The Mount Cook Murder

Unusual circumstances surrounded the violent death at the Hermitage, Mt. Cook, of William Edward Wogan, a barman-porter, who was found shot one November evening in 1931 in his bedroom with a discharged rifle and a spent shell a few feet away. Months later a chef, Whalley, from the hotel was arrested and tried, but he was acquitted, and no one was ever able to say with certainty how the tragedy occurred. Suicide was ruled out on account of the position of the wound and the absence of burning or singeing, and the accidental discharge of the weapon was similarly discounted. It was many months afterwards, in July of the following year, that the police arrested Whalley at Hokitika and put him upon his trial in Timaru. The evidence against him was all circumstantial and the jury refused to accept it, returning a verdict of not guilty. A special circumstance in the case was that Wogan was known to have a horror of firearms and always refused to handle them. But Wogan was undoubtedly shot with the weapon found on the floor. The question the police were unable to answer was how was the shooting done.

The Riccarton Hotel Murder

A particularly cold-blooded murder at the Racecourse Hotel, Riccarton, Christchurch, created a sensation in November 1933, but despite the existence of several very much compromised suspects, no one was ever brought to book for the crime. The 41-year-old licensee of the hotel, Donald Fraser, was killed in the middle of the night in his bedroom, where his wife was asleep, by two blasts from a double-barrelled shotgun. The movements and circumstances of everyone in the house at the time, and of guests at a party held in the hotel earlier in the evening, were checked and rechecked, but without the disclosure of any evidence upon which a definite charge could be laid. Suspicions were early aroused, and although these deepened with the progress of the inquiry, there was never enough evidence to convince a jury. The murder became a public sensation and the police hunt was followed with avid interest. Rewards were offered for information, but the right sort of information was not forthcoming. One thing the police established was that the shotgun shells used in the killing had been purchased on the West Coast, but it could not be discovered by whom. At the conclusion of a lengthy hearing, the Coroner returned a verdict of “murder by a person or persons unknown”, but he had something to say on the reliability of the evidence tendered to him. Some of the witnesses had undoubtedly been truthful, he said, but his concluding remark was: “I leave to public estimation the rest of the evidence”.

Murder of E. S. Nelson

On 9 June 1936 Ernest Severin Nelson, of Waihou Valley, Northland, a wealthy 55-year-old farmer married to an 18-year-old Maori girl, was found shot dead at his roadside gate. The whole Northland district was scoured by the police and a £250 reward was offered, with immunity from prosecution for anyone not the murderer, but the mystery was never solved. Fifty persons made statements to the police, but in the vast file of the case there was no evidence on which the police could prosecute. The young wife of the victim, an unwilling bride from the outset, was in love with a cousin of her own age and had scarcely lived with her husband, despite strong parental disapproval. The police inquiries produced some compromising information concerning certain people who were considered to be suspects, but little of it had any direct bearing on the shooting of Nelson. The case remains another unsolved crime.

Murder of J. R. Rattray

When little Joan Rose Rattray, six years old, was murdered at Karamu Creek, Hastings, on the afternoon of 2 July 1935 on her way home from school, the entire district was up in arms, but the most painstaking and thorough efforts of a large concentration of police failed to produce the culprit. There was no question of accidental death. The body was found in the creek on the following day, and the medical testimony was very definite that death had resulted from the tiny head being held firmly in the mud of the creek until the child was asphyxiated. There was no evidence of an outrage on the child, and no motive or meaning for the crime was ever established. The killer had killed and gone on his way, and to this day he has never been found.

Poverty Bay Murder, 1942

A savagely inexplicable murder in the Wairoa district of Poverty Bay in August 1942 presented the police with an exasperating problem. Two Salvation Army officers, elderly sisters, Rosamund Jane Smyth and Annie Smyth, aged 74 and 63 respectively, were found in the barracks-cum-dwelling in which they lived alone, brutally beaten to death. The weapons used were a household poker and an axe. They were widely known identities throughout the district, and by their uncompromisingly strict attitude towards human failing and peccadillo, they had made themselves very unpopular with certain sections in the community. Rosamund, the elder sister, in particular acted as a self-appointed guardian and critic of local morals. She was very strong physically for her age and was reputed to be afraid of no one. There was no suggestion of a robbery motive, but there was reason to believe that someone had disposed of the sisters in fear of disclosures they may have been able to make. With this in view, the police carefully questioned a number of local people who were known to be in Rosamund's book of judgment, but with no result. A Japanese angle was introduced, largely by means of rumour, because Rosamund Smyth was believed to be strongly sympathetic to the Japanese at that time. Many people were questioned who had had quarrels or disagreements with the two sisters, and the movements of a woman who had been convicted previously of a similar crime in Napier were thoroughly investigated. The semi-nakedness of both victims gave rise to stories of a rape motive, but the police were convinced, from the manner in which the bodies had been exposed, that this was merely an attempt to disguise the sex of the murderer, or perhaps to add a gratuitous insult to the persons of the two sisters. The case had many possibilities but infinitely more difficulties, and despite the greatest possible efforts by the police, with unusually well-organised public cooperation, the mystery has never been unravelled.

