NZHistory, New Zealand history online - crime

The search for Anne Perry

Seminar by Joanne Drayton given at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 5 September 2012, to discuss her recent publication, The search for Anne Perry. The seminar publicity information is provided below. You can also download this audio as a podcast (12 mbs).

‘The Search for Anne Perry’

On 22 June 1954, Juliet Hulme and her friend Pauline Parker, set out for an afternoon in Victoria Park, Christchurch with Pauline’s mother, Honora Parker. For Honora, the walk ended with her murder. Juliet and Pauline were subsequently tried in a sensational court case that was widely covered by the press in New Zealand and overseas.

Having been found guilty, Juliet spent five and a half years in prison. On her release she changed her name, left New Zealand and disappeared from view. Then Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994) changed everything. With interest in the murder reignited, journalists managed to track down Juliet Hulme, who was now living under the name of Anne Perry – and leading a successful life as a bestselling crime fiction writer (she’s sold more than 25 million copies of her books).

While Anne’s identity has been revealed to the world for some years now, she has never spoken to a biographer about her life in-depth. However, in a ground-breaking move, the famously private Perry agreed to be interviewed by Joanne Drayton, allowing her unparalleled access to her friends, relatives, colleagues and archives. This unique access has resulted in the first comprehensive biography of Anne Perry, bringing together the two somewhat incompatible lives of Juliet Hulme the murderer, and Anne Perry the bestselling author in a literary biography with a twist.

JOANNE DRAYTON is an Associate Professor in the Department of Design at UNITEC, Auckland, where she lectures in art history and theory. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime (2008) and biographies of Edith Collier, Rhona Haszard and Frances Hodgkins.

Joanne Drayton and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage

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Hamiora Pere executed for treason

After suffering ‘intense mental agony’, Hamiora Pere was hanged at the Terrace Gaol, Wellington, and buried in an unmarked grave. He is the only New Zealander to have been executed after being convicted of treason.

Hamiora Pere had been tried for treason in the Supreme Court in Wellington on 28 September. He was one of the first men charged under the Disturbed Districts Act, a temporary measure containing special provisions (such as smaller juries) for trying Māori ‘in open rebellion’ who had committed ‘outrages and atrocities’. These trials were a legal landmark: the colonial government was asserting its ‘absolute sovereignty’ over all Māori.

The Attorney-General told the court that Pere had joined Te Kooti’s force at Puketapu, on the eastern fringe of the Urewera Range, in August 1868. He had taken part in the bloody raids on Matawhero and Oweta in November, and in the subsequent battles at Mākaretū and Ngātapa. There was no direct evidence that he had killed anybody and a murder charge against him was withdrawn. The jury took less than 15 minutes to find him guilty of treason, for which the death penalty was mandatory but could be commuted.

Hamiora Pere was one of five Māori men captured after the siege of Ngātapa (many more had been summarily executed) to be convicted of murder and/or treason. The government seems to have decided to execute one of them, ‘by way of example and caution’ to anyone still tempted to take up arms. There was compelling evidence against Wi Tamararo, who was convicted of murder on 27 September but avoided execution by hanging himself two days later. There were extenuating circumstances for the other three, who had been convicted of treason. That left Pere.

The fate of Hamiora Pere cast a long shadow. It was fictionalised in two novels published in 1986. Part of the back-story in Witi Ihimaera’s The matriarch, the trial and execution is the climax of Maurice Shadbolt’s Season of the Jew, in which a youthful Pere appears repeatedly as an informant of the central character, a colonial officer. In its 2004 report on the Turanganui a Kiwa claims, the Waitangi Tribunal recommended that the Attorney-General ‘reassess the record … with a view to considering whether the decision to hang Pere was safe’.

Image: report of execution in Wellington Independent (PapersPast).

Catholic Bishop found not guilty of sedition

James Liston, the assistant bishop of Auckland, was found not guilty of sedition following a high-profile court case. He found himself in the dock following a St Patrick’s Day address in which he allegedly described the Irish Republican ‘martyrs’ of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin as having been ‘murdered by foreign troops’.

Many New Zealanders staunchly loyal to Britain took offence at these comments. The New Zealand Welfare League believed that the speech had engendered ‘bitterness and strife amongst our people’ and encouraged ‘those who efforts are directed to the destruction of the Empire’. But the New Zealand Irish Catholic community, including groups such as the Hibernian Society, was united in its defence of the bishop. Their support was as much for the church as for the Irish nationalist cause. In the end an all-Protestant jury found Liston not guilty of sedition, with the rider that he had committed a ‘grave indiscretion’.

