PIHA FIRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 March 1939, Page 8

PIHA FIRE

POLICE EXHUME body OF VICTIM. EXAMINATION TO BE MADE BY PATHOLOGIST. (By Telegraph—Press Association ) AUCKLAND, March 1.; .... Police investigations in to the Piha fire tragedy at 1.30 o’clock on the morning of Sunday, February 12,. are being continued with unabated vigour. Three days after the tragedy it was learned from Australia that the victim, Gordon Robert McKay, aged 45, hide and skin merchant, of Burwood, Sydney, was insured for sums totalling £ 50,000. Last week there was a development, the police securing permission to exhume the remains, which had been interred at WaikUmete cemetery on Wednesday, February 15. News of the exhumation was withheld at the request of the police. A 5 a.m. on Thursday last, just before dawn, a strange ceremony was enacted in Waikumete cemetery when the police exhumed the remains, of the victim of the tragedy. The exhumation, which was authorised by the Minister of Health, Mr Fraser, to whom ' application had been made earlier in the week under the provisions of Section 67 of the Cemeteries Act, 1908, was carried out quickly .and in the strictest secrecy. Those present at the exhumation were*two detectives, a constable, an inspector of the Health Department, the driver of the police car and a cemetery assistant. The original coffin was not removed from the cemetery, but the detectives took charge of the remains, which consisted of an assortment of charred bones contained in a small hat box, which was. tied with string. This box contained all the remains that could be gathered shortly after the fire burned itself out and which were taken from the morgue to an undertakers after the inauest had been opened on Monday, February 13, when the coronial proceedings" were adjourned sine die. Without being opened the hat box had been placed in the coffin and inThe remains were immediately taken to the morgue for a post-mortem examination by Dr Walter Gilmour, Pathologist at Auckland Hospital. However, Dr Gilmour is at present in Dunedin conducting examinations in pathology at the medical school. Evidence concerning the small amount of remains recovered from the smouldering ruins of the four-roomed bach was given at the opening of the inquest by Constable F. Pollard, Henderson. He told the coroner, Mr F. H. Levien, S.M., that he found a human skull and several vertebrae of the spinal column and parts of other bones. “All the flesh was completely consumed by the fire and even very little of the bones remained,” said the constable. INTEREST IN SYDNEY. DETECTIVE MAY BE SENT TO NEW -ZEALAND. SYDNEY, March 1. Considerable interest is displayed here in published accounts of the exhumation of the bones from the Piha bach fire reported to be the remains of Gordon McKay, Sydney merchant, whose life was insured with Australian companies for £40,000. Detectives here admit that they are in cable communication with the New Zealand polic and will probably send a detective to New Zealand to aid the investigations.