Body found under Mt Eden home: remains identified as property owner David Hart

The remains found buried in concrete in a house in central Auckland have been identified as the owner of the property, who has been missing for a decade.

The bones found at the site belong to David Stanley Hart, police say.

“The police are treating Mr. Hart’s death as a suspect, however the cause of his death and how he was buried under his house is still unclear,” police said today.

“The investigation has identified a number of individuals both in New Zealand and abroad who have resided at the address and spoken to.

“The police are seeking further assistance from anyone who has interacted or had contact with Mr. Hart from March 2004 onwards or had any interaction at the address of 3 Marlborough St, Mt Eden or with people who lived there until 2016 when it stopped operating as home shipping. “

Acting Detective Sergeant Major Mark Franich says police are pleased to be able to move this case forward to a point where the remains have been identified.

“It is a credit to the investigation team and to ESR that we have been able to reach the stage where an identification of Mr. Hart was made, as it has been a long, complex and exhaustive process.”

The missing man was a ‘recluse’

Neighbors previously told the Herald that Hart was a “recluse” who abruptly disappeared at least a decade ago.

Murray Goldings, 45, has lived on Marlborough St his entire life and said Hart had lived at the property for as long as he could remember and used to run a pension for senior citizens.

In 2017, 3 Marlborough St was sold to a new owner.

Other street residents remembered Hart as well, but told the Herald they hadn’t seen him in years.

“In a way we knew him. He was a bit of a recluse. I hadn’t seen him in a long time,” Goldings said.

“He used to always have a little garage in the front that would come down. He was always in there making small adjustments. He was over 70 years old.”

Before the 2017 sale, the house had continued as a kind of pension, but neighbors simply stopped seeing Hart there.

“Yeah, there were all kinds of people coming and going,” Goldings said.

Goldings and another resident on the street said they understood that the bank eventually seized the home and resold it after failing to contact Hart.

“That’s what we hear [the bank took the house]. Because it came up for a mortgage sale, “Goldings said.

“We assume it was lost and had money in the bank and they took it out until it was over and they couldn’t find it.

“There were rumors that he went to Australia and there was another rumor that he had dementia and had gone to a house somewhere. I think it would be more than 10 years ago.

“It disappeared, nobody knew [why] and there were all these rumors. “

In November 2018, the Gray District Council sought Hart in connection with property he owned in Blackball.

A notice in the local newspaper said that unless Hart claimed the land at 24 Stafford St and paid all outstanding fees within a month, the council would seek a court order declaring it to be abandoned and authorize the sale or lease.

The notice said Hart’s whereabouts were “unknown.”

Property records show that 24 Stafford St is still owned by Hart.

Other residents of Mt Eden remembered Hart as “always friendly.”

“If you were doing something in your garden, he would offer you advice, whether at home or in the garden.

“He always had something to say. You’d take it with a grain of salt.”

The neighbor didn’t remember when he last saw Hart, but said it was “quite a long time ago.”

“He was here for a minute and then you realize, ‘Wait, I haven’t seen Dave in a while, he’s gone.’

They described the discovery of the remains as “a sadness.”

Others said Hart had been a miner in the past.

They learned that he had built the basement of the property, but that it was not authorized by the council.

When the new developer bought it, they were apparently working to fix the basement and could have found the body at the time, a neighbor said.

After learning that the body had been specifically found, another neighbor said: “Presumably it is someone’s father or brother and it is good to see that he is receiving respect and hopefully some kind of result or justice.

“The big problem for us is that the police find out what happened and someone or a family member can bury him, I guess it’s him.”

“We know that before the house was sold, the city council and the bank put a lot of energy into locating it, even hiring a private investigator.”