PRESUMED DROWNED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 145, 20 June 1940, Page 16

PRESUMED DROWNED.

BAKER'S DISAPPEARANCE. (From Out Correspondent.)

"■■ 4 WELLINGTON, Wednesday. Having considered the circumstances of' the mysterious disappearance on February 3, 1936, of a baker of Ngatea, Hauraki Plains, Mr. Justice Johnston has decided that he was drowned in the Piako River. His Honor has granted an application by the Public Trustee, the missing man's executor, to swear to hie death.' The deceased was Mr. William Alfred Joseph Suiter Montgomery. Considerable Press and radio publicity was given to his disappearance four years ago. It appeared, Hia Honor said in his judgment, that a man enjoying good health, whose habits were in no wiso excessive and who eeemingly had no family or financial worries, had simply disappeared. While he was well insured he was but adequately insured for a man in his ppsition, and the fact that the policies were taken out years before his disappearance, taken with the fact that there was no evidence to suggest a scheme to obtain insurance moneys for his family _by feigning death, nor of a state of mind that would induce him to take hie own life, robbed of any ex post facto significance the fact that, like many others, Montgomery presumably believed in safeguarding his family's future through life insurance. Mr. J. Byrne appeared in support of the motion, and Mr. G. G. G. Watson, I with him Mr. R. C. Christie, opposed it :on behalf of three insurance companies

1 At the monthly meeting of the Pntaruru Town Board the town, clerk, Mr. V. L. Druininond, recommended that a rate of BJd, the same as for the previous year, be levied. The draft estimates as tabled were approved and it was decided to strike the- rate for the ensuing year at a special meeting next month.