Beyond Reasonable Doubt?, page 6
‘When Jeannette returned from abroad and came back to work in this area she was not working on any particular course. She equally was not on permanent staff. She was merely doing relief teaching. It’s absurd, that point the Crown tried to make, that she was driven out of Maramarua by Thomas. When she returned she was at a bit of a loose end and took this relief teacher position at Maramarua District High. The headmaster tried to persuade her to stay on because he liked her and she was a good teacher. She told him that she wanted to join her friend Beverly in Wanganui. It’s absolute nonsense for anyone to suggest Thomas was pestering her and forced her to leave. There was nothing timid or shrinking about Jeannette. She was quite capable of defending herself against anyone or anything. I have always thought that the so-called “motive” presented by the prosecution was ridiculous.’
Several other women who knew Jeannette during that period confirmed Mrs Hessell’s view of the situation. But rather than quote them, I prefer to quote the woman whom Jeannette lived with when in Wanganui for three years. Following in the steps of the farmer’s daughter from Pukekawa I went south and interviewed Mrs Claire MacGee in the house that had been Jeannette’s home during those three years in Wanganui.
‘The only reason she came down here was to be with Beverly. She had no friends in Pukekawa. Going to St Cuthbert’s had cut her off from girls of her own age at home who, having gone to different schools, had established different friendships. Beverly was a close friend of hers from St Cuthbert days onwards. Jeannette stayed with her for a while then came to live with me.’
The two women became very close friends. Mrs MacGee, a young widow of similar age to Jeannette, was during this period receiving the unwelcome attentions of an aspiring suitor. Jeannette reassured her and told her of a similar experience she had had in her past. Of how she had been ‘chatted up’ at dances and how the same young man had given her a Christmas present of a brush and comb. When I questioned Mrs MacGee about her subsequent trial evidence on these aspects I reminded her directly from verbatim transcript precisely how she had recalled this conversation with Jeannette. During the trial she had clearly conveyed the impression that Jeannette had spoken of her unwanted suitor, Arthur Thomas, with distaste. Her reaction was revealing:
‘The police came and took a statement from me within a couple of weeks of their disappearance. Subsequently, before the second trial, they told me exactly what questions they wanted me to answer. I didn’t know I could qualify my answers if I wished. I’m aware of the impression the answers I gave may have left in the minds of the jury. I assumed that the defence counsel would ask me a great deal more than he did. If he had, I could have corrected that business of distaste. You see, on the occasion that Jeannette mentioned these incidents, it was not with distaste, it was not even with amusement. It was just ordinary, everyday conversation. I didn’t know until the police came and told me, that the man she had been referring to was Arthur Thomas. I don’t recall her mentioning him by name. He certainly never got in touch with her during the entire time she was living with me. In my view the motive is no motive at all.’
The pattern of life led by Jeannette during her stay at the hostel in Maramarua was re-established in Wanganui. Jeannette preferred to stay at home, checking her school work, spending quiet evenings, to going out. Apart from Beverly and Tony Willis who was at that time courting her friend, Jeannette drew upon Claire MacGee’s friends for companionship. She was content, she told Claire, to stay in Wanganui for the rest of her life. She told her friend that she ‘did not get on very well with her father’ and that apart from her mother whom she obviously loved very deeply, there was nothing to take her back to Pukekawa. The half share in the farm that was soon to be hers was, at that time, presumably a minor consideration. In Claire’s view, her young friend had at that time all the makings of a spinster for life. Even when a local man named Alex tried to woo her, the response from the young woman was half-hearted.
