PIHA FIRE INQUIRY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19881, 7 March 1939, Page 14

PIHA FIRE INQUIRY

AUSTRALIAN DETECTIVE KNEW SUPPOSED VICTIM (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. A Press Association cablegram received from Sydney last night, stated that the New South Wales Commissioner of Police, Mr. W. Mackay, had decided to send Detective-Sergeant Alford to Ne w Zealand to assist in the police inquiries into the fird in which a Sydney merchant, Gordon Robert McKay, aged 43 years, was believed to have been burned to death in a'four-roomed shack at Piha, Auckland, early in the morning of February 12. Detective-Sergeant Alford knew Mr. McKay well. The Auckland police authorities are awaiting reports of the pathological examination of the small quantity of charred bones recovered from the ruins of the building. Before Dr. W. Gilmour, pathologist at the Auckland Hospital, can furnish a comprehensive report to the police, certain laboratory work remains to be done, although it is understood that the opinion has been formed that the remains are human. Associated with Dr. Gilmour in the pathological examination of the remains is Mr. Kenneth IMacCormick, a well known Auckland surgeon. Mr. MjacCormick has had considerable experience in bone surgery.