LUNATIC AT LARGE?

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 129, 22 August 1927, Page 9

LUNATIC AT LARGE?

FIRES IN WELLINGTON SOURCE A MYSTERY Press Association. WELLINGTON, To-day. A FIRE fiend, believed to be a xi dangerous lunatic, has been at work in the suburb of Kilbirnie, where five houses have been set on fire in three weeks. He creeps in at night and sets the window curtains and bed clothes ablaze. One room, in which two children were asleep, was set alight, and they were nearly suffocated. Last Friday an infant narrowly escape being burned to death. In one case three attempts have been made to burn a house down. After the first one, a detective kept watch and then a whole squad, but without avail. Meanwhile, further afield, in Seatoun and Lyall Bay, similar fires have occurred, and the police and residents there have been kept bus}’, but without result. Twelve places have also been broken into lately, leading to the supposition that the burglar was using arson to cover up his tracks. When it was found that one place was set on fire three times and nothing stolen, the authorities came to the conclusion that it must be a lunatic. In one house the remains of a paper the incendiary had used were found, disclosing the methods employed.