Her life was enlivened by visits from her ex-teacher, then air hostess sister Heather and trips that she made to Pukekawa. And if those aspects were for her enlivening as they clearly were, it just underlines how very ordinary her life was. It was soon to take on a more significant meaning. She was bridesmaid at Beverly’s wedding, the groomsman was Harvey Crewe. Their meeting quickly blossomed into full romance, most of it conducted at Mrs MacGee’s home. Jeannette, the former pupil of St Cuthbert’s, Auckland, and Harvey, the former pupil of Scots College, Wellington had, it seemed, a great deal in common. Just how much in common can only be realized when one looks at their lives retrospectively. The Demler family were shortly destined to be involved in family discussion, debate and argument about who would get what from the mother’s will. That was in the future. In Harvey’s past, the same wrangling had taken place over his father’s will. In brief the facts are as follows:
At the time of his father’s death in August 1952, Harvey’s parents were separated. The mother had filed for judicial separation, the father for a restitution of conjugal rights. A few months before his death both of these actions were abandoned and a separation agreement was entered into. Mr Crewe agreed to pay during their joint lifetimes £450 a year out of which the mother was to maintain Harvey and his sister Beverly as well as herself. He also agreed to pay his wife the sum of £3,000 so that she could purchase a house. These payments were duly made and indeed continued to be made after his death. At the time of his death Mr Crewe’s estate was worth in excess of £26,000. He willed the bulk to his sister and some to his cousin. With regard to his wife and children he said:
‘I declare that the reason I am making no provision in my will for the benefit of my wife and children is that I do not wish them to participate in my estate by reason of the fact that I have been deserted by them and that they have made statements concerning me which are untrue and harmful to me.’
In 1954, in the Palmerston North Supreme Court Mrs Crewe took legal issue with that statement and also the manner in which her late husband had disposed of his assets. She was awarded £1,000 for herself plus an annual sum of £416, reducible to £208 pounds per annum in the event of her remarriage. Her daughter Beverly was awarded £3,000. Her son Harvey was awarded £3,000.
The judgment was a clear and startling indication that in this world you cannot leave your money or assets as you please but only as the Court pleases.
Mrs Crewe was obviously dissatisfied. She wanted more. The following year she appealed against the judgment. The appeal was heard by a full court of five judges, three of whom, North, Turner and Henry, little knew then in 1955 as they dispensed monies to the Crewe family that in the 1970s they would be deeply involved in the judicial inquiries into the death of the young boy to whom they sought to give security and a good education. Apart from increasing the amount awarded to the two children to £4,500 each, the judges increased the amount allocated to Mrs Crewe to £500 a year. Consequently over £20,000 at the time of writing has gone to people whom Mr Crewe cut out of his will.
His schoolfriends at Scots College whom I have interviewed do not recall Harvey as the most brilliant of students. His main distinction appears to have been his size. His ambition was to be a sheepfarmer like his father before him. It was while learning some of the rudiments of this profession during his late teens that he first met Graham Hewson in the Turakina Valley. They became close friends. Graham would accompany him when Harvey turned out for a local rugby team at Marton. He recalls him as ‘a good forward who always went in hard’. Another aspect of the big young man showed during this period. He had a temper, a violent one. Whilst working in the Woodville area he lost it while having an argument with the farmer who employed him. Graham subsequently employed him for about two years as a shepherd on farms in the Kumeroa area.
Someone else who personally observed Harvey’s temper was Jeannette’s friend and landlady at Wanganui. She recalled Harvey and Jeannette with great fondness, thought they were terrific people and liked them very much, but:
‘I think Harvey had a pretty violent temper. He got on the booze one night. She had cooked a meal for him and he was late back for it. When he came in she had words with him. He got very snaky indeed. Eventually he stormed off. But of course they resolved it happily.’
The farmer’s daughter and the shepherd were married in an Auckland church in June 1966. Before the wedding, Harvey had bought Heather’s half of the Chennell farm from her, paying forty-five thousand dollars; nine thousand dollars were paid in cash, the rest by way of a mortgage that he raised with State Advances. Thus it was that in mid-1966, the estate became known as ‘The Crewe Farm’. For both of them the farm was a second choice. They would have preferred a farm in the Wairarapa but the cost precluded it. In the event the farm in Pukekawa was to cost them everything.
As he traced the course of their lives Inspector Bruce Hutton must have experienced considerable bemusement, not only over some of the details that I have already given, which he may or may not have discovered, but over some aspects covering the next four years; which were to be the last four years of their young lives.
