POOK'S COUSIN IN AUCKLAND. A STATEMENT REGARDING THE CRIME.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 249, 24 March 1888, Page 5

POOK'S COUSIN IN AUCKLAND. A STATEMENT REGARDING THE CRIME.

It may be interesting to mention in connection with this mattor that Mr John J. Pook,storeman Messrs. Mitchelson and Co, and an old and valued employee, is a cousin of the young man Walter Pook who was tried and acquited as above described. A Stak reporter this morning had an interesting conversation with Mr Pook relative to the murder. He states that at the time of the murder his cousin Walter was apprenticed to his own father a printer and stationer in Greenwich. The murdered girl whose proper name is Maria Jane Clouaen had been as a child a playmate of the Pooka and was subsequently in domestic service at the elder Pook's residence. Walter Pook bore a very good reputation at the time of the trial. It was not alleged that there had been any improper conduct between him and Miss Clousen. It is true that Walter Pook had purchased a hammer similar to the one found near the scene of the murder, but it was not proved that Pook's hammer was the article with which the murder was committed. The lawyer who defended young Pook was also named Pook, but he was not a relative. Mr J. J. Pook further stated that his cousin Walter returned to Greenwich seven or eight months after the trial, and worked at his father's place of business and that up to five years ago when J. J. Pook last heard of his Greenwich relatives, he was still there. After the acquitalt this belief in Walter Pook's guilt was so general that J. J. Pook was discharged from a billet in consequence of his relationship to the ac cused, and his father, an engine-fitter, was given notice to quit from a firm in the employ of which he had been upwards of 40 years.