FOR THE RECORD - Column

Crewe review will still leave pall of doubt
When is an investigation not an investigation?
Apparently, when it involves one of this country's most notorious unsolved murders.
Something smells unmistakably "off" about the announcement by police this week of their intention to take another look at the double murder of Harvey and Jeanette Crewe, killed in their Pukekawa farmhouse south of Auckland in 1970.
Arthur Allan Thomas was twice convicted of the murders, before being pardoned in 1979 after spending nine years in prison. No one else has ever been charged over the deaths.
It's not just that this week's police announcement comes hot on the heels of the Crewes' daughter Rochelle finally breaking her silence to ask for the authorities to re-open the case.
As always, the devil is in the detail.
Announcing the review decision this week, deputy police commissioner Rob Pope (who should know a thing or two about controversial murder investigations, having led the inquiry into the Marlborough Sounds disappearance of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope) said while a senior investigator had been appointed to go through the file, they were not re-opening or re-investigating the case.
Issues of semantics aside, what is this review exactly expected to achieve?
It certainly won't go any way towards clearing the pall of doubt and suspicion that has hung over the Crewe murders ever since Mr Thomas' pardoning and a Royal Commission of Inquiry which found that police planted evidence on his property.
In the 1980s, then Solicitor-General Paul Neazor elected not to lay charges against two detectives, Bruce Hutton and Len Johnston, after concluding they had planted the evidence, including two .22 rifle cartridges.
The issue of the planted evidence sits at the centre of the poisoned heart of the Crewe case.
Fast forward 30 years, and the reputation of this country's police force, already battered and bruised over historic sex allegations, will in no way be redeemed by this Clayton's inquiry.
Short of an arrest being made, the only way any resolution will be reached in this matter will be if a full investigation into the police actions surrounding the Crewe case is conducted independent of the police themselves.
Otherwise, given the history of the police treatment of the case, doubts will remain and the integrity of the review findings, whatever they are, will forever be questioned.
Any review process, even while not being described as a re-opening of the case, needs to be kept well clear of even the faintest inference of a police conflict of interest.
Nevertheless, there's no doubt that this review will be keenly watched by the public. The Crewe case has fascinated the country for years and its circumstances are unique.
The decision by the police to take another look at the Crewe file is a victory for the Crewes' daughter Rochelle, who herself sits at the centre of the mystery, albeit as an unaware participant.
After the Crewes were murdered, Rochelle Crewe was found crying in a cot five days after her parents were last seen alive.
She was just 18 months old at the time.
Had Ms Crewe not made the recent decision to speak out, coupled with the publication of a new book into her parents' death, it's doubtful police would have agreed to examine the Crewe file.
But in the end, police had little choice - they had to be seen to be doing something, as the public mood was swiftly moving in behind calls for the case to be re-examined.
As for Mr Thomas, he remains sceptical of the move, and who can blame him?
Sadly, like the recent inquest into the death of the Kahui twins, rather than giving any real answers this review is likely to instead provide nothing but more confusion and speculation.