A WOMAN'S DISAPPEARANCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 911, 29 October 1910, Page 4

A WOMAN'S DISAPPEARANCE.

WESTRAUAN SENSATION. Phr'i'ii, October 22. The search for the body of Miss Harris continues. Detectives are satisfied that it could have been burnt at the foundry where Smart worked, and the traces destroyed. Smart bleaded guilty to the bigamy charge, aud was remanded for sentence. STORY OF THE DISAPPEARANCE. An extraordinary set of circumstances led to the arrest of Alfred William Smart, a carter, forty-one years of age, at Perth, about a lortnight ago, on a charge of 1 bigamy. Smart arrived in West j Australia seven years ago, and | made the acquaintance of a young woman named lithel Harris, who shortly afterwards left Perth with | her parents tor Boulder. A few mouths later she returned to Perth, and lived with Smart as his wife, first at Eeedervill, and afterwards at Co wle-Street, West Perth. The case was brought under the notice of the detectives upon the receipt of a report that the young woman had mysteriously disappeared about March 7th, aud that Smart married Mary Jane Pemberthy a week later. He had been keeping company with this woman for nearly two years, aud Ethel Harris is said to have known this. Enquiries made by the detectives did not bear out Smart’s statements. He said that Ethel Harris told him early in March that she was going to Victoria, aud that on returning one afternoon from work he found that she had gone. But he was positive that she would return. The girl’s father,w r ho is now living at Eeederville, questioned Smart about the girl’s disappearance, and told the police that Smart said at first that she had gone to Victoria, and afterwards that she had gone to South Australia. He did not give any address. The detectives have obtained information that Ethel Harris was seen in the house several days before Smart’s marriage with the waitress Pemberthy. Sergeaut Detective Mann and plainclothes Constable Ebberson questioned Smart in regard to the disappearance of Ethel Harris who is twenty-six years old, and a native of Ballarat, aud this led to the arrest for bigamy, as it is alleged that he admitted having a wife alive in Victoria. Having failed to trace any movements of the missing woman, the detective s took possession of the house in which she was living with Smart, and which Smart was occupying with his wife by marriage last March. Further investigations, starting with the digging up of the yard, were to be made.