Beyond reasonable doubt, p.1
Beyond Reasonable Doubt?, page 1
David Yallop’s latest book, To The Ends of the Earth, is about his hunt to track down the Jackal, the world’s most infamous terrorist. His other books are To Encourage the Others, which has twice forced the British Government to reopen the Craig/Bentley murder case; The Day the Laughter Stopped, a biography of Fatty Arbuckle that posthumously rehabilitated him and solved a 50-year-old murder mystery; Deliver Us From Evil, an investigation that established the truth about the Yorkshire Ripper seven months before Peter Sutcliffe was arrested; and In God’s Name, an investigation into the death of Pope John Paul I which was translated into nearly forty languages, sold more than 5 million copies worldwide, and won the Crime Writers’ Gold Dagger Award for the best non-fiction book of the year in 1984.
‘It reads like a bizarre murder mystery, a chilling whodunit . . . the Hero: a crusading author who challenges the judicial system and, through his book, helps to right a grievous wrong.’
Time Magazine
Books by the author.
To Encourage The Others.
The Day The Laughter Stopped.
Beyond Reasonable Doubt.
Deliver Us From Evil.
In God’s Name.
To The Ends Of The Earth.
Unholy Alliance.
How They Stole The Game.
The Power And The Glory.
Beyond Belief.
Copyright
CONSTABLE
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Constable
Copyright © David A. Yallop 1978, 1995
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-47211-657-4
Constable
is an imprint of
Constable & Robinson Ltd
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DY
An Hachette UK Company
www.hachette.co.uk
www.constablerobinson.com
FOR ANNA
STILL MY BEST FRIEND
CONTENTS
Copyright
About the Author
Books by the author
Author’s Acknowledgements
Introduction
Author’s Note
Copies of police plans used during their investigation and at all subsequent legal hearings
Prologue
Chapter
1. It Begins
2. The Farmer’s Daughter and the Shepherd
3. The Hunt
4. The Farmer’s Son and the Typist
5. The Kill
6. The Hunt Ball
7. After the Ball Was Over
8. An Open Letter to the Prime Minister of New Zealand
9. How Could Two Juries Be Wrong?
Epilogue
Appendices:
1. Memorandum of Land Transfer from Lenard William Demler to May Constance Demler
2. Last Will and Testament of May Constance Demler
3. Last Will and Testament of Jeannette Crewe
4. Last Will and Testament of David Harvey Crewe
5. Mr Justice Henry’s Summing-up to First Trial Jury
6. Final Speech of Crown Solicitor David Morris to Second Trial Jury
7. Letter from Minister of Police the Hon. A. McCready to the Hon. D. MacIntyre
Bibliography
Index
Photo credits
We would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce photographs as listed below:
Auckland Star: 3, 9, 24; New Zealand Herald: 23, 30, 35, 36; Police Department 5-8, 10-20, 22, 26-29, 31, 32; Doig Photography: 1, 2, 21; Vivien Thomas: 4
AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To the many people who assisted me in seeking the truth I would like to express my gratitude. Some only agreed to help on the strict understanding that their names were not made public. I have respected their wishes. I am grateful to them and to the following:
Ernie Alexander; Mrs Alexander; John Barr; Beverley Batkin; Pat Booth; Arnold Brooks; Richard Brough; Michael Bungay; the late Mrs Dorothy Cathcart; Mervyn Cathcart; Cherry Cathcart; Ron Chitty; Mrs Chitty; Keith Christie; June Donachie; Bill Earl, producer of the TV1 programme ‘Dateline’; William Eggleton; Dr Martyn Finlay; Ross Fleming; Jocelyn Fleming; Peter Garratt; Mrs Garratt; Robin Garratt; Bernard Heath; Sir Trevor Henry; Grace Hessell; Graham Hewson; Lyrice Hills; Robert Hills; Mr Hobson, Mr Ward and the staff of Paremoremo Prison; Kenneth Hooton; Lynette Hooton; Bruce Hutton; Alan Jameson; Edith Judge; Odette Leather; Claire MacGee; Queenie McConachie; Ella McGuire; George McGuire; Des Monaghan, Controller of Programmes TV1 New Zealand; David Morris; George Morrison; Brian Murray; Dr Donald Nelson; Sir Alfred North; G. S. Orr, Secretary for Justice; David Payne, Julie Priest; Owen Priest; Bob Rock; Mr Roddick; Mrs Roddick; Bruce Roddick; Kevin Ryan; Rory Shanahan; Margaret Smith; Ted Smith; Ian Spratt; Peggy Spratt; Dr James Sprott; Janet Sutherland; Lyall Sutton; Paul Temm; Allan Thomas; Arthur Thomas; Ivy Thomas; Jean Thomas; Laura Thomas; Mary Thomas; Peter Thomas; Ray Thomas; Richard Thomas; Robyn Thomas; Vivien Thomas; Pat Vesey; Peter Walter, Robert Walton, Assistant Commissioner of Police; Peter Williams; the staff of the Auckland Supreme Court; the librarian and staff of the Government Library, Wellington, particularly Cheryl Watts; the staff of the Court of Appeal at Wellington, particularly the Registrar, Douglas Jenkin.
