PIHA MYSTERY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19885, 11 March 1939, Page 5

PIHA MYSTERY

QUEST FOR CLUES

SECOND EXHUMATION

GRAVE OF A SOLDIER

COFFIN FOUND EMPTY

CHARGE AGAINST TALBOT

(Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day.

A sensational turn was given yesterday to what has become known as the Piha fire case when the police opened the grave of a returned soldier in the Waikumete cemetery and found the coffin empty and two hours later arrested James Arthur Talbot, a close friend of Gordon Thomas McKay, the Australian who has been missing since the mysterious burning of the seaside bach at Piha early in the morning of February 12.

Talbot was charged under the Crimes Act with improperly interfering with human remains. r

This';was the second'grave within the past week that had been opened by the authorities under warrant from the Minister of Health, the Hon. P. Fraser. The case has excited close interest and attention of the public, and within a remarkably short time yesterday the city rang with the news that the police had taken the first major step in theninvestigations since they began their inquiries.

Detective-Sergeants J. Trethewey and F. N. Aplin, under the direction of Inspector R. R. J. Ward, had worked unceasingly in many diverse directions. but the trend of events was held a Close secret.

Insured for £50,000

Science and the work of experienced detectives have been closely associated in the case since the afternoon of Wednesday, February 15, when two Auckland solicitors received cabled information that Mr. McKay, who was reported to. have perished when the bach was burned to the ground, was insured for an aggregate of £50,000. It was at the request of three Australian insurance companies that the Auckland police began to make inquiries.

There were many issues confronting the two detectives. One was that, although the bach burned for scarcely more than half an hour, the only apparently human remains found among the pile of charred wood and ashes were a. small section of what might have been the front or back of a skull, a few fragments of other bone and some vertebrae.

Although Mr. McKay had full upper artificial and partial lower artificial false dentures, no teeth were found on. the site of the bach. An Auckland dentist has stated that the fused porcelain teeth worn by Mr. McKay would have withstood the fierce heat of a crematorium.

The police w«re unable to find any traces of jawbones or thigh, bones. Pathological Examination

The complexion of the inquiry seemed- to assume more serious proportions when a party" of police, accompanied ,by an official from the Health Department, disinterred the remains which had been buried in the Waikiimete cemetery on Wednesday, February 15. The remains were retained by the police, who upon the return of Dr. W. Gilmour, pathologist at the Auckland Hospital, submitted them for pathological examination.

It is understood that here science began to play its part. The piece of Skull, shaped after the fashion of a man's cupped hand, contained certain material mixed with wood ash and dirt. The pathologists engaged in the examination noticed that among the substances in the piece of skull was an article which gave the impression that it could have come there through association with someone who had/recently received treatment at a hospital.

Persistent and careful analyses, it is said, eventually helped the doctors to arrive at a certain conclusion and one day this week a suggestion was made to the detectives. Inquiries at Cemeteries

Meanwhile, Detective - Sergeants Trethewey and Aplin had been working in concert along lines suggestive of a possible result. They caused confidential inquiries to be made at cemeteries as far north as Helensville and as. far south as Bombay. Altogether they checked the dates of burial and the ages and sex of every person buried within a certain period in 30 cemeteries in the Auckland province.

The result of the research by pathologists engaged, Dr. Gilmour, Mr. Kenneth MacCormick and Dr. E. F. Fowler, and the widespread search for information by the detectives prompted the police early this week to seek a second warrant of exhumation from the Minister of Health. On Wednesday afternoon a warrant was received.

Just after 5 o'clock yesterday morning four doctors and two detectives and a representative of the Department of Health gathered round the grave of Patrick Henry Shine, an Australian soldier, who died at the Auckland Hospital on February 8 and was buried on the following day. The grave was opened and the coffin raised to the surface. When the coffin had been opened it was found to be empty. The police returned to the city and at 10 o'clock police intercepted Talbot as he was walking along Customs street west and a few minutes later charged him with allegedly improperly interfering with human remains.