Beyond Reasonable Doubt?, page 37
Several young men testified to moving various metal objects from the Thomas farm in 1965. One actually referred to ‘the axle’ but he was unsure what sort of axle it was they had moved. Other vintage car enthusiasts testified to searching over the Thomas farm at the end of February or the beginning of March 1970 and declared that if they had seen an axle like the one the police brought up from the bottom of the Waikato they would have grabbed it.
The name of Mickey Eyre shot back into prominence with the testimony of Frederick Brooks. He had been working in the Pukekawa area in 1969 and 1970. In view of Mrs Eyre’s testimony that her son Mickey was not allowed out alone at night because of his physical handicaps, the evidence of Mr Brooks was particularly interesting. He swore on oath that at about ten o’clock on an October night in 1969 he had seen Mickey on the road, alone, with a rifle.
His final evidence should have been of particular interest to Dr Nelson, the expert who had opined that pattern 8.22 bullets would by 1970 be a collector’s item. Mr Brooks had bought two packets of .22 bullets from a store in Te Kuiti in either May or June 1970. By the time the number 8 had any significance he had used one packet; he had broken open all of his remaining bullets, purchased in mid-1970, and they all had the figure 8 on them. Significantly the Crown did not cross-examine Mr Brooks about either Mickey Eyre, pattern 8 bullets, or anything.
Quite evidently Mrs Eyre did not keep a very good check on her son. The next two witnesses, Mr and Mrs Hooker, testified about finding him on their porch one evening with a rifle in his hand. That had been about 1959. Ten years later Mr Brooks sighted Eyre, rifle in his hand, out alone at night.
The jury had heard so many policemen talk about the non-appearance and non-existence of Graham Hewson that at this stage of the proceedings they might well have been coming to the conclusion that Hewson was a figment of the defence’s imagination. Before he took his place in the witness box the Court heard evidence from Patrick Vesey. Related by marriage to Vivien Thomas, Vesey had provided a home for the young woman when she had arrived in New Zealand and had subsequently introduced her to Arthur. For nearly two years he had battled and worked for this second trial. Reminiscent of a latter-day Sancho Panza in stature, his role in the campaign for Thomas had been that of Don Quixote, tilting at legal and political windmills of very real substance. He had organized petitions, written articles, held press conferences, dug up tips, taken part in burying cartridge cases on the Crewe property for corrosion comparison tests. He had also done his best to give the marriage of Arthur and Vivien Thomas some continuing semblance of reality. Certain Court officials had throughout the trial been winding the jury up, telling them that they were being heavily protected by the police in case the retrial committee attempted to get at them; there was even talk that attempts might be made on the jurors’ lives. One jury member had been stopped in the toilet of the Supreme Court and told: ‘Don’t forget Arthur Thomas is innocent.’ He complained to the registrar and was told: ‘Don’t worry, that’s the retrial committee.’ I know exactly who the man was; he was nothing to do with the retrial committee but it serves no purpose telling that second jury that now. At the time of the incident it would have seemed clear evidence to those eleven jurors that attempts were indeed being made to get at them. In fact no attempt by any member of the retrial committee was ever contemplated, let alone made.
When Pat Vesey strode to the witness box, the word went around the jury: ‘That’s one of the Thomas clan.’ It was like something out of a Western movie.
Pat Vesey testified about the proliferation of fired cartridge cases around the Thomas property, many of them fired by his sons. The premise being that fired cases from the Thomas rifle were easily available to anyone wanting to drop one into a Crewe flowerbed. He also told the Court of his part in burying test cases. Perhaps the last part of his testimony was the most pertinent. It certainly should have been to Dr Nelson who had refused to accept Ryan’s suggestion that there might still be quite a few pattern 8 bullets around the country. The retrial committee, in an attempt to demonstrate just how many there were, had placed several small advertisements in newspapers. In a very short while they had been sent over 5,000. Pat Vesey was followed into the witness box by Graham Hewson.
