Morriss case police gain useful clues

Two pieces of "quality information" have been given to police working on the Mona Morriss murder investigation.

Inquiry head Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Arnerich said that in the last few days a bus had been set up in Marton's main street where people could pass on sightings of Mrs Morriss or other people around her home to police.

"A couple of excellent pieces of quality information had come through there," he said.

But he would not say what those details were because he wanted to keep the information from the killer.

It has been eight days since Mrs Morriss, 83, was found brutally stabbed in her Wellington Rd unit and Mr Arnerich said as every day passed police were narrowing down the time when she died.

It was either Monday - sometime after she had gone to the supermarket up the road - or on Tuesday when her killer entered her home and left her for dead with multiple wounds.

She had told family members before the attack that she felt scared.

In a murder reported to be the first for the North Island farming township, one Marton resident, who did not want to be named, called what happened to the much-loved local identity "disgusting".

"The town is a bit numb really. She was just such a dear sweet old lady," she said.

Another said she could not understand a motive behind it and that her children were now too scared to go to the area of Mrs Morriss' home.

An elderly woman living at the council-owned block of flats who did not want to be named said she also felt scared after the murder. "We all do."

Rangitikei Mayor Bob Buchanan said he had been to see the residents to see if there was anything the council could do to make them feel more secure.

The property had been used as a bit of a thoroughfare over the years.

But he said extra security would make it harder to get the elderly residents out of their units in an emergency. Mr Arnerich said among the things that police were considering was whether they had been called to the block of flats on Wellington Rd before, although they were keeping the inquiry "wide open".

They had carried on receiving a number of sharp-bladed instruments to consider whether any of them was used in the murder.

"As every hour goes by, the picture gets clearer," he said.

"This is not a TV programme, it's a whodunnit homicide inquiry. We are not going to rush out and miss something.

"We are going to do things properly from the word go."

Mrs Morriss' sons Vernon and Wayne, who were at the Marton Memorial Hall after Tuesday's funeral, said they did not want to speculate on how their mother died and were leaving that side of things to police.

They said that the parents of Tania McKenzie were not at their mother's funeral. It was a case of mistaken identity.