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Police don't often turn up to photograph a man's coffin as it is about to be laid in the ground. But they did for Kimball Robert Brisco Johnson.
The underworld figure tormented the police all his life, from his early days as a young thug through to his
last days as a cancer victim hinting publicly at his involvement in unsolved crimes.
So the police were there to see him off this week. Officially, they photographed the burial service in Gisborne because of the big turnout of seasoned criminals. Unofficially, many were pleased to see him go.
To his friends, Johnson, 58, was the ultimate loveable rogue. To his foes, he was the ugly face of crime.
He was the young wildman who "ran" the East Coast for 20 years. In Auckland "The Enforcer" became a debt collector par excellence, a stand-over man who instilled fear.
He built a multimillion-dollar fortune as a wheeler-dealer in houses, diamonds, paint, farm animals, pubs, boats, aircraft - including a Mig21 - crayfish, cheap rum and bad beer. The list goes on.
The father-of-five became a philanthropist, giving money and opportunity to those who needed it.
And of late Johnson was a would-be country music star, with 800 songs and nine albums.
But nothing can mask his violent deeds. In a death-bed interview with the Herald on Sunday this month, he was asked if he had ever killed anyone.
"Not to my knowledge, I never have," Johnson responded. "I've come close a couple of times and I've sat there and thought 'I hope he doesn't die'."
Johnson said there was one incident that "came pretty close to it" but "I don't want every cop in Auckland standing at my bedside asking me things".
Detective Inspector Stu Allsopp-Smith, who oversees Auckland's policing of organised crime, refused to comment when asked if there were any outstanding investigations involving Johnson. Yet privately, the police contempt for him is clear.
Senior detectives who dealt with Johnson described him as someone who kept his hands clean, getting others to do his dirty work for him. One said news of the death had "made for a great year" so far.
Yet his "metre-long" list of convictions involves nothing major.
His friends are a different story. There was a funeral notice in the Herald from "all the brothers from Paremoremo Maxi and west jail", signed by jailed methamphetamine cook Brett "Donut" Allison and a member of the Hells Angels.
His coffin was carried into his Auckland service on Monday by members of the Head Hunters gang.
Notorious armed robber Leslie Maurice Green - who terrorised bank staff with his Magnum .44 revolver - was among the mourners, having been paroled from a 15-year jail term late last year.
Johnson and Green lived together for a time, and one story tells of how Johnson and a shotgun went out the back of their home while Green made tea for armed police in the lounge.
"Some would say Kimball was a loveable rogue," Green said this week.
"I would say more loveable than rogue. He was a good fella."
Head Hunters leader and convicted murderer Wayne Doyle also praised his friend, saying "a lot of people are going to miss him".
Some people won't miss him at all. They spoke anonymously this week, telling of the way he had threatened them or even their young children.
One investigator talked of getting past Johnson's henchmen to serve papers on him, only to find the door was locked behind him, two rottweilers were brought in, and Johnson told him: "You got in, but you're not getting out."
At the All Saints Anglican church in Howick on Monday the vicar used the shorthand of "colourful" to describe his life.
A United States flag was laid over his coffin, although the only things American about him were his music, motorcycles and cowboy hat.
The coffin was then loaded on to a gun carriage and a cowboy rode in front of the cart as it set off down the main street of Howick.
Three venues in Gisborne cancelled bookings for the wake once they learned who it was for.
The police turned up first at the service, and then in numbers at the wake.
Johnson's oldest daughter Silvi put this down to "small-town syndrome". It was no more than a rocking good party, in keeping with Johnson's request for a wake befitting his lifestyle, she said.
She described an "eventful life", with her father taken away by cancer in just five weeks.
While she would never paint him as a saint, Silvi said her father was nowhere near as bad as many - including himself - made out.
"He was a modern-day Robin Hood," she said.
So in death Johnson will remain an enigma, one man to some, a completely different one to others.
At his Auckland service, one speaker said he asked Johnson straight out: "Were you to die today, would you go up to heaven or down to hell?"
Johnson smiled, and said: "I'll see you in heaven."
- additional reporting by David Fisher
