THE ONEWHERO TRAGEDY.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 138, 13 February 1915, Page 4

THE ONEWHERO TRAGEDY.

EARLY ARREST EXPECTED,

WANTED MAN VISITS HOME. LEAVES REMARKABLE LETTERS. (By Telegraph,—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, This Day. ' Telegraphing tfroni .Onewherc; a •'Herald" representative reported that the surrender or capture is hourly expected of the man wanted in connection with the murder of Mrs Edith Emma Keais and the abduction of her six-weeks' old baby. There is no longer any possible doubt that the man in question is Norman £Bward Keals, the younger brother of the dead woman's husband. Conclusive evidence of this fact has now come into the hands of the police in the form of two letters signed and written by Norman Keals,

In an old shanty half a mile from the Keats' homestead were stationed for the night a constable and three settlers. They had with them a bullflag at the gate if you want me to the whare heard a slight sound. The door was then opened from the outside for a few inches and just when the watchers had began to calculate upon their chances of arresting the intruder the bulldog barked. Instantly the door banged to and f\vhen : the constable and his companions gained the outside of the hut the midnight visitor had disappeared, and despite an immediate search, made good his escape in the dark. Since the writing of the letters, Norman Keals has quite evidently had lucid intervals. In one of these, probably yesterday, he endorsed upon the letters to his brother the following, message roughly scrawled in pencil: "I cannot realise that I. have done this. Forgive me. Put up a white uag at the gate if you want me to come in." As Sub-Inspector Mcllveney perused the letters early this morning he caused a white flag to be flown in front and at the rear of the Keals' residence, on the chance that the hunted man might act upon the signal in the way suggested in the pencilled message.