The Irish migrants who had settled in New Zealand had brought with them the controversies that divided their countrymen at home; there had been many cases of sectarian conflict in this country prior to 1916. The fallout from the Easter Rising saw some of New Zealand’s minority Irish Catholic community express sympathy and support for the republican cause in Ireland. In 1917 Dr James Kelly, a former Irish priest and editor of the New Zealand Catholic newspaper, the Tablet, caused outrage with a number of anti-British Empire comments. On one occasion he referred to the deceased Queen Victoria as ‘a certain fat old German woman’. The solicitor-general urged Kelly’s arrest and prosecution for sedition, but the government – perhaps hoping to calm the situation – took no action.

Sectarian tensions intensified after Howard Elliot, an Auckland Baptist minister, founded the Protestant Political Association (PPA) in 1917. The PPA soon claimed to have 200,000 members; it certainly had enough political clout to oust the prominent Catholic politician Joseph Ward (a former prime minister) from his Awarua seat in 1919.

Following Liston’s acquittal, much of the the bitterness surrounding the ‘Irish issue’ in New Zealand gradually dissipated, although its effects lingered. Over the next two decades the Catholic Church seemed to isolate itself from the rest of the country and what it regarded as ‘institutional bigotry’.

Image: James Liston (DNZB)

Controversial ex-mayor killed in Berlin riots

Charles Ewing Mackay, the disgraced former mayor of Whanganui, was shot dead by Berlin police during May Day riots in the German capital. Covering the riots between communist irregulars and the police for a British newspaper, Mackay had apparently been mistaken for a rioter.

Mackay achieved notoriety in May 1920 when as mayor of Whanganui he shot the returned soldier and poet Walter D’Arcy Cresswell. Cresswell alleged that Mackay had made homosexual advances towards him in the mayoral office (homosexual acts by males were criminal offences in New Zealand until 1986). There was speculation that Cresswell had tried to blackmail the (secretly) homosexual mayor. Mackay pleaded guilty to attempted murder and called no defence. He was duly convicted and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour.

The case destroyed Mackay’s marriage, and following his release from prison in 1926 he sought a new life in England. By 1928 he was working in Berlin as a reporter for the Sunday Express and as an English language teacher.

Whanganui did all it could to eradicate Mackay from the public record. His name was sanded from the foundation stone of the Sarjeant Gallery, for which he had been a tireless advocate. Following homosexual law reform in the mid-1980s Mackay’s considerable contribution to Whanganui’s civic history was restored.

Image: Report of Charles Mackay's death, NZ Truth (Papers Past)

Arthur Allan Thomas convicted of Crewe murders for a second time

The murder of Waikato farming couple Jeanette and Harvey Crewe in the winter of 1970 is one of the great ‘whodunnits’ in New Zealand’s criminal history. It also became one of the country’s most protracted legal struggles as Arthur Allan Thomas, the neighbour convicted twice for the murders, fought to clear his name.

Thomas was convicted in 1971 of the double murder of the Crewes the previous year. His appeal was rejected by the Court of Appeal and an inquiry by retired judge Sir George McGregor found no reason to reopen the case. Thomas’s supporters maintained his innocence and began a long quest to have the convictions quashed. In the face of strong public opinion the government referred the case back to the Court of Appeal, which ordered a retrial that began in late March 1973. The defence questioned evidence presented by the police in the first trial, especially with respect to a cartridge case crucial to the original conviction. Forensic scientist Dr Jim Sprott testified that the cartridge case found in the Crewes’ garden did not match the bullets that had killed the couple. Despite this, Thomas was convicted for a second time.

The matter did not end there. A campaign led in part by Pat Booth of the Auckland Star attempted to overturn Thomas’s conviction. The publication in 1978 of Beyond reasonable doubt?, by British author David Yallop, proved decisive. Yallop was scathing in his criticism of the way the police and courts had handled the case. He included an open letter to Prime Minister Robert Muldoon asking for a pardon. Muldoon responded by ordering Auckland QC Robert Adams-Smith to investigate. The barrister’s finding that ‘an injustice may have been done’ led to Thomas’s pardon in December 1979. A 1980 Royal Commission concluded that police had committed ‘an unspeakable outrage’ – they had planted the cartridge case that had been key to the original conviction. Thomas received $950,000 in compensation for the nine years he had spent in prison.

Scene from Beyond reasonable doubt, 1980 (NZ On Screen). See the full feature here:

Further information - NZ crime timeline

This web feature was compiled by Frances Maciver and produced by the NZHistory.net.nz team.

Books

Bronwyn Dalley, ‘Criminal conversations: gender and narratives of child murder in nineteenth-century New Zealand', in Caroline Daley and Deborah Montgomerie (eds), The gendered Kiwi, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1999
Graeme Hunt, Hustlers, rogues and bubble boys: white collar mischief in New Zealand, Reed, Auckland, 2001
Greg Newbold, Crime in New Zealand, Dunmore, Palmerston North,2000
Sherwood Young, Guilty on the gallows, Grantham House, Wellington, 1998

New Zealand crime map

Map of crimes listed in the Crime Timeline. If a crime took place on what is now private property, only a general indication of the location has been provided.

