Mystery remains over man’s death

A MAN who went missing from his Launceston home in 1971 may have been murdered for money, taken his own life or simply sat down under a tree and died, a coroner has found.

Coroner Simon Cooper said the evidence presented into the death of Winfred Pearson Procter, whose remains were found by a farmer at Dilston in 2016, did not allow him to come to a concrete conclusion.

“Possibilities include that he was murdered for the large amount of cash that was his practice to carry on his person, or that he committed suicide as a result of depression associated with the end of his marriage — or that he simply sat down under a tree to rest and died of natural causes,” Coroner Cooper said.

“The evidence is that Mr Procter routinely carried around with him a very large sum of money (between $12,000 and $20,000) in a sugar bag.

It seems that the fact that he carried such a large sum of money was quite well known.”

The property on which Mr Proctor’s remains were found was 12km from his home in Newnham.

His family told investigators he would often walk long distances and did not drive.

Mr Procter was born on January 2, 1918, in Lancashire, England. He arrived in Tasmania about 1955 and first worked as a weaver before getting a job with the then Postmaster-General’s Department.

He was still employed by the Postmaster-General’s Department at the time he disappeared in January 1971.

Mr Proctor’s son told the inquest his father had been upset after he separated from his wife at the time of his disappearance. “He said he was crying a lot. This may suggest he was suffering from what would now be described as depression. However, there is no evidence he received any formal diagnosis or treatment for any mental health problems,” Mr Cooper said in his findings.

When he reported Mr Procter missing, his son Derek told police he thought that his father had been murdered.

“He described in his affidavit breaking into his father’s house, as he was concerned about his whereabouts, and seeing in the kitchen a halfeaten meal on the table with a cup and saucer on the opposite side of the table to the halfeaten meal,” Mr Cooper said.

“This indicated another person had been in the house.”

The owner of the Dilston property, “Burnside”, found human bones in 2016. With the bones was a watch, a five-cent coin (circa 1968) and a denture with a gold filling.

“All of the evidence satisfies me to the requisite legal standard that the remains located at the Dilston site were those of Mr Procter. The evidence does not allow a conclusion in relation to the cause of his death,” Mr Cooper said.