In examination-in-chief he gave details of his friendship with Harvey and Jeannette Crewe and of how on hearing of their disappearance he had driven from Woodville to Pukekawa to render what help he could. He told the Court of how he was subsequently appointed temporary manager until a more permanent manager could be found. Upon the discovery of Jeannette’s body, having previously returned to Woodville to look after his own business affairs, he had once again driven to Pukekawa, this time with Harvey’s mother. Details of how he had been with the police when they collected the sieve from Tuakau and his participation in the subsequent sieve-search followed, including his finding of a full round of ammunition. As to being a stealer of Harvey’s dogs, he told the Court of his conversations with Mrs Crewe, who urged him to take them; and of his conversations with the estate solicitors and Demler and Hutton who were all quite happy for the dogs to be shipped down to Woodville.
Under cross-examination Morris taxed him about the errors he had made at the referral at Wellington. There was much discussion about the quality of Hewson’s memory, of exactly what beds had been sieved in the Crewe gardens in mid-August. Hewson remained adamant. The bed that Charles found a cartridge case in had been sieve-searched by Hewson and the police officers in August. Morris finished with a series of questions that implied Hewson’s evidence was based on what Kevin Ryan had told him to say. On re-examination Ryan demolished that particular innuendo by establishing that since Hewson had arrived in Auckland to give evidence he had spent less than five minutes with defence counsel.
George McGuire told the jury of his conversation with the jeweller Eggleton in December 1970 and of Eggleton declaring he had never seen either Arthur or Vivien Thomas. Strangely there was no cross-examination from the Crown. There is a droll quality about the last few questions Ryan asked this particular witness.
Ryan: What is the size of your wife?
McGuire: She is about five foot three or four I suppose. She is not the vicious type if that’s what you are talking about.
Ryan: Mr Eggleton said she was.
McGuire: I read about that in the paper.
Ryan: You are married to her, is she a vicious woman?
McGuire: Never found her that way.
Bruce Roddick took the stand. It was predictable from the treatment he had received at Wellington and earlier evidence in the trial that the Crown would attack him as they had attacked Graham Hewson.
In answer to questions from Kevin Ryan he told the Court of the mystery woman he had seen on the Friday morning. For the first time in front of a jury he was asked about Vivien Thomas. He said he knew her and that she had not been the woman. The last piece of information that Ryan elicited from the young farmer concerned Mickey Eyre:
Roddick: Yes, when I was working for Mr Allen out at Glen Murray on his sheep farm Mickey was employed to crutch the lambs, and one lamb wouldn’t sit still for him so he just grabbed it around the throat and throttled it.
He was cross-examined by Baragwanath who initially attempted to conjure up a picture of Roddick and his employer racing around the paddock at breakneck speed to get the job of feeding-out completed. Such an image would of course reduce the amount of attention that Roddick would have paid to the woman he had seen. Such questions, of course, were not put by the Crown during the first trial, when Roddick was their witness.
The curious pre-trial episode of Detective Johnston and the Roddick family on the Chitty farm was also a feature of this cross-examination. Johnston’s calculations of the distance between Roddick and the woman were given by Baragwanath. Roddick observed, very pertinently: ‘I wasn’t there when he measured it.’ The Crown then asked one of its former key witnesses:
Baragwanath: Have you on occasion had difficulty in remembering matters over a relatively short time?
Roddick: No.
Baragwanath: Have you found it necessary for Mr Chitty to repeat instructions he has given you about your work?
Roddick: No.
Baragwanath: Do you think it likely or not you were confused about the day on which it was you saw that woman?
Roddick: No.
Further questions followed pointing out an earlier estimation of the distance between himself and the woman that Roddick had given. The cross-examination finished with:
Baragwanath: In fact did you not initially think the lady you had seen had been Mrs Crewe?
Roddick: Yes.
Baragwanath: After the showing of the photograph in book A, the photograph right at the back?
Roddick: Yes.
Kevin Ryan rose to re-examine:
Ryan: Had you seen Mrs Crewe prior to 19 June 1970?
Roddick: No.
