FAR WEST HORROR

Shannon News, 9 April 1926, Page 3

FAR WEST HORROR

BODY DISMEMBERED FLESH STRIPPED FROM BONES SYDNEY, March 26. Nothing more ghoulish in the history of Australian crime has been chronicled than the details of the murder of William Olliver, an aged rabbiter, who lived in a. hut" near Nigger's Creek, on the Paroo Road, 70 miles from Wilcannia, in the far west of'New South Wales. Olliver, an identity of the district, was in the habit of collecting his mail twice a week when the mailman made his trips through that section of the eountry where Olliver made his living. The mailman was the first to report Olliver missing. He found that the letters were piling up in the improvised letter box which Olliver had erected, and he told the police that he thought the old man had disap-. peared. Police parties from Broken Hill and Wilcannia made a search, but were unsuccessful in discovering anything the first time. That was late in January. Subsequently they gathered a large posse, and, starting from Olliver's camp, scoured the country road round aboiijt over a. wide area. ! '" Their second, search was rewarded on February 15, when a member of the posse found a coat on top of a rabbit warren some miles from the old rabbiter's camp. • ' Digging in the. warren, /they discoveded more of the old man's possessions, and eventually came upon his i body, which had been shockingly mu-" tilated. .!

His murderer had stripped the flesli from every bouo, torn, the muscles away, too, and had so disjointed the skeleton that medical men had difficulty in even determining the sex. Medical opinion was to the effect that the body had been buried there for at least three weeks, and since thai time the police had discovered that a cheque of Olliver's had been cashed at a store in Wilcannia; some of his mail had been collected in that town on a forged order and a Wilcannia garage had received a letter instructing them to sell Olliver's ear. Walter Arthur Harney, alias Nelson, has been charged with murder and committed for trial after an inquest, at : which 22 witnesses were called. Police evidence was to the effect that Harney had tried to raise money in Broken Hill on land deeds owned by Olliver. A married woman, who said she had lived with Harney for a time, when he was rabbiting with Olliver, said that she had received a letter from Harney addressed to her at Nowra. In it he asked her to «ome back to (him, and stated that Olliver had gone away and left him everything.