The leopard that terrified Auckland - Grave Story 101

Auckland residents were on high alert in September 1925 after the terrifying news that a female leopard had escaped from the new zoo.
The zoo, at Western Springs, had only been open three years and its first director - and the man behind the animals - was Louis Thomas Griffin.
Griffin was born in England in 1871, in Royal Tunbridge Wells. He was an ichthyologist (the study of fish), curator and Egyptologist among other things.
He came to New Zealand in 1910.
It was also Griffin who in 1923 went to Africa to get animals for the zoo.
In his time as curator/director at the zoo he consulted about animals all over New Zealand and was brought odd animals to identify, including what was termed a sea serpent - that turned out to be a Great Oarfish.
The female leopard had come from India and had only been at the zoo for three days when keepers noticed her enclosure was empty on September 16. The theory was she had slipped through her bars and out into Auckland without anyone noticing.
For 27 days people kept their doors and windows shut, did not walk alone, and were regaled with tales of sightings around St Luke’s.
Several people saw it but could not get near it.
Worried, and alert to recent reports in newspapers of the day of man-eating leopards from the wilds of Africa, the council offered a £20 reward.
It was on October 11 that it all came to an end when four young men out fishing found her, floating and drowned off Karaka Bay beach in Glendowie.
It was Griffin who said he thought she may have been stuck in the mud behind a tannery and caught by the rising tide.
An investigation into the escape by Internal Affairs showed the bars were mostly 11.4cm apart but in one small area they were 12.7cm.
Along with that an inquest was held for the big cat with the finding that it drowned.
Exactly how it escaped is still a mystery.
It was by no means the only escape from the zoo in the first years. Along with the leopard, a Tasmanian Devil was lost, an agouti and a young sea lion - not nearly as scary.
Griffin, who was also the assistant director of the Auckland War memorial museum director died in 1935 and is buried in Purewa Cemetery.
Pic by Geran De Klerk.