Man’s Body Found After Explosion

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31740, 25 July 1968, Page 12

Man’s Body Found After Explosion

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, July 24.

The body of a middle-aged man was found in the second floor office of the Tamaki Construction Company, Ltd, at Camp Bunn, Mount Wellington, just before 8 o’clock tonight.

The body is believed to be that of Mr Alick Faine, an accountant, of 35 Whytehead Crescent, Glendowie.

Mr Faine, an employee of the construction company, was last seen alive at 4.30 p.m. when staff left the building—a converted war-time warehouse of an American stores depot.

The warehouse, which is opposite the Tamaki railway station yards, is more than 150 yards from the nearest house.

The office, about 10ft by 10ft, was blackened and shattered by what appeared to be an explosion. Books and papers from the room had been hurled through broken windows from the second floor.

The dead man had facial injuries. A safe in the room was found open and the front door of the building appeared to have been forced.

Mr G. F. McCullough, a St John Ambulance Association officer, was called soon after 8.15 p.m. after a member of the firm found the body. The dead man was lying behind the desk oh the floor of the office. He was burned about the head.

Mr McCullough called the police. C. 1.8. detectives and D.S.I.R. forensic experts, headed by Detective Superintendent M. J. Ross, the Auckland Chief Detective, were soon at the scene.

Teams of detectives and uniformed police, with two

police dogs, made a thorough search of the surrounding areas.

There were no signs of explosives having been used on the safe. A wooden stake was lying near the door to the building. Detective Inspector P. M. Gentry, who was in charge of a team of detectives at the scene, said late tonight that the police were not treating the death necessarily as homicide, but it was a suspicious death.