FIRE MYSTERY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 59, Issue 127, 11 March 1939, Page 5

FIRE MYSTERY

SECOND GRAVE OPENED. ■ i, COFFIN FOUND EMPTY. PART PLAYED BY SCIENCE. (Per Press Association). • AUCKLAND, March 10. A sensational turn was given to-day to what lias become known as the Piha fire case when the police opened the grave of a returned soldier buried in the Waikumete Cemeteiy and found the coffin empty, and two hours later arrested James Arthur Talbot, who was a close friend of Gordon Thomas McKay, the Australian who has been missing since the mysterious burning of a seaside bacli at Piha on February 12. Talbot was charged under the Crimes Act with improperly interfering with human remains, and wjll appear before a Magistrate in the Police Court tomorrow morning. ■ This was the second grave within the past week that had been opened by the authorities under warrant from the Minister of Health (Hon. P. Fraser). The case excited the close interest and attention of the public, and within a remarkably short time to-day the city rang with the news that the police had taken the first major step in their investigations since they began their inquiries on February 16. Detective - Sergeants J. Trethewey and F. N. Aiplin, under the direction of Inspector R. J. Ward, have been working unceasingly in many diverse directions, hut the trend of events was held a close secret. Scientific investigation. Science and the work of experienced detectives have been closely associated in the Piha case since the afternoon of Wednesday, Februaiy 15, when two Auckland solicitors received cable information that McKay, who was reported to have perished in the bach that was /burned to the ground early in the morning of February 12 was insured for an aggregate of £50,000. It was at tlie request of three Australian insurance companies that the Auckland police ’began to make inquiries. There were many issues confronting the two detectives. One was that although the bach burned for scarcely more than half an hour, the only apparently human remains found among the pile of charred wood and< ashes were a small section of what might have been the front or back of a skull, a few fragments of hone and some vertebrae. Although Me Kay had full upper artificial and partial lower artificial false dentures, no teeth were found on the site of the bach. An Auckland dentist has stated that the fused porcelain teeth worn by McKay would have withstood the fierce heat of a crematorium. The police were unable to find any traces of jawbones or thigh bones. . Remains Disinterred. The complexion of the inquiiy seemed to assume more serious proportions when a party of police, accompanied by an official from the Health Department, disinterred the remains which had been buried in. the Waikumete Cemetery on Wednesday, December 15. The remains were retained by the police, who, upon the return of Dr. W. Gilmour, pathologist at the Auckland Hospital, submitted them for pathological examination. It is understood that here science began to play its part. A piece of skull shaped after the fashion of a man’s cupper hand contained a certain, material mixed with wood-ash and dirt, and the pathologists engaged in the examination noticed that among the substances in .the piece of skull was an article which gave the impression that it could have come there through association with someone who had received treatment at a hospital. , Persistent and careful analysis, it is said, eventually helped the doctors to arrive at a certain conclusion, and one day this week a suggestion was made to the detectives.

Burials Checked. Meanwhile Detective-Sergeants Troth ewey and Aplin had been working in concert along lines suggestive of a possible result. They caused confidential inquiries to be made at cemeteries os far iiorth as Helensville, and as far south as Bombay. Altogether they checked the dates of burial and the ages and sex of every person buried within a certain period in 30 cemeteries in the Auckland Province. The result of the research by pathologists engaged, Dr. Gilmour, Mr Kenneth MacCormick and Dr. E. F. Fowler, and a widespread search for information iby the detectives, prompted the police early this week to seek a second warrant of exhumation from the Minisf ter of Health on Wednesday afternoon. The warrant was received just after five o’clock this morning, and four doctors and two detectives and a representative of the Department of Health gathered .round the grave of Patrick Henry Shine, an Australian soldier, who died at the Auckland Hospital on February 8, and was buried the following day. The grave was opened and the coffin raised to the surface. When the coffin had been opened it was empty. The police returned to the city, and at 10 o’clock intercepted Talbot as he was walking along Customs Street West, and a few minutes later charged him with allegedly improperly interfering with human remains.