Disappearance of Jean Marie Martin

On 8 April 1945 Jean Marie Martin, a dark, attractive, 23-year-old girl, a laboratory technician and part-time student, went for a walk in Wilton's Bush, Wadestown, Wellington. She was accompanied by a male student friend who later stated that they had parted on a path in the bush. When her disappearance was reported, the police organised a full-scale search that began in the Wilton's Bush area and gradually extended to Makara Beach and Ohariu Valley. Despite every effort, no trace of Jean Martin was ever found.

Mystery of Marie West

A curious and baffling mystery was the case of Marie Emily West, who disappeared from her home at 13 McIntyre Avenue, Wellington, on 7 July 1947. Her body was found on the scrub-covered slopes of Mt. Victoria three months later. She was a young woman in her teens, and the question was then, as it is today, how did she die, and how was her body conveyed to where it was found and concealed. The complexities of the affair may be measured from the fact that officially it has never been conclusively determined whether it was a matter of murder or suicide, but all the indications point to suicide. The police investigations were so exhaustive that the file of the case in the Headquarters Office in Wellington stands about 30 in. high. Abundant evidence was disclosed to support the theory of suicide, while on the other hand the official opinion was that there was not “one jot or tittle” of testimony to suggest murder. The suicide conclusion was based on the considered opinions of two noted pathologists. But if suicide it was, how did the body get to Mt. Victoria? That was one of the perplexing problems. A Mr X came very much into the calculations of both police and public, but the police were finally satisfied that there was not an iota of evidence to connect him with the disappearance of the girl.

The Moa Creek Murder

On 28 September 1949 at Moa Creek, Central Otago, the body of a man named William Peter McIntosh, aged 62 years, was found in the wool shed on his property. He was a married man with a grown-up family. According to the evidence given by his wife at the inquest, McIntosh had left the house in the early afternoon of 28 September to work on the farm. Before leaving he told her that he would return in time to listen-in to a radio broadcast of a rugby match beginning at 3 o'clock. He did not return, however, and at about 7 p.m. that evening Mrs McIntosh telephoned a neighbour and told her that her husband was missing. A search was immediately organised and at about 8 p.m. the party found McIntosh's body in his wool shed. It was obvious that he had been murdered as his head had been battered with some implement, presumably an axe belonging to the deceased. The axe, which was not found until some time later, had blood stains on it but they were so faint that it could not be established whether or not the blood was human. Mrs McIntosh told the police that some time after her husband left the house on the afternoon of the murder she heard the gate click and saw a stranger coming to the back door. He asked to be directed to the house of a person who lived in the neighbourhood. But he never appeared there. Intensive investigations by the police disclosed that no stranger had been seen in the locality on the afternoon of the murder nor did the person whom the stranger was seeking have any idea who it could be. The murdered man had no known enemies in the district.

Despite intensive inquiries and the offer by Government of a reward of £500 for information that might lead to the apprehension of the alleged murderer, the police were unable to discover who committed the murder.

The Disappearance of Wendy Mayes

On Friday, 15 September 1961, Wendy Catherine Mayes, an attractive 16-year-old girl, answered an advertisement in a Wellington newspaper for a photographer's model, and an interview was arranged. At 7.30 a.m. the following Monday morning she left home for work in the city. This was the last time her parents saw her. At 5 p.m. on Monday she met in a city coffee bar a man who was later identified as John Frederick Maltby, aged 30. After a brief interview she and Maltby drove off in his car. When their daughter did not return home on Monday night, her parents reported her disappearance to the police. Investigations led to Maltby, but there was insufficient evidence to hold him. Arrangements were then made to search the scrub behind Maltby's house and a 24-hour watch was set. Early in the morning of Thursday, 21 September, Maltby was seen to run into the scrub and, although the area was searched, no sign of the man was found. The police extended the scope of the search and large patrols combed the beaches and hills in the Wellington and Hutt Valley districts. On Sunday, 24 September, two fishermen found Maltby's body, which had been washed ashore at Island Bay. The fate of Wendy Mayes remains a mystery.

The Ward Parcel-bomb Murder, 1962

At 9 a.m. on 5 February 1962 James Patrick Ward a well-known Dunedin barrister, received a parcel in his office. A few minutes later the building was shaken by an explosion. Ward was rushed to the Dominican Tertiary Hospital, where he died six hours later. Although the police, in the course of their investigations, established the method by which death was inflicted, they were unable to discover any motive for the crime or to gather sufficient evidence to justify an arrest. From an examination of the debris in Ward's office, the police found that the parcel had been posted in Dunedin during the preceding weekend. It contained a roughly made wooden box in which were two torch batteries, a pull-through switch, an electric detonator, a quantity of explosive, electrical wiring, and pieces of tin. Apparently the opening of the parcel completed an electrical circuit which detonated the explosive.

An incident similar to the Ward case occurred in 1937 when a bomb was thrown at R. A. Singer, an Auckland lawyer. The Singer case has never been solved.

by Ronald Jones, Journalist and Script Writer, New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, Wellington.