The Murder of Costello.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3140, 12 March 1879, Page 3

The Murder of Costello.

The Aihburton Mail says:—As supplemental to the telegraphic account of the discovery at Westport of the niurderer of Thomas Costello, we may say that a gentleman now intimately connected with this journal well remembers the circumstances attendant on the murder. It was committed in 1872, when Sibree, the man who ; has now been arrested as the murderer, kept a shanty at Boatman's Creek, on the Buller road, about nine miles from fieefton. It was said at,the time that Costello had been drinking heavily at Sibree's shanty. Wear Sibree's place the creek was spanned by a fallen tree, which, added on the served as a bridge, and, a wire was so fixed and fastened as to serve as a handrail guard to persons crossing it.- On the morning after,the night of Costello's disappear, ance this wire was found to be broken, ,and many believed that Costello in crossing; the bridge must have fallen against the wire, broken it, and so toppled into the creek, which was then swollen with a fresh of water. Others, however, who considered Sibree guilty, inclined to the belief that he had purposely broken the wire himself, out of craftiness, and in order to create a false supposition in the public mind. The creek was dragged for miles, but no trace of Costello's body could be found,,, Search parties (the. first one wai organised by Mr Dupuis, hairdresser, now of Ashburton), consisting.of miners and Warden Broad, Sergeant M'Ardle, Constable Jeffrey, and. Bailiff Temperley, were diligent in. their efforts, but they could find no trace -of; the migg. ing, man^..Subsequently garden Broad stated in! fteefton that in returning from a magisterial visit to the Lyell, he smelt, at a certain point on Boatman's Creek, the odour ofi a decomposed corpse, and another search was made, but still nothing of the missing Costello was found. Sibree was' arrested at the time on suspicion j and the manner in which the clue j came into the hands of the police was curious. Some man happened to sleep in the same apartment at Larry's Creek with another man named "Old Yorkie." The latter exhibiting great restlessness in his sleep, the other man asked what was the matter with him, and Yorkie replied, " Oh, you wouldn't sleep either if you were troubled as I am. I assisted Sibree to bury Costello's body." Yorkie, after this, bolted from the district, and on being i brought back to give evidence in the case i against Sibree, he averred that there was no ground for what he had said to the j man who bad slept with him at Larry's Creek. A little girl, ten years of age, named Mary Woodman, who had been living at Sibree's, also told her mother that she had seen the Sibrees burying Costello's body under a bridge, but the police, on making search at the place indicated, could find no tracer of the man's remains.The case against Sibree there* fore fell through, owing to there being no evidence of convincing clearness to bring against him. Now, however, after a lapse of seven years; his wife's statement appears to be another verification of the pregnant old saying, "Murder will out." —[The accused was discharged from custody some days' ago, the statement of Mrs Sibree not being borne put by a sub« ■equent search made by the police.]