For her help with the research for this latest edition, I would like yet again to thank Cheryl Watts, now of Radio New Zealand.
INTRODUCTION
After this book’s initial publication in New Zealand in 1978 a great deal of nonsense and fantasy was written and reported by that country’s news media concerning the circumstances and the reasons surrounding my initial involvement in what since 1970 has always been referred to as ‘the Thomas case’.
It was said that I had been paid a huge amount of money to come to New Zealand and investigate this case. The amount would vary, as would my benefactor, depending on who was telling the tale, but the thrust was always the same. I was commissioned, so it was confidently asserted, to investigate then write a book that concluded that Arthur Thomas was innocent of the murders of Harvey and Jeannette Crewe.
That this book exists and that as a result of it Thomas is a free man is solely because of two love affairs. The first, with my wife Anna, continues. The second, with New Zealand, well, that is another story.
In late 1976 I flew with Anna from London to Wellington to meet my future wife’s parents for the first time. For Anna this was a return to her homeland, for me a first visit. Some months before our departure I casually mentioned this intended trip to colleagues at my then British publisher, Hodder and Stoughton. They had recently published my second book, The Day The Laughter Stopped, not only in the United Kingdom, but also in what publishers still identify as ‘The Commonwealth’. To the Sales Director at Hodders it was an opportunity to exploit. To this particular author it was a moment when I wished I had kept my mouth shut. This was intended to be a holiday and a strictly private trip. There are undoubtedly times when reporters are invaluable to an author. The first meeting with prospective in-laws is not one of them. We reached a compromise. Two weeks of anonymity before any interviews.
During those two weeks that second love affair began. How could it fail not to? A country more or less the same size as my own but with only some three million people. That amount of space ensured less aggression, less stress, less violence, less crime; a greater degree of gentleness, of tranquillity and of something that was called when I was young a caring Christian community.
I had read before this first trip to New Zealand that it was ‘a country in a time warp, some thirty years behind England’. In some respects that is exactly what I found in December 1976 and I revelled in it.
During the third week the first of a series of interviews took place. The interviewer, Margaret Hayward, had in another existence been the personal and private secretary of Prime Minister Norman Kirk. At the time of our meeting Kirk had been dead for a number of years. I recall being particularly struck by the fact that notwithstanding her close professional relationship with the ex-Premier and despite the fact that he could only be referred to in the past tense, whenever she spoke of him it was always ‘Mr Kirk’. There was something else about that interview that I also very clearly recall.
‘Of course many people in New Zealand are wondering why you are here.’
‘Really? I’m surprised that anyone knows that I’m here.’
‘Oh, it’s a small country.’
It isn’t, but over the years I came to know exactly what she meant. On one occasion two years on I fell down a flight of stairs inside Noah’s Hotel in Christchurch. Twenty minutes later I had a telephone call from a lawyer friend in Auckland. His opening observation, ‘I hear you were pissed in Noah’s this afternoon,’ was slightly wide of the mark, but it indicated that Margaret Hayward had a point. I told her that the trip was merely an extended holiday. She smiled and shook her head.
