THE WOODLUPINE MURDER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 311, 26 May 1911, Page 5

THE WOODLUPINE MURDER.

A HOSTILE DEMONSTRATION. Rjr Oa.tle-'-Preo!, Association—Copyright. Perth, May 25. There were large crowds at the station, and there was a hostile demonstration against Smithson. A SHOCKING TRAGEDY. The victim of the murder, Francis Elizabeth Coinpton, was the 18-year-old daughter of an English immigrant, who keeps a poultry farm a mite and a-half frrm the scene of the outrage. The girl, who used, to do domestic work for Mr. (!. Clark, of the Lands Department arrived at Mr. Clark's house at 7.IHi o'cmck on Saturday morning, May 13, and was told by him that she need not prepare any dinner, as he would remain in 'Perth till late, at night. Mr. Clark left by train for Perth soon after. The girl about !1.30 went to a store half a mile away to purchase some jam. When she started back for Mr. Clark's house the storekeeper noticed a strange man, apparently about 25 years of age, walking in the same direction on the opposite side of the road. Mrs. Compton, who usually took her daughter home in a spring cart, picking her up every evening near the Woodlupine station, was surprised to miss her that evening, but drove on home. Subsequently the girl's j)iirents went to Mr. Clark's house to make enquiries. Mr. Clark on his return from Perth had found that the key of his house, winch the girl carried, was missing, and tkat the dog had not been chained up as usual.

Jilack trackers on Sunday morning discovered evidences of a struggle in tin* bush between Mr, Clark's house and the main road, and, following lip the tracks, found the murdered girl in a clump of bushes. The body was lying between a stump and a tree trunk. Her lips were swollen, as from a blow; her face was blood-stained, and a red mark on the neck dearly indicated that she had been brutally choked to death. The trackers found CO yards away the girl's hair comb, and clear indications that she had been thrown down. Footprints of a man's No. 7 boot were traced following the girl through the l)ush parallel to the track she was using. These tracks joined those of the victim at the spot where the struggle had occurred, about 140 yards from the main road. The murderer had carried the body about (!(» yards to where it was hidden, and the tracks show that he then ran off at top speed.