New Zealand crime timeline

This timeline lists some of the most notable crimes (especially homicides and other violent crimes) involving New Zealanders since 1840. We encourage readers to comment on our selections and suggest additional entries in the community contributions area at the end of the page. For background information on crime in New Zealand, see Te Ara. See also a map showing the location of these crimes.

1842 The hanging of Maketū: On 7 March, at Auckland, Maketū Wharetōtara (also known as Wiremu Kīngi Maketū), the son of a Bay of Island chief, Ruhe, became the first person to be executed by hanging in New Zealand. He had been found guilty of murdering two adults and three children at Motuarohia in November 1841. Read more.
1848 The hanging of Joseph Burns: On 17 June, at Devonport, Auckland, Joseph Burns became the first European to be hanged in New Zealand under British law. He had been convicted of murdering a naval officer, his wife and daughter. Read more and see a newspaper report (PapersPast).
1855 James Mackenzie, sheep stealer: On 4 March James Mackenzie was found – in the area that was later to be named the Mackenzie Country – with 1000 sheep stolen from the Levels Station, South Canterbury. Read more.
1861 Murder at the Rutland Stockade: On 1 November Colour-Sergeant James Collins fatally shot Ensign William Alexander in the Rutland Stockade, Whanganui, after the latter had slighted him. Collins’ hanging was the first in New Zealand not to be held in public (public hangings had been abolished by the Execution of Criminals Act 1858). Read more (1966 Encyclopaedia of NZ).
1864 The Jarvey poisoning: On 26 September ship’s captain William Jarvey poisoned his wife, Catherine Jane, in Dunedin. The crime was reported by his daughter Elizabeth. Scientific expert Dr John Macadam succumbed to ‘excessive debility and general exhaustion’ on board ship on his way to give evidence at Jarvey’s second trial. Jarvey was nevertheless convicted and hanged. Read more (1966 Encyclopaedia of NZ).
1866 The Maungatapu murders: On 13 June Philip Levy, Richard Burgess, Thomas Kelly and Joseph Sullivan robbed and murdered John Kempthorne, James Dudley, Felix Mathieu and James de Pontius on the Nelson goldfields (they had killed James Battle the previous day). Three of the gang were hanged, but Sullivan’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after he testified against his accomplices. Read more.
1869 Executed for treason: On 16 November Hamiora Pere was hanged at the Terrace Gaol, Wellington. He is the only New Zealander to have been executed after being convicted of treason. Read more.
1876 The murder of Edwin Packer: On 27 January Edwin Packer was murdered on the farm on which he worked in Epsom, Auckland. His workmate Taurangaka Winiata of Ngāti Mahuta, the prime suspect, escaped to the King Country. Six years later he was captured by Robert Barlow of Ngāti Pikiao, who handed him to the police and picked up a £500 reward. Winiata was executed at Mt Eden jail on 4 August 1882. Read more about the crime; capture and execution (PapersPast).
1880 The murder of Mary Dobie: On 29 December Tuhiata, known as Tuhi, was hanged in Wellington for the murder of the artist Mary Dobie at Te Namu Bay, Ōpunake, on 25 November. Tuhi wrote to the governor days before his execution asking that ‘my bad companions, your children, beer, rum and other spirits die with me’. Read more.
1883 The Whanganui River murder: On 26 February the body of four-year-old Phoebe (‘Flossy’) Veitch was found washed ashore at the mouth of the Whanganui River, which had been in flood. Her mother, Phoebe Veitch, was convicted of Flossy’s murder. Phoebe’s death sentence was commuted when a Jury of Matrons found that she was pregnant. This is the only occasion on which a Jury of Matrons – a medieval innovation for testing women who ‘pleaded their belly’ – was impanelled in New Zealand. Hear podcast and see related newspaper report (PapersPast).
1886 The Hall poisonings: On 19 October Timaru businessman Thomas Hall was convicted of the attempted murder of his wife, Kate, after a suspicious doctor had a sample of the contents of her stomach analysed. Hall, who had poison in his pockets when arrested, was sentenced to life imprisonment. In January 1887 he was also successfully charged with the earlier fatal poisoning of Henry Cain, Kate’s stepfather, and sentenced to death. This murder conviction was overturned on appeal because of an evidential technicality. Read more (DNZB).
1891 Child murder in Christchurch: On 5 January the head of a three-week-old male child was found by children in Christchurch. Anna and Sarah Flanagan, the mother and grandmother of the dead infant, were found guilty of infanticide but their death sentences were commuted. The case was a sensation because of the gruesome circumstances and the hysterical behaviour of the accused in court. Hear podcast and see related newspaper report (PapersPast).
1895 The hanging of Minnie Dean: On 12 August the infamous Winton ‘baby farmer’, Minnie Dean, became the first and only woman to be hanged in New Zealand. Although she had concealed the deaths of several children in her care, it remains unclear whether Dean was actually guilty of murder. Read more.
1905 Lionel Terry’s hate crime: On 24 September Edward Lionel Terry shot Joe Kum Yung, an elderly Chinese man, in Haining Street, central Wellington. Seeking to publicise his campaign to cleanse the empire of alien influences, he soon turned himself in with the murder weapon. Terry was to spend the rest of his life – nearly half a century – in mental hospitals. Read more.
1909 The notorious Amy Bock: On 21 April con artist Amy Bock – in the guise of Percy Redwood – married Agnes Ottaway for her money. At her avidly followed trial, Bock admitted to masquerading as a man, forgery, false pretences and theft. She received a two-year prison sentence. Read more (DNZB).
1912 Violent death during the Waihi Strike: On 12 November, during a bitter industrial dispute in the goldmining town of Waihi, striker Frederick George Evans was savagely beaten by police and strikebreakers. He died the following day. An inquiry found that Constable Gerald Wade had been ‘fully justified in striking deceased down’. To unionists, on the other hand, Evans was an innocent victim of state violence. Read more.
1914 A New Zealand ‘Jack the Ripper’?: On 28 September prostitute Frances Marshall was brutally stabbed in Auckland. This unsolved crime sparked fears that a New Zealand ‘Jack the Ripper’ mimicking London’s Whitechapel murders was on the loose. However, no similar murders or attacks followed. Read more (PapersPast).
1914 The Ruahine axe murderer: On 28 December a young German man, Arthur Rottman, brutally murdered his former employer Joseph McCann, his wife Lucy and their infant son John with an axe. No clear motive emerged before he was hanged on 13 February 1915 at the Terrace Gaol, Wellington. Read more (PapersPast).
1915 The Alice Parkinson case: On 2 March, Napier woman Alice Parkinson killed her boyfriend after he refused to marry her following a painful miscarriage. She then shot herself in the head but survived to stand trial. The jury recommended mercy due to provocation, but the judge sentenced her to life with hard labour. More than 100,000 people signed a petition calling for Parkinson’s release. She was eventually paroled in 1921. Read more (DNZB).
1916 The arrest of Rua Kēnana: On the morning of Sunday 2 April 1916, 57 armed police invaded the remote Tūhoe settlement of Maungapōhatu in the Urewera Ranges. They had come to arrest the prophet and community leader Rua Kēnana. A gunfight broke out and two Māori were killed, including Rua’s son Toko. Read more.
1920 Dennis Gunn’s fingerprints: On 13 March Dennis Gunn murdered Ponsonby postmaster Augustus Edward Braithwaite in order to obtain his set of keys to the post office. This case vindicated the use of fingerprint evidence in New Zealand, as prints left on the gun were matched with some found in the post office. Read more.
1920 Whanganui mayor shoots poet: On 15 May Whanganui mayor Charles Mackay shot and injured the poet Walter D’Arcy Cresswell in the mayoral office. Cresswell alleged that the mayor had made homosexual advances. Mackay was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour. Read more.