‘The Press think you’re here to investigate the Thomas case.’
‘Thomas who?’
‘Arthur Thomas.’
‘Margaret, until this moment I have never heard of Arthur Thomas. Who is he and why would the Press think I’m here to investigate his case?’
Thus I learned a little of the farmer from Pukekawa.
At every subsequent interview much the same scene occurred. After questions about a teenager named Derek Bentley1, who had been taken out one cold January day in 1953 and, courtesy of the British Government, murdered, and questions about sweet, talented, funny Roscoe Arbuckle2, who had been murdered in quite a different way at the bar of American public opinion, the assertion that I was in New Zealand to write about Thomas would be made, to be followed by my denial and a request for information. I would listen while the reporters outlined the case from their own knowledge and perspective. Putting to one side the variable quality of the information, one fact shone out like a beacon. If these reporters were representative of the country as a whole then the nation was split right down the middle when it came to consider the guilt or innocence of Arthur Allan Thomas.
After the interviews Anna and I continued our holiday and I rapidly saw the truth of Margaret Hayward’s ‘small country’ observation. I concluded that I was shortly going to marry into a family with three million members, certainly everyone seemed to know everyone. I was enthralled with the country and my desire for knowledge of it was insatiable. The fact that it was high summer helped, but there was an easy-going ‘she’ll be right’ philosophy that was quite new to me. Nobody in England went around saying ‘she’ll be right’. Looking back now, seventeen years later, it is obvious that even an extended holiday of six weeks is no way to come to terms with a country, but hindsight always has twenty-twenty vision.
After Christmas in Lower Hutt we began to drive North to visit other members of this, by my only-child experiences, vast family. From time to time at a barbecue or dinner party I would raise the Thomas case, then sit back and listen. Opinions always divided: a wife disagreeing with her husband; a sister with her brother. These experiences stimulated within me a memory of another warm summer’s evening in London, more than three years earlier.
As a result of the publication of To Encourage The Others and my television play of the same name, the then British Government had been forced to re-open what is known as the Craig–Bentley murder case. Their secret inquiries concluded that all was well, that justice had been done. Many remained unconvinced, among their number the Lords Arran and Goodman. In June 1973 they provoked a full-scale debate on the case in the House of Lords. Speaking without recourse to notes for some forty minutes, Lord Goodman made a speech that for lucidity and clarity of thought surpassed anything I have ever heard in my life. Sitting in a variety of New Zealand homes nearly four years later a particular part of that speech kept resounding in my mind:
‘Very occasionally, as I have said, cases occur in our criminal courts in which, although they have been concluded, and concluded with the finality with which these cases were concluded, that is to say, by a capital sentence, there nevertheless remains a stir of public anxiety and concern. Where this happens and where that stir of public anxiety and concern fails to be allayed by the passage of time, it appears to be a pretty historic certainty that there is something that needs to be looked into. If you examine the occasional cases where this has happened, public concern is a pretty good index of the need for examination and re-examination. This has happened with very great rarity. It is difficult to put a finger on any number of cases of which this observation could be made; but where it has happened – as in the case of Oscar Slater, the case of Evans and a few others – time does not enable one to bury the situation.’
In early February 1977 our visit to New Zealand was coming to a close. We had returned to Auckland. I was recounting to Neil Robinson, my editor, my feelings about his country. My love affair with ‘God’s Own Country’ was now in full flower. Neil smiled at me tolerantly.
‘Hodders would like you to come back here and write a book for them.’
‘Would they now.’
‘Yes, very much. We can’t afford to pay you much. The advance would be two thousand dollars.’ [At that time a little over one thousand pounds Sterling.]
‘Any particular subject that you have in mind?’
‘Yes, David, there is. Have you ever heard of a man called Arthur Thomas?’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The reader will see that from time to time I refer within the book to ‘this country’ and to ‘now, eight years later in 1978’. The Introduction and the Epilogue are of now. The main text is of a time when Arthur Thomas was still serving a life imprisonment inside New Zealand’s maximum security prison.
