PIHA FIRE CASE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 May 1939, Page 4

PIHA FIRE CASE

TWO AUSTRALIANS STAND TRIAL FIRST EXPERT WITNESS CALLED. EXAMINATION OF CLAY. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, May 24. The trial was continued in the Supreme Court today of two Australians, Gordon Robert McKay, aged 43, alias Tom Bowlands, wool and hide dealer, and James Arthur Talbot, aged 38, labourer, on charges that, on or about February 12, they wilfully set. fire to a dwelling-house, thereby committing arson, and that, on or about February 10, they interfered with a dead human body. They were further charged with conspiring by deceit to defraud the Mutual Life and Citizens Insurance Company, Limited, Sydney, of £25,500 by representing that McKay was dead. Mr V. R. Meredith, with him Mr N. I. Smith, appeared for the Crown, and Mr W. Noble defended McKay and Mr J. Terry defended Talbot. Douglas Mitford Thurston, baker, who was on holiday at Piha, said that when he arrived at the fire with Sutton there was a definite smell of kerosene. He smelt it 75 yards away. All the bach windows were open. A woman cried out that there was a baby inside. Witness knocked in the backdoor with an axe. Talbot arrived with Fraser 10 minutes after witness. When he asked Talbot who was in there, Talbot replied, "My mate, my mate.” The fire was burning only over the garage. Talbot attempted to enter, but when witness told him not to he didn t enter. The flame witness saw was distinctly a light bluish white flame. Later witness broke the garage door with an axe and assisted to remove a car. There was no fire in the garage then.

Constable Pollard, of Henderson, described his arrival at the scene of the fire about 6.30 a.m. Portion of the embers were still burning. He saw a skull and what appeared to be vertebrae. He interviewed Talbot at another bach and typed Talbot’s explanation of the circumstances of the fire, Talbot read and signed it. Frederick Daniel Miller, laboratory attendant at the Auckland Hospital, described the post-mortem. He also received burned bones which were marked: “Remains of Robert Gordon McKay.”

William George Leland, inquiry' officer at the Post and Telegraph Department, produced the originals of cablegrams referring to the death ffi: McKay and the funeral arrangement?, endorsed, “J. Talbot.” They were addressed to Dudley Westgarth, solicitor, Mrs Gordon McKay, Mrs J. Robertson, John McKay, and McKay, all of Sydney. The first expert witness to be called was Kenneth Massey 'Griffin, Government Analyst, Auckland. He said he received from Detective-Sergeant Trethewey a sample of clay and a longhandled shovel taken from the garage at Avondale on February 22. He also received samples of clay in envelopes, marked with the names of 29 cemeteries, and another containing clay from Shine's grave at Waikumete cemetery. He compared the clay from the garage with the other 29 samples. By examination under ultra-violet light the clay from the garage had the same number of diatoms as the clay from the Waikumete cemetery. In every test he' made the clay from the garage agreed with the clay collected from. Shine's grave. He also examined clay taken from the coffin of Shine and clay taken from two feet and three feet levels in Shine’s grave.

Mr Meredith: What conclusions did you come to? Witness: That the clay from the garage and from the shovel came from the lower soldiers’ portion of the Waikumete cemetery and was exactly identical with that which had come from the grave of Patrick Henry Shine at a depth of about two feet. From Detective-Sergeant Aplin witness received a quantity of soil and ashes, taken from where the bones were recovered on March 6. From those ashes he was able to recover trace of residue of a paraffin distillate such as benzine or kerosene. Witness added that he had been forced to the conclusion that something had been used in the fire to supply extra oxygen. It was not necessarily thermite. It might have been potassium chlorate, for instance. Benzine or kerosene would spread the fire rapidly, but would not to its heat, because vapourisation of the spirit actually took away from the heat of the flames. Kerosene in the garage of the house at Piha, however, might well have accounted for the residue he found in the sacking and wallboard. A member of the staff of the Auckland Hospital, Dr Stephen Empsom Williams, gave evidence of a postmortem examination he had performed on February 8 on the body of Patrick Henry Shine. Answering Mr Terry, witness said that no surgical clip was used in the post-mortem examination. Dr Walter Gilmour, pathologist at the Auckland Hospital, said he received from Dr Williams pieces of burnt bone of various sizes. Some of the bones had been burned white, and that required a very fierce heat indeed. The muscular development of the bones was suggestive of a male, rather than a female. Sutures in the skull definitely pointed to an adult, and it could be said that this individual had reached middle age. From wadding adhering to the palate he concluded that the body had been prepared for burial after death and, therefore, it must have been burned after death. Evidence was given by DetectiveSergeant J. Trethewey covering police investigations. He described the opening of the grave of Patrick HenryShine on March 10, and the finding of the coffin empty. He was under cross-examination by Mr Terry when the Court adjourned.