1921 The murder of a police constable: On 27 August Constable James Dorgan was found fatally shot outside a Timaru drapery store that he had been watching, believing a robbery was taking place inside. Despite an energetic search by the police and wide public cooperation with the investigation, the murderer was never found. Read more (1966 Encyclopaedia of NZ).
1923 Baby farming in Newlands: Daniel and Martha Cooper of Newlands, near Wellington, were charged with infanticide and performing abortions. Martha was acquitted – her defence counsel claimed she was weak-minded and pressured to assist her husband – but Daniel was ultimately found guilty and executed. Read more.
1928 The Elsie Walker mystery: On 5 October 17-year-old Elsie Walker was found dead with a head injury in a disused quarry in east Auckland. The cause of her death was not confirmed but locals suspected her cousin, William Bayly, who was to be convicted of murdering the Lakey couple in 1933. Read more (1966 Encyclopaedia of NZ)
1929 The Himatangi tragedy: On 6 September a farmhouse in Himatangi was burned to the ground, with four adults and three children perishing inside. One of the victims, 47-year-old farmer Thomas Wright, had been shot in the head prior to the fire, but there was not enough evidence to convict anyone. Read more (Te Ara) and see contemporary newspaper account (PapersPast).
1933 The Bayly case: On 16 October the body of Christobel Lakey was found at Ruawaro, near Huntly; it was later discovered that the body of her husband Samuel had been incinerated. Their neighbour, William Alfred Bayly, was convicted of the murders and hanged on 20 July 1934. This case marked the beginning of more professional and thorough police practices in the gathering of evidence. Read more (DNZB).
1934 Tragedy in the King Country: Hēnare Hona shot a family of four, the Davenports, on their farm near Te Kuiti on 9 October, then went on the run for 11 days. On the 20th, near Morrinsville, he shot Constable Thomas Heeps, who died the next day. Cornered by other policemen, Hona committed suicide. Read more (Te Ara) and see contemporary newspaper account (PapersPast).
1935 The murder of Joan Rattray: On 2 July six-year-old Joan Rose Rattray was found asphyxiated in the mud of Karamu Creek, Hastings. Police ruled her death no accident but never found the murderer. Read more (1966 Encyclopaedia of NZ)
1939 Faking death at Piha: On 12 February Australian Gordon McKay attempted to fake his own death at Piha, west of Auckland. Helped by James Talbot, he placed a corpse in a bach and set this on fire. Both men were found guilty of arson and – a New Zealand first – improper interference with a dead human body. Read more (PapersPast).
1941 Stan Graham’s shooting spree: On 8 October Eric Stanley Graham killed three police officers and fatally wounded a fourth at his farm near Hokitika. He later killed an agricultural instructor and two Home Guardsmen. A massive manhunt ended on 20 October when Graham was shot on sight by Constable James Quirke. Read more.
1942 The German sabotage hoax: On 29 March confidence trickster Sydney Gordon Ross convinced Robert Semple, the Minister of National Service, that members of a German sabotage cell had tried to enlist him to their cause. Ross was put up in the Rotorua Grand Hotel under the pseudonym of ‘Captain Calder’. The con went on for months until suspicions led to an investigation. In February 1943 the embarrassed Security Intelligence Bureau was taken over by the Commissioner of Police. No charges were laid against Ross or his co-conspirator, Charles Remmers. Read more.
1942 The Wairoa murders: On 21 August the elderly sisters Rosamund and Annie Smyth were found beaten to death in their Wairoa home; the crime had occurred about 13 days earlier. There were a number of suspects but no one was ever convicted. Read more (DNZB).
1943 Rail disaster at Hyde: On 4 June 1943 a train derailed near Hyde in Central Otago, killing 21 passengers in what remains New Zealand’s second-worst rail accident. The driver, John Corcoran, who was alleged to have been drinking, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. Some have argued that he was a scapegoat for the wartime failings of a hard-pressed Railways Department. Read more.
1947 The mystery of Marie West: After Marie West went missing from her home on 23 April, it was three months before her body was found just 60 m away in bush on Mt Victoria, Wellington. She had apparently committed suicide, but how her body ended up where it was found remains a mystery. Read more (1966 Encyclopaedia of NZ).
1949 The Moa Creek murder: On 28 September 62-year-old William Peter McIntosh was murdered with an axe in his woolshed in Central Otago. The main suspect was a stranger who had stopped to ask McIntosh’s wife for directions. This man was never identified and the murder remained unsolved. Read more (1966 Encyclopaedia of NZ).
