The Great Oakes

In the cool, labyrinthine Nassau house he built above the quiet sea, Sir Harry Oakes was found dead in bed. There were four blows on his head, burns on his body. The Duke of Windsor, Governor of the Bahamas and a friend of Sir Harry's, called in two detectives by plane from Miami.

Sir Harry was a splendid character for a murder mystery. He was born in Sangerville, Maine in 1874. After graduation from Bowdoin College he worked two years in the New York office of a paper manufacturer. Then came news of the Yukon gold strike, and Oakes rushed off to prospect. He found no gold there. In the next 13 years of a persevering search he found none in Alaska, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, West Africa, the Belgian Congo, South Africa, Mexico, California or Nevada.

By 1911 he was in Canada, broke. A conductor kicked him off a train at a junction called Swastika, in northern Ontario. A down-&-out Chinese was sitting there, and when Oakes said he was a gold prospector the Chinese said that if gold was all he wanted there was plenty of it all around the place. Oakes found it, staked out Lake Shore Mine. It became the second-richest gold mine in the world: by 1927 it had paid Oakes $28 million in dividends, and thereafter it yielded him approximately $3 million a year.

In 1923 he married Eunice McIntyre, whom he had met during his Australian prospecting days. They built a modern palace on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, bought show places at Bar Harbor and Palm Beach, a house in London and a shooting box in Sussex. There were five children. Their 18-year-old daughter Nancy eloped last year with Alfred de Marigny, a slick weekend guest. Sir Harry did not approve.

In 1937 Oakes got hopping mad at Canadian taxes, announced that he was moving to Nassau because it would tax him only 5%. There he built a glass & stucco mansion around a saltwater swimming pool. He bought the Bahamas' largest hotel and Nassau's water works, built a private airport, rebuilt the Bahamas Country Club, got himself elected to the Bahamas House of Assembly. For his contributions to St. George's Hospital in London, Oakes was made a baronet.

To Nassau society Sir Harry and his wife gave lavish dinner dances, sometimes for 300 guests. In 1941 a society page reported: "This year even the Oakes purse feels a proportionate pinch, and there is the shadow of war to dim too much display. However, the comings and goings at Westbourne, their Caves Point villa, keep it about as quiet as 42nd St. at high noon."

When death came last week, Sir Harry Oakes was 69 and worth about $200,000,000. His wife and family were summering in Bar Harbor. But Son-in-Law Alfred de Marigny was in Nassau. And it was he the detectives arrested at week's end. The charge was murder.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.