OPEN VERDICT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 August 1939, Page 6

OPEN VERDICT

DEATH OF MR H. R. SELLERS

SECRETARY OF RACING CONFERENCE.

EVIDENCE AT INQUEST.

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day.

An inquest on Hartley Roy Sellers, aged 55, secretary of the New Zealand Racing Conference, was held today. After hearing evidence, the coroner. Mr E. Gilbertson, said: "Evidently he was very worried and we have a friends evidence that he was in financial difficulty and that would lead one to a suspicion that there was the cause of the suicide. But there is no direct evidence of that and in light of the lack of substantial evidence of that fact. I shall bring in an open verdict, that he was found drowned in Wellington Harbour on August 2, there being no evidence to show how the body came to be in the water.’' The principal evidence was that, of Herbert Richard Churton Wild, solicitor, of Wellington, who said that deceased was well known to him. He last saw him alive at 8.30 a.m. on July 3, as he left his home. He informed witness that he was going to meet a man at the Carlton Hotel. Although general inquiries had been made for him, he had not been seen alive since he left the Carlton Hotel at 9.50 a.m. on July 3. For some time past Sellers had been worried about private financial matters and during his last weekend he reached a stage of acute worry, which caused his friends and witness himself great concern. The only other witnesses were Dr P. Lynch, pathologist, and two constables who recovered the body and some clothing from the foreshore of the harbour.