1951 The ‘Secret Service’ murder: On 14 June George Cecil Horry was arrested for the murder of his wife, Mary Eileen Jones, who had disappeared from Titirangi the day after their wedding almost 10 years earlier. Suspicions were raised by Horry’s implausible claim to be a secret service agent whose wife had drowned during the Second World War. Despite the absence of a body or a confession, Horry was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Read more (DNZB).
1952 Capital punishment returns: On 13 March William Giovanni Silveo Fiori, who had murdered Jack Gabolinsky, his wife Marie and their infant son at Minginui in the central North Island, became the first person to be hanged in New Zealand after the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1950 by the new National government. Read more (TrueCrimeLibrary) and Jack Gabolinski service page (Cenotaph).
1954 The Parker-Hulme murder: On 22 June Pauline Parker and her close friend Juliet Hulme murdered Pauline’s mother, Honora, on a walking track in the Cashmere Hills, Christchurch. The key question in this infamous and shocking case was not the girls’ guilt, but their state of mind. It was finally decided that the pair were not insane and had murdered in cold blood. Because of their youth they were released after five years in prison, on condition that they never contact each other again. Read more.
1954 Manslaughter at Dunedin Hospital: On 12 December Senga Florence Whittingham shot John William Saunders in a bathroom at Dunedin Public Hospital. The two house surgeons had been engaged to each other until Senga miscarried. She was charged with manslaughter after claiming she had not wanted to kill Saunders but only frighten him. Read more (1966 Encyclopaedia of NZ)
1957 Walter Bolton hanged: On 18 February Walter Bolton, a 68-year-old Whanganui farmer, became the last person to be executed in New Zealand. After a controversial trial he was convicted of murdering his wife, Beatrice, and hanged at Mount Eden prison. Read more.
1961 The disappearance of Wendy Mayes: On 15 September Wendy Mayes disappeared after meeting John Maltby for an interview about becoming a photographer’s model. Maltby was the main suspect, but while under police surveillance he escaped into the bush. His body was washed ashore at Island Bay on 24 September; Wendy Mayes’ body was never found. Read more (1966 Encyclopaedia of NZ).
1962 The Dunedin parcel-bomb murder: On 5 February Dunedin barrister James Patrick Ward was killed by a bomb delivered to his office in a parcel. Although it was established that the bomb was sent from Dunedin, no firm lead was ever found. Read more (1966 Encyclopaedia of NZ).
1962 George Wilder’s prison breaks: 17 May was the first of three occasions on which convicted burglar George Wilder escaped from prison. This first prison break lasted 65 days, his second, 172 days, and his last, only three hours. Read more.
1963 The Waitākere shootings: On 6 January Victor George Wasmuth shot dead a kennel owner and two police officers who attempted to apprehend him. Wasmuth was found not guilty of the murders by reason of insanity. Read more (Stuff).
1963 The Alicetown shootings: On 3 February Bruce Douglas McPhee shot two police officers who had responded to a domestic incident at his house in Alicetown, Lower Hutt. McPhee received life imprisonment for the murders. This shooting, along with the Waitakere shootings that year, led to the formation of the Armed Offenders Squad in 1964. Memorial pages: Bryan Schultz; James Richardson (NZ Police). Read more (Stuff).
1963 The Bassett Road machine-gun murders: On 4 December, in Remuera, Auckland, John Frederick Gillies and Ronald John Jorgensen shot Kevin James Speight and Frederick George Walker with a .45-calibre Reising sub-machine gun. The men were involved in a gangland dispute over illegal liquor dens. Both Gillies and Jorgensen were sentenced to life imprisonment. Read more.
1969 The Jennifer Beard murder: On 31 December Jennifer Beard, a 25-year-old schoolteacher from Tasmania, was murdered while hitchiking in the South Island. It is believed she was strangled in a sexually motivated attack. Despite a massive police investigation the murder remains unsolved. Read more (Crime.co.nz)
1970 The Crewe murders: On 22 June the disappearance of Waikato farming couple Harvey and Jeanette Crewe was discovered when their starving two-year-old daughter, Rochelle, was found in their home by her grandfather. The couple’s bodies were found three months later in the Waikato River. Arthur Allan Thomas, who farmed nearby, was twice convicted of double murder, but doubts remained about police methods and evidence. After a long campaign he was pardoned nine years later and awarded almost $1 million compensation. It is still not known who was responsible for the Crewe murders. Read more (Te Ara)
