When I first heard of Papamoa

 Papamoa farmland - typical flat land that the Baylys farmed in the 1920s.

Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo gca-20628

I can remember my parents talking about Elsie Walker when I was a child.  In fact, it might even have been part of a ‘stranger danger’ conversation with them.  The year before I was born, my father had heard on the radio that Bill Bayly had been hanged.  What does this have to do with Papamoa, my current home, you may well ask?

Elsie Walker, Auckland Weekly News, 28 February 1929, p.50 

Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-19290228-50-05

Elsie, an Opotiki girl, lived with her aunt and uncle, the Baylys, on their farm in Papamoa in 1928 when she disappeared.  Coincidentally, so did their car.  Some days later, her body was found in Auckland at Panmure, and the car was discovered with an empty petrol tank at Papatoetoe. Elsie did not drive.  The sandshoes she was wearing were worn out as though she had walked the seven miles from Papatoetoe to Panmure. The police and coroner could not establish her cause of death, with opinions varying from exposure to accidental. A witness claimed to have seen the car being driven to Auckland by a man with a woman sitting in the back seat, already dead, but the accuracy of this information was not conclusive. Some suspicion arose about Bill Bayly, Elsie's cousin, but he claimed to have been in Auckland all along, and the police believed him.

Mr F K Hunt, a Stipendiary Magistrate, spoke at the inquest stating that the public were entitled to a better service from the Police than they received in that case.  He referred to mistakes and described the enquiries as inefficient. No person ever faced trial for the murder of Elsie Walker.

William Alfred (Bill) Bayly, NZ Truth, Issue 1246, 17 October 1929, Page 7
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZTR19291017.2.33.1.2

Five years later William Alfred Bayly, a married man with two children by then, was farming at Ruawaro near Huntly.  Bill Bayly lived on an adjacent farm to Christobel and Samuel Lakey. Other neighbours noticed one day in October 1934 that the Lakey’s cows had not been milked that morning and set about doing so. The Lakey’s 110-acre farm carried 51 dairy cows. The neighbours were concerned to find no sign of the Lakeys in their house and it was not long before they found the body of Christobel Lakey dead with her face in the duckpond.  As soon as this news spread around the district people assumed Samuel Lakey had murdered his wife.  

The search for Samuel Lakey, Auckland Weekly News, 8 November 1933, p.46 

Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-19331108-46-02

Police searched for his body, with the help of local people, expecting that it might be a murder/suicide.  Lakey’s shotgun was found in a creek on Bill Bayly’s farm and blood was found on items at his place.  The two farmers had fallen out and argued over a fencing issue when Bayly’s bull got into the paddock with Lakey’s cows, and they did not get on generally.  Mrs Lakey has said she believed he had killed Elsie Walker and could well kill them. Police used chemical tests that revealed that there were charred bone fragments on his shovel, for he had tried to burn Samuel Lakey’s body in a drum.  On 10 January 1934, Bayly was charged with Samuel Lakey's murder and he hanged for it in the following July. Gossip spread around the country and the version that I heard a decade later was that he fed the body to his pigs.  The guilty verdict reinforced the suspicion that he had murdered his cousin in Papamoa.

Burial of Samuel Lakey with his wife
Photo: KELLY HODEL / Waikato Times by kind permission

Christobel was buried in an unmarked grave in Huntly while Samuel's remains became part of the police's investigative and forensic training exhibits collection.  It was not until 2015 that the Police released the remains for burial and arranged to have a name plaque placed on the joint grave. The Lakeys were English and had no family in New Zealand.