Police are appealing for information as they continue to investigate the suspicious death of a Hunter Valley man just over a year ago.
\nAbout 8pm on Saturday 1 December 2018, emergency services were called to a rural property in
\nDenman, following reports of a concern for welfare.
\nOn arrival, officers from Hunter Valley Police District found a 71-year-old man had died. He was later formally identified as Douglas Thrift.
\nA post-mortem examination revealed Mr Thrift had a fatal concentration of the highly-toxic strychnine in his system. Strychnine is a restricted substance.
\nDetectives from Hunter Valley Police District established Strike Force Farview to investigate the circumstances surrounding his death.
\nHunter Valley Police District Crime Manager, Detective Inspector Matthew Zimmer, said detectives would leave no stone unturned in this investigation.
\n\u201cFrom all accounts, Douglas Thrift was a loving father, grandfather and husband, who really enjoyed playing sports \u2013 especially rugby union, cricket and golf \u2013 and was happiest working on his farm,\u201d Det Insp Zimmer said.
\n\u201cStrike Force Farview investigators are trying to piece together how a fatal amount of this substance came to be in his system.
\n\u201cOur detectives are keen to speak with those who saw or spoke with Mr Thrift in the days leading up to his death in early December 2018.
\n\u201cWe’re also interested in speaking to any farmers, or other members of the public, who have found strychnine missing from their properties.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Police are appealing for information as they continue to investigate the suspicious death of a Hunter Valley man just over a year ago. About 8pm on Saturday 1 December 2018, emergency services were called to a rural property in Denman, following reports of a concern for welfare. On arrival, officers from Hunter Valley Police District … Continue reading “Strike Force Farview investigators appeal over 2018 death of Hunter Valley man”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newcastle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}