PERFUNCTORY INQUIRY

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 144, 15 December 1933, Page 9

PERFUNCTORY INQUIRY

SYDNEY BRIDGE VICTIM

JUDGE'S SEVERE COMMENT

SYDNEY, December 13. In probate jurisdiction the Acting Chief Justice (Sir John Harvey) granted Pierce Lehano leave to swear to the death of his brother, William Lchane, who committed suicide from the Harbour Bridge on September 24, 1932. Due to mistaken identity the victim was buried as George Williams, a New Zealander. Sir John Harvey declared that the Coroner's inquiry'was a most perfunctory one, -while the police had accepted evidence of identification of the bridge victim without the slightest investigation. AVilliam Lehanc, who now is legally presumed dead, was possessed of considerable means, and probate of the estate was granted' to his brother, Pierce Lchane. A strange set of circumstances associated with the identity of a Harbour Bridge victim _.of September 24, 1932, involve a New Zealander, Georgo Williams, 57, of Papakura, said a Sydney message of October 18. A battered body found on the concrete road beneath the bridge was identified as that of Williams. However, Mrs. Williams, in Now Zealand, upon being communicated with, was unable to reconcile the description with that of her husband, and Leslie Dunlop, who identified the body as that of Williams, cannot be traced. It is now believed, in fact.it is claimed, that tho body was that of William Lehane, a retired sugarcane worker, who was in ill health at that time and had stated that if he contemplated suicide ho would throw himself over the bridgo to the concrete below and make a proper job of it. Ho was ',ast scon on the very day the tragedy occurred with which Williams is linked.