What happened to Ernest Burr?

​In Ernest Burr’s workshop were a series of wooden toys that he was making for his children.
But there was no sign of Ernest himself at his West Coast home.
Despite investigations and any number of theories, nothing has ever been found of him.
He had separated from his wife Teresa in August 1930 after an argument and she had taken their three children to go and live with her brother.
Then on November 7, Ernest was found to be missing from his home on the West Coast with no real sign of what might have happened.
Police had to be brought from Christchurch to investigate and search parties scoured the area.
No sign of him has ever been found.
Ernest Mansfield Burr was born in 1901 at Kumara, on the West Coast.
He married Teresa Hynes in 1923. Ernest worked as a locomotive trolleyman at the Ogilvies mill in Marsden.
Ernest’s home was tidy, with food in the pantry and one suit missing. In the bedroom above the headboard were little flecks of blood. The bed had been stripped of its bedclothes. It was enough for the police to consider foul play.
However there was not enough to mean much and police could not even tell if it was human blood. A second bed in the house looked like it might have been slept in.
Despite the investigation, police could not say with any certainty if Ernest had been murdered.
There had been odd signs at the house when police arrived, the doors were tightly locked and the windows had been nailed shut which was considered unusual.
He had spent the day in Greymouth with a friend and returned home around midnight telling his friend he was going away the next day.
A neighbour reported hearing odd noises at dawn of the next day. It was four days later that one of the neighbours rang Ernest’s one of brothers (he had eight) to report him missing.
He was an ordinary hard working man with no known enemies.
Ernest was also an experienced bushman - and the area around where he lived was wild and also filled with abandoned mines.
One of the theories was he just up and left after his wife left him and yet another was that he had harmed himself.
But months on - and then years on - nothing more was ever found and if it was murder, no one was taken to account.
He likely died on November 4 or 5, 1930 - and the whereabouts of his grave is unknown.