LITTLE BARRIER MYSTERY

Evening Star, Issue 18333, 21 July 1923, Page 4

LITTLE BARRIER MYSTERY

DEAD AT CLIFF FOOT.

FATE OF SUPPOSED POACHER,

[Pbu United Phess Association.]

AUCKLAND, July 20,

Tho police returned from tho Little Barrier ‘this evening with tho body of Hubert George Weidman, aged between twenty-eight and thirty. A statement was made by William Cleaver, caretaker of the bird sanctuary, to tho effect that on Juno 14 he saw smoko on a distant ridge, and next day met weidman in the bush. It is illegal to land; but the caretaker had no power of arrest, so ho accommodated the man at his house. In the night Weidman disappeared with a dinghy, and on June 27 Cleaver found deceased’s body at the foot of a cliff. There was nothing to indicate how ho got there. Cleaver, failing to attract notice from the mainland, bureid the body two davs later. Weidman, who was mate of the American schooner Cecilia Sudden, _ which was burned off the Great Barrier in September, 1922, was a native of Melbourne. It is supposed that ho was poaching kauri gum, of which a sack and a-half were found near the body.

[A message received yesterday stated: Tho police received word late on Wednesday night that tho death had occurred, on the Little Barrier Island, of a man named Weidman. In order to investigate tho circumstances it was thought advisable to send down a parly of officers. They left by launch at 4.30 a.m. yesterday, but have not returned. The information received came through telephone from the owner of a launch, who slated that he had called at the islands and had been asked by the caretaker to notify tho police that a man staying on tho island bad died, and that ho had burisd him.]