Six bodies found after bomb ignites buildings

Press, 16 May 1985, Page 6

Six bodies found after bomb ignites buildings

NZPA-Reuter Philadelphia Six bodies, burnt beyond recognition, were found late yesterday in the charred headquarters of a bizarre black cult that was destroyed along with 59 other homes in a fire ignited by a police bomb. The Police Commissioner, Mr Gregore Sanbore, said the bodies of two adult males, two adult females, one female child and part of a body of another child had been found.

Earlier reports had put the number of dead at five and Mr Sanbore said the sixth body had been found at the rear of the house occupied by the cult. He did not identify the latest victim by age or sex. He said he could not say if there were any other bodies in the rubble, but the search was continuing.

Earlier he said that he feared that up to 15 bodies

might be buried beneath the charred remains of the house, occupied by an organisation calling itself MOVE. He said that a bunker fortification erected on top of the cult house was “the most extensive series of fortificatons I’ve seen in 35 years of police work.” He said the fortress on top of the house was made with large boards and steel plates on reinforced supports. In addition there were log barricades made out of trees inside the house. As outraged residents charged that police had turned their quiet black working class neighbourhood into a war zone, the Mayor, Mr Wilson Goode, the city’s first black mayor, said that MOVE had been stockpiling weapons and ammunition because it wanted “to have a violent

confrontation.” “MOVE turned a peaceful block into an armed camp,” he said. Mr Goode said that area residents had told him they would solve the problem if he did not. However, residents said that they never dreamed that police action would end with their own homes and possessions destroyed. The bombing triggered a fire that swept across the block destroying 60 homes, making 240 people homeless and causing SUSS million (SNZII million) in damage. A police spokesman said the bodies recovered after the blaze were from the basement of the two-storey terrace house that MOVE had fortified. The entire house had collapsed into the basement and the police said there was still tonnes of rubble to sift.