1974 The Sutch trial: On 26 September a retired senior public servant, Dr W.B. Sutch, was arrested on charges of sharing state information with Russian diplomat Dimitri Aleksandrovick Razgovorov. Sutch was the first person charged with an offence under the 1951 Official Secrets Act. He was ultimately acquitted. Read more.
1975 The disappearance of Mona Blades: On 31 May Mona Blades disappeared while hitchhiking from Hamilton to her family home in Hastings for her nephew’s first birthday party. She was last seen in an orange Datsun on Matea Road, off the Taupō–Napier highway. Read more.
1979 The Queen Street nightclub murder: On 1 July Brian Ronald McDonald shot 17-year-old Margaret Bell in the head. The bullet was intended for the doorkeeper of a Queen Street nightclub, who had refused him entrance. Read more (NZ Listener).
1979 The ‘Mr Asia’ murder: On 14 October the body of Christopher Martin Johnstone, a leader of the ‘Mr Asia’ drug syndicate, was found in a flooded disused quarry in Lancashire, northern England. His corpse had been hastily mutilated to make identification difficult. His associate Terence John Clark was found to have put out a hit against Johnstone and was convicted for his murder on 15 July 1981. Clark was found guilty after a 123-day trial, one of the longest in English history. Read more.
1984 The Wellington Trades Hall bombing: On 27 March Ernie Abbott, the caretaker at Wellington Trades Hall, was killed instantly when he moved a suitcase bomb. No motive was established and the case remains unsolved. Read more.
1985 The Rainbow Warrior bombing: On 10 July the Greenpeace protest ship, docked in Auckland, was torn apart by two bombs planted by French Secret Service (DGSE) agents. A Portuguese crew member, Fernando Pereira, was killed by the second bomb. Having been arrested and charged with murder, agents Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. Read more.
1987 Teresa Cormack’s murder: On 19 June six-year-old Teresa Cormack’s body was found half-buried under a tree on Whirinaki Beach, Hawke’s Bay, eight days after she had gone missing. It was not until 2002, after new techniques for DNA testing had been developed, that Jules Mikus was arrested for Teresa’s sexual violation and murder. Read more (Crime.co.nz).
1989 The Huka Falls case: In February 1989 the body of cricket umpire Peter Plumley-Walker was found floating below the Huka Falls, with wrists and ankles tied. A teenage dominatrix and her partner were tried three times for murder and finally acquitted. It was alleged that after Plumley-Walker died during a bondage session at their Auckland house, the pair took his body to Taupō and dumped it in the Waikato River. Read more (NZ Herald) and Te Ara.
1990 The Aramoana massacre: On 13 November David Gray killed 13 people, including a police sergeant, following an argument with a neighbour at the tiny Otago beach settlement of Aramoana. This remains New Zealand’s largest mass murder. Gray was shot dead the next day by police officers. Read more.
1991 The Delcelia Witika child abuse case: On 21 March Tania Witika told police that she had arrived home in Māngere to find that her two-year-old daughter, Delcelia, had died. The investigation that followed uncovered one of New Zealand’s most horrendous cases of child abuse. Both Tania and her partner, Eddie Smith, were found guilty of manslaughter and other counts of neglect and ill-treatment and sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment. Read more (Crime.co.nz)
1992 Child abuse at Christchurch Civic Crèche: On 30 March Peter Ellis was one of five staff members arrested for the sexual abuse of children at the Christchurch Civic Crèche. He was the only one to stand trial. His conviction drew attention to the authorities’ handling of the sexual abuse of young people, particularly the reliance on children’s testimony. Read more (Te Ara).
1992 The Masterton massacre: On 26 June Raymond Wahia Ratima killed seven members of his family, including his three young children, at his home in Judds Road, Masterton. He received life imprisonment. Read more (Te Ara).
1992 The Schlaepfer farm murders: On 20 May South Auckland farmer Brian Schlaepfer killed his wife during an argument. He went on to kill his three sons, a daughter-in-law and a grandson before committing suicide. His nine-year-old granddaughter Linda, who hid in a wardrobe, was the only survivor. Read more (Crime.co.nz).
1992 New Zealand's worst white-collar crime?: On 18 December Allan Hawkins, the executive chairman of Equiticorp, was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for stealing $88 million from investors in his company. Read more (Te Ara).
