Who killed Joan?

Joan Rose Rattray was expected home from school in Hastings, just like she was every day.
But when her two brothers turned up and she didn’t, her mother Hazel Catherine Rattray knew something was wrong.
Because it was 1935 and no one’s first thought back then was sinister foul play, she went looking for her six-year-old daughter. But on not finding her she went to the police.
A search was started but it was the next day, July 3, 1935, that the little body of Joan was found lying face down at the edge of the old Ngaruroro river.
A boy who had joined the search, Frank Shine, found her about 3pm.
She had a gash on her forehead and appeared to have had her face deliberately pushed into the muddy bank.
The mud held other things - including the impression of a man’s size nine boot. An undergarment of hers was found in the grass along with her hat although police did not think she had been interfered with. She was otherwise fully dressed.
The search then began for her killer.
One theory was that she had been knocked over by a motorist who panicked and then moved the body but that was discounted.
A post mortem showed she died of asphyxiation.
Despite police hunting around the country for anyone who might have been involved, no one was ever arrested. A £200 reward was offered (huge money in those days) but brought nothing.
But 31 years later someone did come forward. By leaving a suicide note.
Arthur Henderson Smith was a former soldier and railway worker and labourer who hanged himself aged 62. A suicide note read he felt he had gone insane with his wicked ways. He thought he had committed the murder at the Karamu Creek years ago but could not remember taking the child off the road and did not know for sure that he did.
Smith was mentally unwell and under care. There was no evidence one way or the other that he was involved in Joan’s death.
At an inquest it was noted that the mentally unwell can sometimes confess to crimes they had not committed.
Joan’s killer has never been identified. She is buried in Hasting Cemetery. And not far away in the same cemetery is Arthur Smith.