FIVE YEARS' MYSTERY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21882, 18 August 1934, Page 2 (Supplement)

FIVE YEARS' MYSTERY

WOMAN WHO DISAPPEARED SAID TO BE WORTH £3,000,000 ASHES IN PRIVATE SAFE A 20,000 acre estate on the Pacific Coast, dotted with fine cattle and horses, has recently yieldod the solution of a mystery which for five years has baffled popular imagination. In April, 1929, there disappeared from the town of Brownstown, in the State of Washington, its most conspicuous figure—an eccentric aged woman known as Mrs. Sarah *E. Smith Scollard, reputed to be worth £3,000,000. A few weeks ago a silver casket containing her ashes and a document purporting to be her death certificate were discovered in the private safe of Mr. Beese B. Brown, a wealthy horse and cattle breeder who owned a vast estate at Yakima, Washington. Mr. Brown was killed in a motor accident last January shortly after the trustee of Mrs. Scollard's estate had begun a suit for the recovery of £1,000,000, which it was alleged he had taken from her while she was mentally incompetent.

The missing widow was a striking character, well known both on the Pacific Coast and in Chicago, where she was nicknamed, after the famous New York woman banker, "the Hetty Green of La Salle Street." Mrs. Scollard bad first become wealthy by a death-bed marriage in September, 1908, to James R. Smith, a pick-and-shovel miner. Tho marriage

was solemnised in hospital, and on Smith's death a few days afterwards his widow found herself the possessor of his fortune of £BO,OOO in copper shares. She then married a popular Yale football player, but divorced him, A third marriage, to a commercial traveller named Scollard, also ended in divorce.

By judicious investments Mrs. Scollard amassed a great fortune. One of her eccentricities was to carry immense amounts of money about with her. Brown was her chief adviser and friend, and it is. his widow who has now cleared up the mystery of Mrs. Scollard's disappearance Mrs. Brown took the silver casket to the authorities, saying that her son had discovered it. Sho explained that for some unknown reason her husband had seen fit to keep secret the fact of Mrs. Scollard's death, which occurred in a hotel in Montreal on July 24, 1932. She had fled to Montreal in 1929 to avoid prosecution for alleged income-tax evasions.. When Mrs. Scollard died Brown had the body cremated, and kept the ashes in a silver casket shaped like a jewel box. Mrs. Brown requested the authorities to allow the casket to be buried beside her husband.