STRANGE TRAGEDY.

Grey River Argus, 21 July 1923, Page 5

STRANGE TRAGEDY.

On Little Barrier Island. AUCKLAND, July 20. Police officers returned from the Little Barrier this evening with the body of Hubert George Weidman, aged between 28 and 30. A statement made by William Cleaver, caretaker of th" bird sanctuary, is that on June 14th he saw smoko on a distant ridge, and next day he met Weidman in the bush. It is illegal to land, but the caretaker has the power of arrest, so he accommodated the man at his house. In the night Weidman disappeared with a dinghy, end on June 26th, Cleaver found deceased’s body at the foot of a cliff on the shore. There w's nothing to indicate how he got there. Cleaver, failing to attract notice from the mainland, buried the body two days later. Weidman, who was the 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 he was poaching kauri gum, of which a sack and a half was found near the body.