We owe Rochelle Crewe one more effort!
Jeanette and Harvey Crewe
The NZ Herald’s editorial of today pleads for us to give the Crewe murders one more re-investigation.
Even if the chances are slim, Rochelle Crewe, the only surviving child of Jeanette and Harvey Crewe, certainly deserves it that we investigate her parents murder one more time.
A quote from the editorial:
”For people of a certain generation, there was no bigger story than the murders of Harvey and Jeannette Crewe at Pukekawa. Even 40 years on, they remain fascinated by the unsolved case.
for one person, it means far more than that.
Rochelle Crewe, the couple’s only child, was just 18 months old when she was found crying in her cot five days after her mother and father were last seen alive. Ever since, she has lived with the killing of her parents hanging over her.
Only now has she broken her silence to ask the police to re-investigate the murders. Her appeal should be heeded.”
The Crewes disappeared from their blood-spattered Waikato New Zealand home in June 1970. Their daughter Rochelle, almost 2, was found crying in her cot five days after the Crewes were last seen. Farmer Arthur Allan Thomas was convicted of murder, but was pardoned in 1979 after mounting public protest and the personal intervention of Prime Minister Rob Muldoon. A Royal Commission set up to investigate the case found inquiry head Detective Inspector Bruce Hutton and Johnston had planted a rifle shell casing at the Crewe house to implicate Thomas.
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.
Other authors have also written about this case.
Author Ian Wishart has named Detective Sergeant Len Johnston as suspect in the murders of Harvey and Jeanette Crewe. Johnston was a detective who played a pivotal role in the police investigation into their deaths. Johnston passed away in 1978.
Journalist Pat Booth has a different solution. In Booth’s scenario, Mr Crewe had punched his wife so heavily that he broke a bone in her face and knocked out some of her teeth. She shot him as he sat in his favourite chair in front of the fire. Jeanette and her father Len Demler then disposed of the body in the river. Jeanette nursed her injuries but then became desperate as she realised that she faced a murder charge. A few days after the murder she supposedly shot herself, and her father put her body into the river, plus a rifle. Demler then staged discovering the house and called the police.
Vidocq agrees that we owe it to ourselves and especially Rochelle to re-investigate this case one more time preferably with independent investigators who would re-examine all the evidence and re-check all the time lines. Even if they then do not find an answer, at least we tried one more time with modern technology that so far may not have been used to the fullest extent possible in this case.
I support a re-investigation of the Crewe murders. I hope you do too.
Categories: Cold Case News, Forensics, Help the Cops!, Miscarriages of Justice, Unsolved
Tags: Actual Innocence, Autopsy, Ballistics, Crime Scene, Cruelty, DNA, Evidence, Expert Testimony, Faulty Evidence, Finger Printing, Forensics, Gun Fire, Identification, Investigations Division, Jeanette and Harvey Crewe, Miscarriage of Justice, New Zealand, Police, Prisons, Unsolved Homicide, Victim, Witnesses, Wrongful Convictions