A MYSTERY STILL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 134, 8 June 1932, Page 11

A MYSTERY STILL.

CITY CLERK'S TRAGIC END. BONES FOUND IN BUSH. CASE OFFICIALLY CLOSED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, Jane 4.

Bungendore is a little country town not far from Canberra, ami quite ••unknown to Fame."' lint for months it lias boon associated in the public mind with a tragic mystery which, though it still remains unsolved, was officially "closed'' by a coroner's verdict this week. On October G last year Sidney Morrison, a young city clerk, rang up his married sister at Bondi to say that lie was "going away." The sister was surprised, and telephoned her father, remarking at the time that her brother's voice "sounded very distressed over the 'phone." Nothing more was hoard of the young man, and the father notified the police. Nothing happened till November 20, when a squatter whose station is close to Bungendore reported to the local police that ho had come across sonic human bones, a blackened gun-barrel and other articles in the scrub off the main road. Detectives were sent up from Sydney, and they discovered in addition a watchcase, a belt and a key, all disfigured by lire. The criminal investigation officers were battled at first, but they sent cables to Scotland Yard asking the; authorities at Home to ascertain what firms were shipping locks to -Australia. In this circuitous way it was learned that the key fitted a. lock sent to Sydney in February. 1020. The number on the key was found to correspond to a lock fitted to a. locker in the Y.M.C.A. buildings, and it was then discovered that young .Morrison had been a member of the Y.M.C.A. Gymnasium Club, and that the key had been issued to him by the secretary there. ' I

It Mas now clear that the remains were those, of Sidney Morrison and that his body had been burned, lint how did he come to this tragic end? There were signs that wood had been collected to build up and stoke a lire, and this, of course, suggested that the man had been murdered and the body deliberately destroyed. The police, however, advanced an alternative theory that the young man might have been bent on suicide, that he built his own funeral pyre, lighted it, and then shot himself upon it. This theory was certainly hard to accept, but it was also suggested that, if it was not a case of murder, Morrison might have been shot by accident and his body burned by a companion too scared to reveal 'the truth. There seemed to be no doubl that Morrison was actually seen in this district after his disappearance from Sydney. Witnesses testilied that they had spoken to him "early in October," that lie had talked of "going prospecting," and that he had been seen in a car "with two other men."

This last piece of evidence ought to have been valuable, but the men have never been discovered, nor have they come forward in response to the public appeal for any information likely to throw light on Morrison's disappearance. This is in itself suspicious, but the coroner could only record the fact that "the bones are the remains of Sidney dames Morrison, and that lie died on or about October 20." So the circumstances of this tragic end in the lonely bush remain a mystery still.