A mystery that reaches from Australia to Atherton

Negara has a photo snapped on the Peninsula in the 1930s she hopes will provide important information toward solving the puzzling death of the 5-year-old gelding, who was the odds-on favorite in the majority of his 51 lifetime starts from 1929 to 1932, 37 of which he won. His victories included the prestigious Melbourne Cup. Phar Lap’s last race was in the $50,000 (around $810,000 today) Agua Caliente Handicap, winning in record time and hugging the outside rail for the entire race.

Phar Lap, born in New Zealand, has “never died in the public imagination,” Negara said. The horse is so revered “down under” that his skeleton, hide and heart, which was much larger than normal, have been preserved. Other parts of his body are buried somewhere on the Peninsula. Phar Lap’s headstone was discovered in the backyard of an Atherton home in the 1970s and now sits in the Phar Lap memorial garden in Australia.

Phar Lap, which means lightning in Thai, was stabled at the Atherton ranch of Suzanne Perry and her husband, Edward, when he died under strange circumstances on April 5, 1932. According to Negara, in 2006, Phar Lap’s hide was put under a powerful microscope that, for the first time, “showed a massive dose of arsenic.” In 2008, an even more accurate study verified the earlier results.

The photograph Negara is seeking information about shows the Perrys standing next to a car driven by a chauffeur.

“I am hoping that your article will find readers who know the identity of the chauffeur,” said Negara, who also wants to interview relatives of anyone who worked for the Perrys, say maids, cooks or butlers.

The early theories surrounding the death included grazing on pastures near trees that had been sprayed with an insecticide that contained arsenic. Another involved an accidental overdose of horse tonic. Negara said these ideas were put forward before the results of the tests on the hide were conducted.

“The unequivocal truth is that Phar Lap died from one single large dose of administered arsenic,” she told “The Rear View Mirror.”

The journalist said her investigation will show who poisoned the horse and why. “I am hoping that my results will be so conclusive that it will put to rest once and for all the mysterious circumstances of Phar Lap’s death.”

Theories about the culprit are a roundup of the usual suspects, mainly gamblers, but respected Peninsula writer Marion Softky, who died in 2011 at 84, wrote an extensive article on Phar Lap for the Almanac in 2004 in which she concluded that there really was no big mystery.

“The horse didn’t die of arsenic, or the mob, the Mafia,” she wrote. “Death was from natural causes, probably bacterial.” She also reported this unusual angle: There was so much concern about safety that Phar Lap’s feed was brought all the way from Australia and it became moldy during the long voyage.

Post mortem tests ruled that death was due to inflammation of the intestines. Those tests, however, were conducted long before the modern ones Negara is banking on. So the race to let Phar Lap rest in peace — or pieces — goes on.

The Rear View Mirror by history columnist Jim Clifford appears in the Daily Journal every other Monday. Objects in The Mirror are closer than they appear.