Ryan: Is that why you thought the person you saw there was in fact Mrs Crewe?
Roddick: Yes.
Ryan: Regarding your knowledge of the accused’s wife had you been to any social function where she was present?
Roddick: Yes.
Ryan: Seen her there?
Roddick: Yes.
Ryan: Been to other occasions at which she was present?
Roddick: Yes, there were parties, dances and there was a football match.
Ryan: Although she wasn’t known to you well she was known to you by sight?
Roddick: Yes.
Ryan: On the statement you gave to the police in June 1970 …
At this point there were strenuous objections from Baragwanath. Apparently although he considered it was perfectly in order for the Crown to attack Roddick about the deposition he had given to the Lower Court concerning distance, he objected to Ryan asking about the initial statement that Roddick had given to the police. Mr Justice Perry ruled that the question could be asked.
Ryan: Can you recall what distance it was you said in your statement to the police you were away from the person when you saw her?
Roddick: Between 75 to 100 yards.
In fact as has been previously recorded in this book Roddick’s original statement states: ‘I was about 75 yards.’ At the Lower Court he had said approximately a good 200 yards and Detective Johnston’s calculations put the distance at about 120 yards. I have not measured the distance but I have stood in exactly the area where Roddick was working that day with Ron Chitty. Two women appeared from the direction of the kitchen entrance of the Crewe farm. This had not been arranged – it was pure chance. One of them I instantly recognized as the wife of a Pukekawa farmer. The other I had never seen before. Perhaps if either jury during their respective guided tours of the Crewe and Thomas farms and areas by the Waikato had been taken across the road to that paddock they would have been in a far better position to assess Roddick’s evidence. There is no doubt in my mind that if he had known the woman he would have recognized her from that distance. Clearly he did not.
To combat the array of Crown experts the defence produced a few of its own. It had become what Sir Trevor Henry so rightly objects to: ‘A trial by experts’.
The first defence expert called was the highly qualified Ian Devereux. His contribution to the Thomas trial concerned the wire. He took exception to the conclusions of the Crown’s wire expert Harry Todd. Using a different method of analysis he had concluded that the body wires and the wire removed from the Thomas farm had significant differences.
David Baragwanath when cross-examining Dr Devereux spent about half an hour stating in essence: ‘Our expert is more expert than your expert.’ Eventually Mr Justice Perry decided to intervene. The judge insisted that the content of trace impurities in the wires be expressed in percentages, rather than parts per million, and he failed to appreciate the significance of differences between the Todd tests and the Devereux tests. The conversation between the judge and the expert contained this interchange as it approached its conclusion.
Devereux: I can’t see you can apply Mr Todd’s results to my figures.
Judge: I am not proposing to do that; the greatest variation you found in copper was .014.
Devereux: Yes and on the basis of those figures that is a significant difference.
Judge: He has been willing to allow for a possible error variation of .01 so the difference would be .004 after allowing for your .014.
Devereux: I don’t follow that.
Judge: You say the biggest gap in all those six samples of copper was .014. Mr Todd said he was willing to allow or agree there could be … you see his .01, if he had put there .014 you would have been in agreement?
Devereux: No, all that means is that two things agree within a large area of say, a five-foot man and a six-foot man, within a foot. This is a very important scientific fact, I have quoted the maximum error I have to be applied to my figures and on the basis of that the chances of those two wires being the same would be something like approaching 1 million.
Shortly after that the judge withdrew from the discussion.
In the first trial, evidence from the final witness for the Crown, the jeweller Eggleton, had come as an apparent bombshell to the defence. This book makes it clear that though Paul Temm’s knowledge of that evidence was not acquired until two days before the testimony he nevertheless was at that stage aware of what Eggleton would say.
In the second trial, the boot was on the other foot with a vengeance. Sensational evidence for the defence was to come from the man that Kevin Ryan called on the final day of the case for the defence, Dr James Sprott. The events surrounding that evidence are as strange and bizarre as anything in this strange and bizarre case.
