Arrest blows secret wife out of water

Harry Bentley Gordon could not keep his new Auckland wife a secret from his birth family once he was charged with fraud and locked in a Sydney jail.

Margaret Gordon, his Tauranga sister-in-law, said yesterday that she and husband Michael were surprised at the unfolding details of Harry Gordon's alleged life of deception from media reports last week.

"It's stunning, isn't it. We last saw him about six years ago," Mrs Gordon said of the 56-year-old whom Australian police accuse of faking his own death five years ago.

"We thought it might have been suicide, but they [a coroner] said it looked like he had fallen out of the boat."

Two months ago, using the name Robert Motzel, he married Auckland social worker Kristine Newsome. Mrs Gordon, when asked yesterday if she had been in contact with Kristine Newsome, said: "Only the day after he was put there [in jail]. We didn't know her."

Harry Gordon was arrested last Monday trying to enter Australia under that name.

An Australian coroner ruled in 2001 that he had died the previous year in a boating accident.

AMP Insurance refused to pay out on a A$3.5 million ($3.73 million) life insurance policy he took out in 2000, because his body was never found.

His Australian wife, Sheila, is understood to be co-operating with police.

Kristine Newsome, 57, declined to be interviewed yesterday. "No. Sorry. Not talking to reporters," she said at her home in West Harbour, where Gordon lived briefly.