First, in a country rightly famed for the hospitality its citizens extend not merely to one another but to strangers, Harvey and Jeannette Crewe were curiously unique. Close friends like Claire MacGee never went to the farm during that four-year period. Neighbours like the Chittys, living immediately opposite, entertained the Crewes to dinner several times and they were also among the guests at a Christmas party on the Chitty farm. It was hospitality that was never returned.
Neighbours like the Priests and the Spratts, good friendly sociable people, were others who never sampled the Crewe hospitality. Ron Chitty said to me: ‘One could never say that you got to know them very well. It’s hard to explain. They were good neighbours, it was an ideal neighbour relationship. We felt you could borrow a bottle of gin or as Carolyn my wife did on one occasion a bag of potatoes. Harvey would come over and help me with the lambs or loan me a piece of equipment. But basically they kept themselves to themselves.’
Of the Demler family, only Len had mixed freely in the area, his abiding passion for bowls bringing him into contact with many. The rest of the family basically remained aloof from the day-to-day affairs of the small community. The Crewes would make arrangements to go to local meetings; then, again and again, cancel them at the last minute.
Some attribute this lack of socializing to the determination of the young couple to work extremely hard on their farm and bring it up to peak efficiency.
‘No, the Crewes did not socialize,’ said Mr Spratt, ‘The impression that I got right from the start was that Harvey, having married a wealthy young girl, was not going to live the life of a playboy. He was determined to prove himself by his own hard work. To justify his presence there by his own efforts.’
Beverly Batkin: ‘Harvey was very conscious of the opportunity he was being given to start up on his own farm because of Jeannette’s circumstances. When we first visited them he remarked, “Well, you won’t see me for a few years. I’m going to get this farm into shape the way I want it.” ’
Work hard he certainly did, and so did Jeannette, and yet four years later no-one in Pukekawa could claim to be intimate friends of the Crewes. The awareness that some were saying he had only married Jeannette for her money was certainly a driving force in the young shepherd from Wanganui. Jeannette confided during one of her visits to Claire MacGee:
‘She told me that it would have been better if she had not had any money. Better for the marriage if they had had to rely on Harvey’s income. He resented the fact that she was wealthy. That’s why he worked so hard to justify himself. There were quite a number of people, I know for a fact, who thought he had married her for her money.’
The marriage therefore of the woman whom Beverly Batkin described as ‘a bit of an ugly duckling who as she matured became an elegant lady’ and the man whom Claire MacGee thought ‘had a pretty violent temper’ was not without its serious pressures.
That ‘violent temper’ exploded a number of times during those four years. On one occasion Harvey had arranged for two stock agents to drive out to see him. The appointment was for 8.30 a.m. The two men arrived at 8.20 a.m. Harvey burst out of his house in his stockinged feet in a rage. He told the men that they were early, that they had interrupted his breakfast. That they could sit and stew in their car until he was good and ready to talk to them.
In March 1967, the aerial top-dressing firm of Barr Brothers arrived on the property, making one of their regular bi-annual visits to top-dress. They were just getting the cover off their equipment when Harvey Crewe appeared. Pilot Keith Christie recalled:
‘He came roaring across the farm. He went absolutely bonkers. Started screaming at me, “Get off my farm. I don’t want you on here. You’re not going to top-dress for me. Clear off. I don’t want Barr Brothers on my property. You cheat on your prices. I don’t believe you can do it as cheaply as you do and still do it properly.” I tried to explain that we had been topdressing the area for so long that we knew the short cuts around the corners. At first he just would not listen. He was very unstable for a time, then he settled down and invited us to have a cup of tea. We did, but we still didn’t get to top-dress the Crewe farm that day, or ever again.’
Ernie Alexander, ex-farmer, now a local newspaper editor in the area had, with his wife, known the Demler family for many years. They had watched the girls grow up, had attended Jeannette’s wedding. He observed:
‘Harvey was a stern sort of man. He was a bit abrupt. If anybody was shooting on his property he would simply order them off and tell them not to come back, whereas many farmers would not be bothered. He was rather tactless, brusque.’
Did that instability, so clearly demonstrated in the above statements, finally culminate in a lethal explosion one June night in 1970?
Adding fuel to the fire of Harvey’s temper were a number of curious and still unresolved incidents that occurred on the property.