‘Throughout the web of the English Criminal Law one golden thread is always to be seen, that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner’s guilt … If, at the end of and on the whole of the case, there is reasonable doubt, created by the evidence given by either the prosecution or the prisoner … the prosecution has not made out the case and the prisoner is entitled to an acquittal.’ —Viscount Sankey L.C. expressing the unanimous opinion of the House of Lords in the case of Woolmington v. D.P.P.
‘It is no business of the defence to prove innocence or even prove reasonable doubt. The defence, if it can show any weakness in the Crown case, if it can bring you to the stage where you have a reasonable doubt, then, of course, you ought to acquit, but that is only argument on the evidence. The burden of proof, as we call it, to prove the crime and to prove who was the criminal, rests and rests always upon the Crown.’ —Mr Justice Henry (now Sir Trevor Henry). From his summing-up to the first jury. The Queen v. Arthur Allan Thomas March 1971.
‘Now the words “beyond reasonable doubt” mean exactly what they say. It means you should not be deterred by a fanciful or frivolous doubt. But that you must feel sure. If guilt of the accused is not established beyond reasonable doubt, then the accused is entitled to be acquitted.’ —Mr Justice Perry (now Sir Clifford Perry). From his summing-up to the second jury. The Queen v. Arthur Allan Thomas April 1973.
Prologue
Pukekawa, 17 June 1970. Night-time. The gusting southwesterly wind buffeted the car as it sped along the deserted country roads. The strange collection of items in the trailer behind bounced and rattled as one of the wheels hit a pothole. At the wheel of the Hillman, Arthur Thomas turned his head at the sound, anxiously checking that none of the items had been thrown into the road. Satisfied, he turned back to peer through the moving windscreen wipers at the road ahead. Still staring in front, his left hand reached out to the front passenger seat and came into contact with his .22 rifle. The feel of the wooden butt gave him that measure of reassurance he had been seeking. He glanced at his gold wristwatch. It was a few minutes after 11 p.m. At this time of the night if his luck was in he would get to his destination without meeting another car. As it transpired his luck was indeed in.
Switching off ignition and lights he stared out of the window at his ultimate destination. The farmhouse of Harvey and Jeannette Crewe. The lounge and kitchen lights were still on, indicating that at least one of the Crewes was still not in bed. Good, that would make the task he had set himself that much easier. That left hand went out again and reached for the Browning. Quietly getting out of his car, he moved unseen and unheard on to the Crewe farm. The dogs were kennelled well away from the house and the rain and the wind were proving useful allies as he approached the house. Opening the garden gate, he moved cautiously from the path that led to the front door on to the front lawn. Pausing, he stared with unblinking eyes into the lounge a short distance away. Thoughtful of them not to draw the curtains. Harvey was sitting in one of the armchairs, his back towards Arthur Thomas, the smoke from his cigarette curling up into the air. On the sofa facing him sat Jeannette, the knitting needles in her hands moving quickly as she talked to her husband.
Thomas began to walk across the lawn to the side of the house. At the kitchen window and the back door he paused with a frown of concentration on his face. Harvey was in profile to him now and Jeannette completely masked. The frown was replaced with a smile at the sight of the open louvre windows. It was all going to be so easy. Moving to the back door, he quickly climbed onto the small wall. Familiar with the house and its layout he knew that the sliding kitchen door was never closed. He could see right through into the lounge. Harvey was still chatting to his wife. Thomas flicked the safety catch and pushing the rifle through the open louvre windows aimed at the side of Harvey’s head. Thomas held his breath then squeezed the trigger. The impact of the shot jerked Harvey’s head to the right arm of his chair. As Thomas jumped from the small wall he quickly reloaded. Bursting into the house through the back door he was down the short passage across the kitchen and into the lounge within a few seconds. Jeannette was on her feet staring in shock at the dying body of her husband. The shock turned to fear at the sight of Harvey’s murderer standing there smiling. With equal rapidity the fear switched to anger. She swung her arm to bang that smile from his face but Thomas was quicker. He parried the blow with his rifle then smashed the butt of the gun into her face. Screaming with pain she fell back. Then, standing over her, he shot her in the head. As with Harvey, it required only a single shot.
