In recent years police methods of investigation have undergone great changes to meet the needs of the modern world. With the expansion of scientific detection, tremendous advances have been made in every department of law enforcement, with a corresponding emphasis on police recruitment, training, and experience. But like every other country in the world, and despite the high standards of efficiency set by its Police Force, New Zealand has its list of crimes which have defied every effort to solve them. In their day these cases aroused great interest, in large measure because the mysteries were never unravelled to the full satisfaction of the law. Many are still referred to from time to time – a few of the more notable unsolved crimes are dealt with here.
The story of Yorky, a sort of semi-anonymous miner-packer, known to everyone throughout the Roxburgh diggings in Central Otago in 1863, provides one of the earliest recorded unsolved crimes in New Zealand. Yorky, an inoffensive 50-year-old, with a liking for strong liquor but no enemies, was found one day in March brutally battered to death in a lonely gully. His horses and a stranger he had befriended had disappeared, and the hunt was quickly up. The search ranged far and wide around the goldfields, and eventually detectives meeting the Dunstan coach at Dunedin arrested a miner, Johnson, on his way back to Victoria, on the grounds that he seemed to answer the circulated description of the man wanted for the murder of Yorky. The pity of it was that with the arrest of Johnson the search was called off, even though none of the identifying witnesses was prepared to swear that the police had the right man. Strong defence evidence was ignored by the committing Magistrate and Johnson faced his trial. But the jury, without leaving the jury box, brought in an acquittal. By this time the trail of the mysterious stranger was cold. The Otago Provincial Council was so convinced that Johnson had been the victim of a grave error that it gave him an ex gratia grant of £500, and public subscription found another £300 to defray the costs of his trial and enable him to continue his journey to Melbourne. The killer was never brought to justice in spite of a feverishly renewed search after Johnson's acquittal.
In 1889 the sudden death of a wealthy South Canterbury station owner in suspicious circumstances that suggested arsenical poisoning started a thoroughgoing inquiry in the Temuka South district which finally ended without the cause of death being determined to everyone's satisfaction. The deceased was John Hayhurst, aged 62, the owner of two rich estates. He died suddenly on the eve of his departure on a trip to England. As Hayhurst had taken a prominent part in local affairs and in the development of the district, his inexplicable death created wide-spread public interest. A coroner's jury had returned a verdict of death from natural causes in accordance with medical testimony, but the police were not satisfied and the body was exhumed. There was evidence that members of the family had considered Hayhurst's life to be in danger and had urged him to slip away to England quietly without letting anyone know. Before he could do so he died. Conflicting medical testimony with regard to the presence of arsenic in the body complicated the position, and no firm conclusion was ever reached. The cause of death is still officially unknown as far as the police are concerned.
The police were never able to solve the mystery of the throttling in a cloakroom at His Majesty's Theatre in Courtenay Place, Wellington, in December 1908, of John H. McCormack, a Liverpool seaman. The body was discovered soon after the murder, but although several unsavoury characters known to have been in the company of the dead man that evening were carefully questioned, the police were unable to find evidence warranting an arrest. Similarly, when in September 1914 a Mrs Frances Marshall was found in a factory alley in Upper Nelson Street with about 30 stab wounds in all parts of the body, there was a clear history of doubtful associates, many of them with criminal records, but no case could be made out against any individual.
The murder of Horatio Heywood Fechervill Ramsden on Mt. Eden, Auckland, on 22 January 1916 was committed within the hearing of residents of Hillside Crescent, one of the less-populated streets of the suburb. Screams and cries for help were heard and there was a following commotion in bushes lining the crescent. Death was by stabbing, and although a man was seen hurrying away from the locality of the crime within a few minutes of the cries for help, the police were unable to locate him even for questioning. There was evidence of a woman in the case who was alleged to have been in the vicinity, but after interviewing a large number of people and exhausting every possibility, the police were compelled to admit defeat.
The murder by shooting of young Constable James Dorgan outside a drapery store in Stafford Street, Timaru, on 27 August 1921, was the cause of one of the most intensive manhunts in South Canterbury, but the killer was never found. The dead man had been left to watch the premises because it was believed that a burglar or burglars were at work inside, but when police reinforcements arrived they found Dorgan fatally shot. The young policeman had a family of three children, and his death and the circumstances of it resulted in a fine example of public cooperation with the police. The search for the murderer was prosecuted with the greatest diligence. There were at least a dozen suspects who were closely questioned, and 70 sets of fingerprints were compared with prints left by the intruder on the door of the shop. With great reluctance the police were compelled to give up the search.
