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'I am Guilty'

says Arthur Thomas

"I am guilty," Arthur Thomas told me last night. "For the past few months I have been living with my guilt, but I can't live with my conscience any longer."

Mr Thomas's confession will bring to an end the probing investigations which many private individuals have been carrying on during the past two months.

Even the police have been involved in the investigations.

The guilt Mr Thomas has been bearing began in the little West Coast town of Blackpool, where he works at the sawmill.

Mrs Jenkins, a retired postal worker, had spent many years developing a new strain of rose, Morning Dew, and was to enter it in the Grey-mouth Mother Union Horticultural Show.

The night before the show disaster struck, the roses had been picked.

The small community was in an uproar, letters of sympathy arrived by the mailbag. Neighbours started accusing one another. The community was split, neighbours who had been friends for years stopped talking.

Now three months later despite Mr Thomas's confession he wounds may be too deep to ever heal.

"I wish that fateful Friday had never occured," he confided in me, "I was walking home that, after having been down at the local when I thought that I should give my wife, who has been a paraplegic for the last two years, a present. She gets out so seldom that I thought that some flowers would be a nice little gift. I climbed over the fence and in a couple of seconds had plucked five roses. I didn't know they were special.

"I am willing to hand myself over to the authorities, but I would like to say that I've been punished by my conscience, it's been like living in hell. I will be able to look my friends in the face again. It's a great load of my chest."

Greymouth Police Sargeant O'Toole had no comment to make when asked whether charges would be preferred. "We haven't heard from Mrs Jenkins if she wishes to lay a complaint."

And it seems unlikely that anyone will know just how Mrs Jenkins feels, she died last Saturday, without ever knowing who her assailent was.