MISSING 20 YEARS

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28973, 14 August 1959, Page 11

MISSING 20 YEARS

Body Identified In Brisbane BRISBANE, August 13. A shocked widow and son have identified a man who died on Monday night as the husband and father they gave up for dead 20 years ago. Now police are trying to close the 20-year gap in the double life of Percy Albert Honeysett, a lonely, ageing man who lived quietly in a hotel room as Richard Preston. All that police have established is that he worked all over Queensland, usually as an explosives expert, and had “a fairly large sum” in a bank account in the name of Preston. “Preston” became ill at a Brisbane private hotel on Monday. He died before an ambulance arrived. No-one knew his relatives. He had had no visitors, no mail. When the police were summoned, their only clue was a Returned Servicemen’s League badge. Through the number they traced it to Honeysett, who in 1938 lived in Leichhardt, New South Wales. Sydney police interviewed Honeysett’s relatives, and found he disappeared on a fishing trip to Narrabeen, on May 7, 1939.

Visit to Qaeen. — President Eisenhower will probably pay a one-day informal visit to the Queen at Balmoral, her Scottish home, on August 28, according to a usually reliable source.— London, August 12.