1994 The Thomas murders: On 16 February father and son financial dealers Eugene and Gene Thomas were shot dead in their Wellington office. John Barlow faced three trials for the murders: after the first two ended with hung juries, he was found guilty in October 1995 and sentenced to a minimum of 14 years’ imprisonment without parole. Read more (Te Ara).
1994 The Bain family murders: On 20 June Stephen, Arawa, Robin, Laniet and Margaret Bain were killed in their South Dunedin home. The only surviving family member, David Bain, was found guilty of the murders in 1995. Following intense public speculation and doubts over police conduct during the investigation, Bain was acquitted after a 2009 retrial. Read more (Wikipedia).
1995 The first convicted serial rapist: On 31 July Joe Thompson became New Zealand’s first convicted serial rapist when he pleaded guilty to 129 charges spanning more than a decade – the largest number of guilty pleas ever in a Commonwealth country. Thompson was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Read more (Crime.co.nz).
1996 Serial rapist Malcolm Rewa: On 13 May serial rapist Malcolm Rewa was arrested at his Māngere home. Found guilty of 24 rapes, he was given a 22-year minimum non-parole sentence. His subsequent conviction for the rape (but not the murder) of Susan Burdett earned him an additional 14 years in prison. Read more (Te Ara).
1997 The Raurimu massacre: On 8 February Stephen Anderson, a 25-year-old with a history of mental illness, killed six people, including his father, at a central North Island ski lodge. Found not guilty by reason of insanity, he was committed indefinitely to psychiatric hospital care (but has since been released). Read more (Crime.co.nz).
1998 The Peter Mwai HIV case: On 24 June Peter Mwai was released from prison after serving two-thirds of a seven-year prison sentence for knowingly infecting others with the HIV virus. The first person to be charged in New Zealand with wilfully spreading the HIV virus, Mwai was convicted on a lesser charge of recklessly causing grievous bodily harm. Read more (Crime.co.nz).
1998 The disappearance of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope: Early on New Year’s Day, Ben Smart and Olivia Hope went missing after boarding a stranger’s yacht in the Marlborough Sounds. Picton resident Scott Watson was found guilty of the pair’s murder in 1999 but their bodies have never been found. Read more (Crime.co.nz).
2000 The Lundy murders: On 29 August Christine Lundy and her daughter, Amber, were beaten to death in their Palmerston North home. Their bodies were discovered the next day. Christine’s husband, Mark Lundy, who had been visiting Wellington on business, was arrested for the murders six months later. In April 2002 he was convicted and sentenced to a minimum of 17 years without parole. In 2013 Lundy’s conviction became the last decision of the New Zealand courts to be appealed before the Privy Council in London. Read more (Crime.co.nz).
2000 The Chubb robbery: On 22 December Peter Tyson, a former Chubb employee, and six accomplices robbed a Chubb security van in central Wellington. This was the largest armed robbery in New Zealand’s history – $940,404 was taken. Tyson was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment and his accomplices got between 4 and 9½ years. Read more (NZ Herald).
2001 The RSA murders: On 8 December William Bell killed three people and severely beat another employee while robbing the Mt Wellington-Panmure RSA, from which he had been fired three months earlier. Bell was sentenced to 33 years in prison, the longest term imposed by a New Zealand judge. Read more (Te Ara).
2007 Graeme Burton’s shootings: On 6 January, near Wellington, mountain biker Karl Kuchenbecker was killed and three other people were wounded in random shootings by Graeme Burton (who had been convicted of murder in 1992). This crime sparked widespread criticism of the Corrections Department and the Parole Board: Burton had been released on parole in mid-2006 despite behaving violently in prison. Read more (Te Ara).
2008 Sophie Elliott’s murder: On 9 January, in Dunedin, Sophie Elliott was stabbed 216 times by her ex-boyfriend Clayton Weatherston, who was sentenced to at least 18 years without parole. The case attracted feverish media attention. Public outrage at Weatherston’s claim that he had been provoked led to the abolition of provocation as a partial defence against a charge of murder. Read more (Stuff).
2009 Christchurch’s House of Horror: On 3 September, following a confession by murderer-rapist Jason Somerville, the bodies of his wife Rebecca and Tisha Lowry were found under the Somervilles’ Christchurch house – subsequently dubbed ‘The House of Horror’. It was demolished after surviving several arson attempts. Read more (Te Ara).