The case of Francis Edward Jew, a carefree 20-year-old youth-about-town in Auckland, who was battered to death with a fence paling in an empty section at Arch Hill, Grey Lynn, on 16 July 1921, created widespread public interest but it baffled the police completely. There appeared to be no motive or reason for the killing. Robbery was ruled out, and there were no signs of a struggle on the spot. A woman of unstable mentality complicated matters with a fantastic confession, but she withdrew her story when the police were able to demonstrate its complete impracticability. A young companion of the murdered youth, who had been in his company throughout a daylong drinking spree, and who later was sent to prison for another serious offence, was the last person to be seen in Jew's company. The most exhaustive inquiries produced nothing but mere suspicion against this man, and certainly nothing to support a charge. Sixty-six persons gave evidence at the eight-day inquest, and the police interviewed no fewer than 1,500 people. A large crop of rumours, anonymous letters, and family representations were sifted but to no avail. One interesting feature of the search was an offer to provide bloodhounds to track down the killer, but the official attitude then was that the proposition was not one from which any degree of success could be expected.
It was never discovered who beat Margaret Emily Oates, a 32-year-old housewife, to death in her home at Somme Parade, Wanganui, on 27 October 1923. Known as the Aramoho murder, this crime presented a great problem to the police. The victim left her husband in his shop in the city to go home and, when he had closed up, Oates followed her. Entering the house by the kitchen door, he was violently attacked by someone just inside, was struck with a bludgeon, knocked down, kicked, and rendered unconscious. When he came to his senses, there was no sign of his assailant, but in another room he found his wife brutally done to death. A reward of £500 for information about the killing produced no results.
The discovery on 5 October 1928 of the body of an attractive 16-year-old girl among scrub in a disused quarry at Tamaki, a suburb of Auckland, constitutes one of the most baffling problems the New Zealand police have ever had to cope with. Elsie Walker disappeared from the home of her uncle and aunt at Papamoa, near Tauranga, and was not seen again until her body was found five days later on the outskirts of Auckland, 200 miles away. When the body was discovered, it bore no visible signs of violence, though medical examination later showed the existence of a fractured skull. Pathologists, however, could point to no precise cause of death. They agreed that natural causes were emphatically ruled out, and they considered that the blow on the head which must have caused the fracture of the skull could have contributed to death. A significant conclusion reached by the medical experts, and incorporated in the coronial verdict, was that there was no evidence to show whether the blow on the head had been accidental or homicidal. Suicide was out of the question.
Public interest in the inquest, which dragged interminably over several months, was maintained at the highest pitch, mainly as a result of strong magisterial criticism of police efficiency and methods in the investigation, and the continual emergence of intriguing new, but entirely inconclusive, evidence. Public meetings were held to discuss aspects of the case and, when the inquest was concluded, a magisterial commission of inquiry was held into the police handling of the mystery. The Police Department was entirely exonerated of any inefficiency or impropriety. It was shown that the girl's disappearance coincided with that of a motorcar owned by her uncle and aunt with whom she was living. The car was recovered at Papatoetoe, 200 miles away, and 7 miles from where the body of the girl was found. This merely deepened the mystery as the girl was unable to drive a car and had never been known to attempt to do so. William Alfred Bayly, a 28-year-old farmer, and a cousin of the deceased girl, who five years later was to be hanged for the brutal murder of his farmer neighbours at Huntly, Samuel Pender Lakey and his wife, Notable), was one of the principal witnesses at the inquest and was regarded throughout by the police as the mystery man in the case. His movements at the time of the disappearance were exhaustively investigated, and for several months he was questioned and interviewed, but the final verdict was entirely inconclusive – neither the cause nor the circumstances of death have ever been determined.
Few crimes in New Zealand have had the shocking consequences of the shooting of a former Rongotea farmer, Thomas Wright, aged 47, at Himatangi, near Foxton, in May 1931. Whether by accident or design, the killing of one man involved the deaths of three other adults and three children. After the crime the lonely farmhouse was set on fire and all the occupants perished. The mystery has never been solved. When the gutted dwelling was examined after the fire, the charred bodies of four adults and three children were discovered in the ruins. It was also found that Wright had been shot in the back of the head with a shotgun. The victims, in addition to Wright, were Katherine Wright, his wife, aged 40, his three children, John Brown Westlake, aged 62, a well-known and wealthy farmer and Justice of the Peace from Pahiatua, and Samuel Hewitt Thompson, a 23-year-old farmhand. There could be no possibility of suicide with respect to the death of Thomas Wright, and the bodies of the deceased family were so nearly unidentifiable that the police had practically nothing to work on in their investigations. A man who had a long time before been guilty of a similar murder was suspected and questioned, but nothing could be ascertained to link him with the occurrence in any way. The entire Manawatu district was combed by the police in their efforts to solve the crime, and at the inquest the Coroner had a special word of commendation for the manner in which the police had handled the problem. He said, however, that he could not imagine how the answer to the riddle could ever be found.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.