PIHA FIRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 April 1939, Page 8

PIHA FIRE

TWO ACCUSED COMMITTED FOR TRIAL PLEAS OF NOT GUILTY ENTERED. FORTY WITNESSES HEARD. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, April 19. With pleas of “not guilty” from Gordon Robert McKay, alias Tom Bowlands, wool and skin dealer, aged 43, and James Arthur Talbot, labourer, aged 38, both Australians, the Lower Court hearing of the Piha case concluded today, when Mi- C. R. Orr-Walker. S.M., committed both men to the Supreme Court for trial. . The hearing, which closed at 6 o'clock tonight; had occupied two full days and involved 40 witnesses. McKay and Talbot were jointly charged with improperly interfering with a dead human body, that of Patrick Henry Shine, in. Auckland on February 10, and with wilfully setting fire to the dwelling house of Florence Jessie Thomas, thereby committing arson, in Piha on February 12. Mr R. J. C. Sanderson appeared for McKay and Mr J. Terry for Talbot. Detective Sergeant Nalder prosecuted. Evidence given by medical men and a Government analyst occupied most, of the morning and practically the whole of the afternoon was taken up with that .of two investigating detectives who had been engaged on the case. The crowd of spectators which listened at the morning session was as large as that of the previous day but in the afternoon the numbers, gradually lessened and when the Court rose only 12 persons, three of them women, remained in the public enclosure.