CRIMES, UNSOLVED

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 Murder of Yorky

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.

Death of John Hayhurst

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.

Murder of J. H. McCormack

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.

Murder of H. H. F. Ramsden

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.

Murder of Police Constable

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.

Case of F. E. Jew

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.

Murder of M. E. Oates

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 Elsie Walker Mystery

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.

Foxton Tragedy, 1931

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.