On the evening of 29 July 1967, while Harvey and Jeannette were at the Demler farm, their house was broken into. Much was to be made later about a brush and comb set that were stolen. Too much. It has always been assumed that this brush and comb set were of the High Street chemist’s variety, but in fact they were sterling silver. Also stolen at the same time was Jeannette’s handbag, her engagement ring, a string of real pearls, her watch and two brooches. All of these items were taken from her dressing table. The police were later to make the point that money and other valuables in another dressing table were not taken; the implication being that it was not a genuine robbery, that all the thief really wanted was the brush and comb set that had been given to her by Harvey Crewe, presumably obliging her to use the one that Arthur Thomas had given her years before. An extraordinary innuendo. One of the other valuable items that was not stolen, an item that no-one before now has officially admitted to exist, was Harvey’s gun.
When discussing the robbery with me Beverly Batkin listed a number of the valuable items that were not touched:
‘Harvey’s gun was also there. In the lounge. I don’t know much about guns, but apparently it was quite a good one. That was not taken.’
The robbery was never solved. None of the stolen items has ever been recovered.
Maisie Demler asked local editor Ernie Alexander not to publish details of the robbery in the local paper. He duly obliged.
In December 1968, Rochelle Crewe was born in Pukekohe Hospital. Harvey returned from visiting his wife one evening to find the spare bedroom ablaze. The cause of that fire, like the identity of the burglar, remains a mystery. Adding to this particular mystery are the alleged remarks of Harvey Crewe. According to a fire officer and an insurance assessor Harvey was emphatic that the fire had been caused by faulty wiring. Yet an electrician calling a few days after the fire could find no fault in the wiring or in the electrical installation that could have caused the fire. Len Demler was later to say that his son-in-law was equally emphatic that the fire had been started deliberately.
Equally odd was the occurrence in June 1969, when a haybarn on the farm went up in flames.
Apologists for Arthur Thomas have gone to some lengths to dismiss these incidents. In view of the fact that there is not a single shred that links Thomas with any of them I feel they have fallen into a trap set by the Crown. Undoubtedly all three incidents did happen. There was a robbery and there were two fires. Clearly if either of the Crewes had had the slightest reason to suspect Arthur Thomas he would have been subjected to police questioning at the time. He wasn’t. As with the robbery so with the fire inside the house. Maisie Demler again asked the local editor to suppress details, again he obliged. Amongst other items destroyed in the house fire were a pile of new baby clothes that had apparently been used to start the inferno. What price an accidental fire?
These incidents undoubtedly affected the Crewes. They also upset Maisie Demler who remarked to her neighbour Peggy Spratt, ‘What are they going to do next?’ She did not elaborate on who ‘they’ were.
On the day after the haybarn fire in June 1969, Owen Priest called at the Crewe farm to see if he could help clear up the mess. ‘Jeannette refused to open the door to me. She would not even open the fly-screen door even though she knew it was me. She was scared for some reason.’
Jeannette became very nervous. She refused to stay in the house on her own. She would rather sit in the car with Rochelle in the fields waiting for Harvey to finish his work.
The Priests, who had received visits from the police three times in three years concerning the incidents on the Crewe farm, were destined within the year to be visited yet again in connection with happenings on the property. But that lay in the future in mid-1969. At that time Jeannette was not the only member of the Demler family coping with problems.
Maisie Demler was a very high-principled woman who, unlike many, apparently lived by her principles and expected her children to do the same. In July 1969 she changed her will, cutting her daughter Heather off from every single cent. Not even an item of her jewellery was to go to her younger daughter. The reason? Heather had married a divorced man named Robert Souter. As a father of three and an undischarged bankrupt, Maisie did not consider him the ideal husband for one of her children. The favouring of children that was such an aspect of this family burst into bitter acrimony. Len subsequently changed his will cutting Jeannette out and leaving his half of their property to Heather. So once again the two sisters were destined to have a half-share each in a superb farm, Len and Maisie Demler’s. But destiny or fate were about to take a hand. Jeannette would never live to enjoy the fruits of her mother’s generosity.
