Spent round inside rifle found at fire

Press, 9 August 1976, Page 1

Spent round inside rifle found at fire

PA Dunedin A spent round was found in a .22, singleshot rifle lying beside a foot of one of the four persons who died in an early morning farmhouse fire at Taumata, near Clinton, on Friday.

But the police, who have spent three days sifting through the remains of the house, are unable to comment on the possibility of any of the occupants’ having died before the fire began.

Those who died are believed to have been

John Dunsmuire McArthur, aged 56, the owner of the property. Marjorie Ann McArthur, aged 44, his wife, and their two daughters

Dorothy May McArthur, aged 15, and Carol Ann McArthur, aged 11.

Post-mortem examinations at Invercargill on Saturday established that the bodies were those of a

man and woman, a teenage girl, and a younger girl, and this points to their being those of the McArthur family. The head of the Dunedin C. 1.8. (Detective Inspector R. N. McDonald) and Detective Senior-Sergeant K. G. Schwass, in charge of the Invercargill C. 1.8., with three Invercargill detectives, inspected the site of the fire on Saturday.

From 9.30 a.m. yesterday, 14 policemen were at the site, sifting through the debris for anything which might help establish the cause of the fire. It is believed that the fire occurred between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. on Friday. Detective Inspector McDonald said yesterday that the bodies of the man and the two girls were found in three bedrooms, and the body of the woman was found on the floor beside the bed of the younger child. The rifle, with the spent cartridge in it, was lying beside her. “At this stage of the preliminary finding, there is no suggestion that anyone else was involved wdth the fire, but we are keeping an open mind to all possibilities,” he said.

It was not possible to say from the examinations if the occupants of the house had been shot, but it was known that the rifle was normally kept in the house.

The youngest girl was known to have a hearing defect, and she might not have heard anything that happened in the house that night. Detective Inspector McDonald said that the cause of the fire had not been established. However, it was known that there were a number of tins of paint inside the house because of the renovation work.

Samples from the bodies would be sent to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in Christchurch for analyses. “We are not able to establish yet whether some of the people did not die from inhaling smoke, or whether they were dead before the fire,” Detective Inspector McDonald said.

Because of renovations being made at the house, sleeping arrangements had been changed and other items in the' house were not in their normal position. This had made investigations more difficult/