MYSTERIOUS DEATHS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 November 1942, Page 3

MYSTERIOUS DEATHS

COUPLE FOUND DROWNED WAS IT A SUICIDE PACT? TRAGEDY AT HAUMOANA. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) HASTINGS, November 16. “I suppose the cause of death will always remain a' mystery, for there is no evidence of what' happened that night. The inference is that owing to domestic circumstances they entered into a suicide pact, but I can’t enter a verdict on inferences. It is difficult to think that it could possibly have been an accident, and all assumptions can only be theories. On the evidence all I can find is that death was due to drowning, and there is not sufficient evidence to say how that drowning came about.” Such was the summingup of the district coroner, Mr G. Ebbett, J.P., this morning when he concluded the inquest on the deaths of Kenneth Robert Herd and Joan Beryl Gunn, who were found drowned at Haumoana on November 2. Dr Marshall said that with Dr Foley, Napier, he held a postmortem on the bodies. There was no evidence of external injury, death being due to drowning. Mary Florence Herd, widow of Kenneth Herd, stated that she and her husband were married in 1936. There were three children, the youngest being eight weeks old. Soon after she came home with her baby her husband told her’ that he had fallen in love with a girl named Joan Gunn. Witness rang the girl’s mother and told her the position, with the result that on October 31 the girl came to see witness. Her husband and the girl then frankly admitted that they were in love with each 'other. Witness said that this was no good as her husband had his children to look after. The whole thing was discussed freely and, as the girl was leaving shortly for the Air Force, she asked if she could come and visit witness in the meantime. This was agreed to and they all parted good friends.

The next afternoon, continued witness, the girl came to her house. At this time witness’s husband was on parade with the Home Guard, returning shortly before 6 p.m. On the arrival of another visitor they all spent a pleasant evening together. The evening broke up at 10 o’clock and the girl and witness’s husband left on their bicycles to go to her home. They all parted good friends and both called out good night to witness. She never saw them again.