FIRE MYSTERY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 14 March 1939, Page 8

FIRE MYSTERY

THE PIHA BONES DISCOVERY OF CLIP TWO MEN AND A CAR RENTING OF GARAGE STRANGER IN CEMETERY The discoveries made by the police' and the scientists engaged in the un- \ ravelling of the Piha mystery, says today’s New Zealand “Herald”, include the finding of a surgical clip in the: small section of skull believed to have been that of Mr Patrick Henry Shine:! the identifying of some grains of soil | as having come from the Waikumete Cemetery, and the fact that persons. who rented a garage from a widow at j Avondale are believed to have left a ■ shovel behind them. These three mat-1 ters are receiving close attention by thei experts, who have not yet made their j final reports. According to information obtained j yesterday the small piece of skull found among the smoke-blackened ashes | of the bach at Piha contained a small clip hidden by dirt and ashes. When the j pathologists had cleaned the section of skull they uncovered the clip, which ( suggested to them that the skull had j come from a body that had been the j subject of a post-mortem examination. | TWO BURIALS i ! I Surgical clips of the type found in j I the remains are used after post-mortem examinations to join the skull sections | together. The discovery of the clip prei supposed that hospital dossiers would I show what persons had been pathologij cally examined. It would then become a , matter of routine to discover when and where those persons were buried. It ; was learned that Mr Shine, a returned i soldier, was buried in the Waikumete : Cemetery at half-past two in the afternoon of Thursday, 9th FebruarjL

By a coincidence another returned soldier. Mr William Cherry, was buried in the soldiers’ section of the cemetery on the same afternoon, but in a plot on the eastern side, Mr Shine having been buried on the western. It has ! been elicited that a short time before the burials took place a stranger approached one of the workmen in the cemetery and asked which of the two was Mr Cherry's grave. When he had seen it he walked away. THIRTY SAMPLES OF SOIL ! It was a further coincidence that on that particular afternoon the two men who normally fill in the graves after burials were aWay, and their places taken bv men not so familiar with the work. In those circumstances, if one of the graves were disturbed in any way, it probably would pass unnoticed. In the course of their inquiries the detectives discovered something which led them to secure samples of soil from every cemetery between Auckland and 1 Helensville and Auckland and Bombay. Although no official statement has yet been issued it is learned that 30 different soils have been submitted for analysis. A PARKED CAR A man has said that early in the evening of Saturday. 11th February, he passed a car parked about 100 yards' to the northward of the main cemetery gate. He thought little of it at the time, beyond that it was a peculiar place a which to park, but when subsequently questioned, he mentioned what he had seen. He added that if Mr Shine’s grave had been tampered with, it must have been done early in the evening, since it was then the practice j of the sextons to pay periodic visits to j the grounds later in the evening, because of wilful damage done by ch:l-| aren some days before. An elderly woman who keeps a confectionery store at Avondale, has said that during one afternoon in the first j week in February, a man walked into ( her store; that he said to her: “I say,; Gran, do you know' of anyone who 1 w-ants to' let a garage?" “THE MYSTERY MEN" • It's a funny thing you should ask that,” the woman says she replied, j "because I’ve a friend in my sitting room, and she has one. I’ll bring her out. and you can talk to her.” With that, she continued, she brought out a woman friend, w’ho lived at Avondale. The friend talked briefly w-ith the man who had inquired for a garage, and th? tw'o left the shop. “She came back later, and told me she had let the garage to two men.” the shopkeeper said, “and for several days we laughed about the 'mystery men.’ as w’e called them. They weren't there more than a few days." BOX AND SHOVEL There is information that on ore occasion, while the owner of the gar-, rge was passing the corner of the house at the back, she noticed a box and shovel in the garage, and that when the men had gone, the shovel, with r.cme earth attached to its blade, was' left behind. The woman herself is verv I reticent about the matter. The garage which the two men arc said to have hired, is about 50ft. down a narrow driveway in a quiet neigh-J bourhood. the nearest neighbours being loughly 50 yards away on either side.; One of the neighbours states he remembers that some time early last j month he noticed a car. with a strange I man in it standing at the roadside, and 1 directly in front of the gate leading to the garage at the back. All these facts arc being sifted by the police, in an endeavour to identify any persons who may have been asso-! ciated with the surrounding circum- j stances.