Way Of A Murderer Puzzles Detectives

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 562, 15 January 1929, Page 9

Way Of A Murderer Puzzles Detectives

HAMMER OR GUN? SPILSBURY CALLED IN (United P.A. —By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian atid N&. Press Association) Reed. 11.33 a.m. LONDON, Monday. The police have not yet solved the mystery- of the murder of Vivian Messiter, aged 55, Southampton manager of an American oil company. The authorities at Scotland Yard are now satisfied that Mqssiter was murdered in his garage while he was bending over a ear. An extraordinary feature of the case is the inability of the detectives to locate the bullet, the mark of which passed direetly through the head. The police are inclined to the theory that the murderer, who was sufficiently calm to secrete the body between two packing cases and to lock the garage door and also the door to the outer yard, might have searched and found the bullet, remembering how fatal a similar clue proved in the case of the murder of Constable Gutteridge. A fresh clue was obtained this evening in the discovery of a heavy hammer believed to bear bloodstains. This had been secreted behind some oil drums in the garage. Sir Bernard Spilsbury, pathologist to the Home Office, has been called in in an attempt to settle the vital question whether Messiter was shot with a revolver or killed with a hammer. Should he prove not to have been shot, it will virtually eliminate the theory that the crime was a carefully-planned revenge. Decomposition is so advanced that even the famous Sir Bernard may have difficulty in deciding. The police to-day got possession of a letter written and posted by Messiter on the day before the crime, in which they believe they have a valuable clue..