The Winton baby farmer - roadside stories

The peaceful town of Winton was the centre of a national scandal in 1895. Local woman Minnie Dean, a 'baby farmer' who looked after infants in her home, was convicted of murdering one of her young charges, and the bodies of several children were found buried in her garden. Dean is the only woman to ever be hanged in New Zealand.

Transcript

Narrator: The quiet farming centre of Winton is linked to one of New Zealand's most infamous women. The Winton Baby Farmer case of 1895 was a major scandal, which horrified and intrigued the nation.

Newspaper voice: The trial of one of the most remarkable criminals that has ever lived in New Zealand was concluded here at 1 o'clock to-day.

Narrator: The woman at the centre of the case was Winton resident Minnie Dean. Born in Scotland, Minnie Dean first appeared in Invercargill in the 1860s under her maiden name Willamina McCulloch. She was a widow with two daughters.

Minnie married an innkeeper, Charles Dean, who turned to farming. However, an infestation of rabbits and the end of the land boom brought about bankruptcy. So Minnie placed discreet advertisements in the local paper:

Minnie Dean: Respectable married woman (comfortable home, country) wants to adopt an infant.

Narrator: It was not long before she had responses. At the time, contraception was not widely available. Unmarried mothers were ostracised, so desperate women were keen to get rid of unwanted babies. Minnie would take in the babies for between 5 and 8 shillings a week or a lump sum of between 10 and 30 pounds. Then she would supposedly adopt the babies out. Up to 9 infants were usually in her care at any time, and given the mortality rates of the time, it was inevitable that some died.

But before long, police began to suspect Minnie of foul play. Minnie was seen boarding a train with a baby and a hatbox, only to disembark later carrying a heavier looking hatbox and no baby. Later, police made the grisly discovery of the bodies of several young children in her garden.

Minnie maintained her innocence and explained the deaths as accidental, but the community was convinced that Minnie had taken the babies and the money, and then killed the babies. There were rumours that up to 20 children could have died at her hands. There was a macabre fascination with the court case. Souvenir baby-dolls stuffed inside miniature hatboxes were even sold outside the courthouse.

Minnie Dean was only tried for one murder, but the jury took just half an hour to find her guilty. They sentenced her to death by hanging.

Newspaper voice: Minnie Dean, the now notorious baby-farmer, being found guilty and sentenced to death for the murder of Dorothy Edith Carter, an infant which she received for adoption on the 2nd of last month. The announcement of the verdict was received by the prisoner with remarkable composure, and she was asked the usual question as to whether she had anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon her.

Minnie Dean: No, I have only to thank Detective McGrath for the kindness I have received from him.

Newspaper voice: Then his Honor assumed the black cap and pronounced-the fatal words which sealed the doom of the murderess whose systematic and heartless cruelty had sent so many helpless and innocent little victims to their last sleep.

Narrator: Dean was hanged at Invercargill, the first and only woman in New Zealand to be hanged.

Newspaper voice: She walked erect and dignified to the foot of the broad sloping steps up which she had to ascend to the scaffold. The sheriff then asked her if she had anything to say.

Minnie Dean: I have nothing to say, except that I am innocent. Thank you.

Narrator: Minnie Dean was buried in an unmarked grave in Winton cemetery.

Songwriter Helen Henderson was brought up in Invercargill and remembers that naughty children would be warned by their parents to be careful, or else they would be sent to Minnie Dean’s farm and never heard of again.

Manatū Taonga - Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2011. Part of the Roadside Stories series

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Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme

Pauline Parker (16) and Juliet Hulme (15) who were convicted of murdering Pauline's mother in 1954. The young age of girls meant they could not be sentenced to death.