FIRE TRAGEDY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 58, 10 March 1937, Page 13

FIRE TRAGEDY

A THIRD VICTIM

DISCOVERY FROM REMAINS

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

DUNEDIN, This Day,

Three men, not two, as at first presumed, perished in the fire in an old house by the Taieri River at Henley on Saturday night. This revelation in the mystery, the identity of only one of the victims having yet been proved, was made at a pathological examination of the remains yesterday after an inquest on two bodies . had been opened. When the fire burned itself out in 'the early, hours of Sunday morning two piles of ashes and the remnants of bones were found in the debris of a front room on the bottom floor. The first remains were recovered inside the roofn at a spot where the first farmer to arrive at the blazing building saw a body in the flames. The other remains were found just inside the door, four feet away from the other body. When the fire was raging three or four Henley settlers saw two bodies in the flames, and others have since stated that they saw three bodies.

That a third man was incinerated in the fierce blaze is now positively established. Yesterday an examination of the two piles of remains was made by Dr. R. McAlister Wylie, of Outram. The first set of bones were proved to be the remains of one adult, but the bones collected from the debris near the door were found to be those of two adults. The third man is believed to have been- an elderly stranger to the district who was given a lift in a motor-car towards Otokia on Saturday afternoon by a young man. He asked if there were any empty houses at Henley, and the young settler told him there were two or three, but did not direct him to any.