The Many Deaths of Mary Dobie

'Dreadful murder at Opunake', said the Taranaki Herald , 'Shocking outrage', cried the Evening Post in Wellington when they learned in November 1880 that a young woman called Mary Dobie had been found lying under a flax bush near Opunake on the Taranaki coast with her throat cut so deep her head was almost severed. In the midst of tensions between Maori and Pakeha in 1880, the murder ignited questions: Pakeha feared it was an act of political terrorism in response to the state's determination to