As had been indicated by the evidence of Pat Vesey, newspaper advertisements were placed requesting .22 bullets bearing the pattern 8. The object was for the defence to demonstrate just how widespread such bullets were throughout New Zealand. They got more than they bargained for. A lot more. Packets, envelopes, boxes of .22 bullets began to arrive at Dr Sprott’s laboratory in Parnell. Among those sending samples was a man who is largely unknown in the Thomas case. A man who to my mind is the unsung hero in a story noticeably short on heroes. His name is Jack Ritchie, a former police detective.
At the time of the Thomas trials Ritchie had left the police force and was in business in Dannevirke. The nature of his business was a gun shop. The police must certainly rue the day they allowed Evan Swain to write his booklet, ‘The Crewe Murders. Featuring Photographs Previously Unpublished’. One such photograph in that booklet had alerted Graham Hewson. Another alerted Jack Ritchie. The photograph of the base of the Charles cartridge case. Reading the booklet the former detective learned of the pattern 8 bullet fragments that had been recovered from the bodies of Harvey and Jeannette. One of those apparently useless pieces of information that we all have dancing round inside our heads started Jack Ritchie looking through his large stock of .22 bullets to check that piece of information. Examination of his own stock confirmed what he already knew. Carefully placing some cartridge cases and bullets inside three envelopes he mailed them to Sprott’s laboratory with certain suggestions. Sadly they lay for several weeks among the boxes and packets of bullets that members of the public had sent. In the final week of the trial, Pat Vesey, idly sorting through the many samples that had been sent in, picked up the small box that had come from Dannevirke. When he opened it and digested the contents he went running in search of James Sprott. What Jack Ritchie, the ex-policeman, had sent to the defence was not just a few bullets and cartridge cases but a bomb that caused an explosion of such magnitude it is still reverberating in this country. Tragically when the experts got loose on the information Ritchie had made available it moved the Thomas case into the rarefied atmosphere of experts and beyond the comprehension of the ordinary man.
Put simply, what Jack Ritchie had discovered was that the markings on the base of the cartridge cases differed. All of them had I.C.I. stamped on them but his sharp eyes had noticed significant differences in the shape and the size of the letter C. In terms of cartridge bases, therefore, there were different categories. One particular category in Jack Ritchie’s experience never carried a bullet with the pattern 8, the murder bullets. That category appeared to be the same as the base of the Charles cartridge.
It was explosive. It established beyond any doubt whatsoever that the Charles case, which experts were agreed upon had come from the Thomas rifle, had no connection with the deaths of the Crewes and had been deliberately planted for Mike Charles to find.
Sprott began to check through .22 samples. His excitement grew with each check. He found what he considered four clear categories of case. Three of the categories always contained a pattern 8 bullet, the fourth always had a bullet with a blank base. Ironically he was surrounded by thousands of bullets that the public had sent in. What he now needed was complete unfired bullets so that each cartridge case could be compared against the actual bullet it held. He remembered that there in the Supreme Court was another bullet with its cartridge case: the Keith bullet, the one example of pattern 8 that the police had found on the Thomas farm. It had been dissected by the police but the cartridge case with it was in a small perspex phial, under the safe keeping of Deputy Court Registrar Ian Miller. Sprott phoned Ryan at the lawyer’s private residence and told him he wanted to examine the Keith exhibit. He told him why. To do so of course on a tapped telephone was tantamount to announcing the discovery on the front pages of the national press, but then neither man was aware of the fact that the phone was tapped.
The following morning a curious scene was enacted in No. 1 Court. At 8.30 a.m. Miller, having unlocked the precious exhibit from the court safe, was standing watching Dr Sprott and his assistant subject the Keith cartridge to microscopic examination. Both Sprott and his assistant Douglas Gifford had examined and had advised Kevin Ryan, who was also present in the otherwise deserted courtroom, that it was in accordance with the categories that Sprott had established. At that point Inspector Hutton, who told me he ‘happened to be walking by’, burst in. Douglas Gifford described Hutton’s demeanour.
