Defrosting Cold Cases

Forty years after he was convicted of murder, Arthur Allan Thomas’ ex-wife Vivien has spoken out for the first time about New Zealand’s most baffling murder mystery. She has requested Justice Minister Simon Power to consider re-opening the 1970 cold case. The case inspired the 1980 movie “Beyond Reasonable Doubt.” Author David Yallop wrote a book about this case.

In 1970, a murder investigation was launched after a baby was found alive in a blood stained house with the parents nowhere to be found. This investigation would later shock the nation in what was to become one of New Zealand’s most notorious cases of police misconduct. A time line of the case can be found here.

The bodies of Jeanette and Harvey Crewe were discovered weighted and dumped in the Waikato River and neighbour Thomas was arrested and convicted following two trials. The investigation and subsequent trials that followed the Pukekawa murders were to have a significant impact on many peoples’ lives, but none more so than that of Vivien!

Now known as Vivien Harrison, in 1970 she was accused by police of being involved in the double homicide by feeding baby Rochelle. While an unwavering statement from local farmhand Bruce Roddick led to her being cleared of any involvement, the case did lead to the demise of her marriage and forced her from the country.

Vivien filed for divorce after Thomas’ guilty verdict remained in place after the second trial. The pair never spoke again, but she remained a staunch supporter of his innocence, maintaining he was home with her at the time of the murders.

She stated that the case completely messed up her life. She knew the media attention would never go away and so in order to avoid the spotlight, she moved to Australia. Vivien says that she now realises that her divorce led many people to believe that she thought that her husband was guilty, but she says that was not the case at all.

The persistence of Thomas’ supporters paid off in 1979, when after nine years behind bars, Thomas was pardoned.

Then in 1980, a bombshell was dropped when a Royal Commission found police had planted evidence to convict Thomas. The police cartridge case and the distinctive bullets from the bodies didn’t match and had never been together on the production line which meant that the cartridge the police “found” in the garden outside the Crewe house and which carried the ejector marks of the Thomas rifle was not a clue to the murders at all. Someone who didn’t know the difference had planted the wrong bullet case. Who?

The commission ruled that Thomas should never have been charged, much less convicted. The commission concluded that police had planted a gun cartridge case, which was crucial to the case, to frame him. As a result Thomas was rewarded $950,000 in compensation.

Mystery remains

Thomas was exonerated, but the mystery remains over who fed the baby before the murder was discovered.

Vivien, and others who lived in the area at the time, know who this mystery woman is but as she is still alive she is not able to be named. Vivien says even though police were given that information at the time by Roddick who had seen her on the property, they did not follow it up as it went against all the evidence they were using to point the blame on Thomas. Vivien says it is still possible that justice will prevail in this case if the woman comes forward and tells what she knows.

Vivien has written to the Minister of Justice with her statement and a suggestion he read the North and South magazine article published this month. “I have asked him if he will reconsider reopening the case, or take whatever action is necessary to address the issue of who fed Rochelle Crewe.” She says she cannot understand why someone would remain silent while an innocent man suffered.

Vivien says it is important that this case is not forgotten because it still remains unsolved. “You’ve got two unsolved murders and you have the woman that is available to be interviewed that fed the child … and the police just seem to be washing their hands of it, they don’t want to come to grips with it and deal with it.”

Power’s office says he will respond to the request in due course.

Meanwhile journalist Pat Booth thinks the case need not be re-opened, he knows the answers: Booth remains convinced Jeanette Crewe committed suicide a few days after shooting her husband. What motive Jeanette could have had, why she did not make arrangements for her daughter, and why she committed suicide days later, are all questions Vidocq would like to see answered. 

Booth did his own investigation of the case after the second trial and campaigned for Thomas’s release. His book, Trial By Ambush, was published in 1975. He was the first witness called by the Royal Commission of Inquiry.

When first Jeanette Crewe’s body and then Harvey’s surfaced in the nearby Waikato River there seemed no question it was a double murder. The prime suspect for months was Jeanette’s father, Len Demler. Booth thinks that during a major domestic violence incident in the Crewe house that Wednesday night in June, Harvey punched his wife so hard that he broke a bone in her face. Some teeth were missing when she was found. Jeanette then got Harvey’s rifle and shot him as he sat in his favourite chair in front of the fire.

Then she phoned her father, Len Demler, who lived close by. Together, they disposed of Harvey’s body in the river and tried unsuccessfully to clean up the bloodstains in the house. They burnt a probably bloodstained mat and a cushion in the lounge fireplace. Over the next few days, Jeanette nursed her injury and became understandably desperate as she realised that she faced a murder charge.

In this scenario, Jeanette was the woman seen near the house on the Friday when the police reconstruction said she was already dead and in the river. She was the person who dressed Rochelle and  put her down in her cot in the pyjamas and two diapers the distraught child was found wearing. Some time over the following weekend, she shot herself, and Demler put her body into the river, plus the rifle. Then he staged discovering the house abandonned and called the police.

Read the article here.

Categories: Forensics, Miscarriages of Justice, News: Cold Cases, Unsolved

Tags: Actual Innocence, Alibi, Ballistics, Crime Scene, Evidence, Forensics, Gun Fire, Identification, Investigations Division, Miscarriage of Justice, New Zealand, Pardon, Planting Evidence, Police, Police Misconduct, the Pukekawa Murders, Unsolved Homicide, Victim, Wrongful Convictions

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