved herself in any vulgar and perilous escapade. But the police point out that she was seen' leaving the Coogee baths alone after her swim on Wednesday evening, and she was home at Redfern too soon to have come by train. She must therefore have gone home in a ear; hut whose? Her friends and relations scout the idea that she would have "taken a lift" in a casual way from a stranger. "Besides," says a woman who has lcnown her all her life, "she would never get into a car with a man she did not know." The driver must therefore have been an aequaintance; and it seems possible that she may have accepted an offer to drive her home from Coogee; then, as the evening was warm, she may have been pursuiaded to prolong the 'excursion, after leaving her costume at home and speaking to her mother. And so, all unknowingly she drove away to this terriole doom." Public Horrified Much of this is hypothetical, but it seems to square with most of the known facts. As to clues — -the car is, of course, an important fact — so, too, are the wheel marks not far from the spot where the body was found, and the sign of a struggle close at hand. It happens that on Wednesday night a car was stolen from Centennial Park before 9 o'clock and was returned there before 4 o'clock on Thursday morning; and the police believe that something may come of this coincidence. The wounds, too, seem to have been inflieted by a tyre lever. But so far neither the ingenuity of detectives nor the keen instinct of the blaek trackers whom they have called to their aid has contributed much toward the solution of this tragic mystery. It is possible that there may be some remote eonnection between the death of the unfortunate May Miller and the awful fate of this innocent child — the murderer in each case may be the same man — another Moxiey, or some maniac crazed with thirst for hlood. But so far, to all these. questions there is no reply — the friends and relatives stupefied with amazement and grief — the many thousands to whom the hapless victim is only an unknown girl, almost dumb with the hofror of this tragic story.