THE STAWELL MYSTERY.

Waikato Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1516, 23 March 1882, Page 3

THE STAWELL MYSTERY.

Referring to the finding of the headless and naked body of a man at Stawell, Victoria, a correspondent informs the Talbot Leado that an exactly similar murder was perpetrated in that locality about 23 years ago. A Scotchman employed on the Glenmona station, in crossing the Crabhole Plain (that is between the Bet Bet Creek and Avoca) found about 100 paces from where the track from Maryborough to Avoca formerly crossed the plain, a human skeleton, minus the head. Not a veatage of clothing was to be found, but an American axe with a straight ironbark handle lying near — doubtless the the tool that the head had been hewn off with. An inquest was held, and anatomical experts declared the skeleton to be that of a woman. Here the matter rested for some 8 or 9 months, when two diggers fossicking in the old ground in Paddy's Gully, at top end of the Avoca lead, down the side of which runs a continuation of the same track that the skeleton was found near, on looking down an old hole saw a piece of canvass in the mouth of the drive. One of them went down, handed it out, and found it was an old tarpaulin, wrapped round the head of a woman, with a mass of red hair still adhering to the skull. It was satisfactorily proved that the head belonged to the skeleton previously found, and there, as far as our correspondent knows, the matter rested for a quarter of a century. Our correspondent is of opinion that the two murders are connected— indeed, that they have been committed by the same monster, and says that the murder of the woman occurred at the period ot the rush to Pleasant Creek, Stawell, and that the people were leaving Maryborongh and the Alma for these diggings ; that the track near which the skeleton and afterwards the head, were found, was the road to Pleasant Creek. That^ the murderer was journeying in that direction is a fair inference from the fact that the head was fouud five or six miles nearer Stawell on the same track. The in urderor was supposed to be tiavelling with a cait ; and the red hair of the woman, the tufts of reddish brown hair that the report says were on the neck of the murdered man at Stawell, and the same fearful cunning characterising the two murders—the bodies being denuded of every atom of clothing and the heads chopped off and carried away— our correspondent claims as confirmation of his theory that the murdered man was the son of the murdered woman ; that as a little boy he had become possessed of information which he held in terrorism over the head of the murderer —possibly his father. Our correspondent thinks that the murdered man was only an occasional visitor to Stawell, and that the murderer is permanently located there, and has been from the time of the rush.