JO-MARIE BROWN reports on a Hollywood-inspired crime tour.
Two Auckland men stole BMWs, impersonated police officers and lived the high life on stolen credit cards in a Thelma and Louise-style crime spree across the North Island.
Dubbed by the 23-year-olds Operation Pig, their six-month crime binge was designed to create maximum work for the police officers hunting them.
Details of Zeke Lowe and Aaron Wilson's escapade were revealed in the Auckland District Court yesterday.
Judge Barbara Morris sentenced the pair to five years' imprisonment for their "tour," which covered Auckland, Hamilton, Rotorua, Taupo, Tauranga, Whakatane, Palmerston North, Wanganui, Ohakune and Wellington.
More than $500,000 of damage was done as each committed around 900 fraud, burglary, assault, criminal damage, motor vehicle, drug, and other offences.
Lowe was yesterday sentenced on 176 representative charges, and Wilson on 172.
The pair formed a criminal partnership after meeting in prison in 1999.
They later launched Operation Pig as a vendetta against the officers investigating them.
They hit churches, schools, hospitals, rest-homes, convents, shops and businesses in Auckland from December 1999 to June last year.
They stole credit cards and bought expensive clothing, jewellery, drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, hotel accommodation and the services of prostitutes.
The pair videotaped themselves committing some burglaries, and sometimes dressed in couriers' uniforms.
In February 2000, Lowe and Wilson were inside an Auckland tennis clubrooms when they stumbled across the keys to a $100,000 BMW.
They changed the number plates and used it for several weeks, parking it on Remuera streets to avoid detection. The vehicle is still missing.
In June last year, Lowe and Wilson decided to hit the road.
They hired a campervan and altered its appearance to elude police.
Their first stop was Cambridge, where they stole jewellery and cash.
From there, a trail of burglaries and tagging offences marked their route through the North Island.
On June 10, a bridge was tagged at Huka Falls and a credit card was stolen from Taupo. Three days later, buildings were tagged in Palmerston North.
Credit cards disappeared from Wellington Hospital and Victoria University on June 14, and $15,000 of audio-visual gear was stolen from a Lower Hutt store the next day.
On June 18, they tried to deliver cannabis to an associate at Rimutaka Prison before heading north to Ohakune, where further drug offences were committed.
Lowe and Wilson not only eluded police, they terrorised them.
Threatening and abusive phone calls were made to the investigating officers , who installed alarms in their homes.
Members of the public were also harassed, including one elderly Wellington man who was led to believe Lowe and Wilson were police officers about to arrest him.
But at 9.15 pm on Friday, June 30, Operation Pig came to an end.
In true Hollywood style, a high-speed getaway in Whakatane was followed by Lowe trying to escape on foot from a nearby motel. Both he and Wilson were caught.
Canterbury University criminologist Dr Greg Newbold said the pair were probably highly intelligent and with a great sense of humour.
"They've played out a fantasy which you see in the movies. They're like Bonnie and Clyde, Jessie James, Thelma and Louise," he said.
Defence lawyer David Niven said both had drug and alcohol problems and he admitted that prison was "inevitable."
Dr Newbold suggested the pair should now write a book and make some honest money out of their road trip.
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