The bizarre case of the missing body

(We want to give you fair warning to stop now if you like, this is a disturbing story.)
Albert McKeeber, who worked in the morgue at Timaru Hospital was the last person to see 12-year-old Valmai Irene Phillips before she disappeared.
He might have been a suspect, except that poor Valmai was dead in the morgue when he saw her last at about 1.30am on December 21, 1947.
She had died the previous afternoon, although at the time the doctors were not exactly sure how.
But when McKeeber returned to the morgue about 3.30am her body was gone and a window was open.
What followed was a truly bizarre and disturbing case.
Also missing was the other morgue porter, a man whose name was Desmond Robert Perry - or maybe John Rains.
A car he had been using was found within half a mile from the hospital, bogged down on a beach during the immediate police search.
Valmai was the eldest daughter of a Timaru couple. A post mortem had been planned but without a body her cause of death remained unknown. It had been suspected she had infantile paralysis - or what we now call spinal meningitis.
Two days later on December 23, Perry was found in Nelson. He was initially charged with the theft of the car that had been found and immediately put before a court.
A day later - after Perry had been interviewed - Valmai’s body was found under bushes off a country road off the Timaru-Mount Cook main highway about 16 miles from Timaru. It had been pointed out by Perry who had been taken there by police.
Horribly, Perry was then charged with inferring with the body by removing it from the morgue.
During the trial it was alleged Perry may have tried to drug the other porters during the annual Christmas party, although there was no evidence other than the suspicions of the others.
He claimed he had left and when he got to his car the body of Valmai was in the boot covered in a sheet. He was unable to start the car so stole another, taking Valmai’s body with him.
He then drove to where he hid her body before heading to Nelson.
It then came out that the 24-year-old Perry had already twice been committed to mental institutions, once at the age of 14, and escaped from both.
His mother and grandmother had both died in mental hospitals.
Experts called at the trial said he was not insane. He was however suffering from schizophrenia
Perry’s lawyer claimed Perry had not inferred with the body other than removing it, although the Crown contended differently.
Perry was found guilty by the jury in two hours and 35 minutes (an hour of which was lunch) and sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail.
After several months of gruesome headlines, Perry went to jail and seems to have vanished from the records.
Valmai was buried in the Timaru Cemetery, having been found, in the end, to have died from pneumonia.