Key to solving kidnap stalling for time

After the abduction for ransom of an Auckland boy this week, a former detective recalls a similar case. TONY WALL reports.

Secrecy and delays were two crucial tactics used by police in one of the country's most celebrated ransom kidnapping cases.

The officer who led the investigation into the snatching of a millionaire businessman's wife 15 years ago has given an insight into how police respond to ransom kidnappings - which are rare in New Zealand - after a 6-year-old Auckland boy was snatched this week.

The Taiwanese boy, seized at knifepoint from his parents at their West Harbour home, was held for nearly two days until a $500,000 ransom was left beside the Northwestern Motorway.

The boy was later found unharmed and two men were arrested.

Police have refused to say exactly how they made the arrests, at the men's home in Henderson, because it would blow their investigation method.

But Hamilton-based former Detective Chief Inspector Rex Miller has revealed to the Herald details of how he and his team caught the men who kidnapped Jenny Gallagher in 1987 and held her for ransom.

Mrs Gallagher was abducted at gunpoint from her Hamilton home on February 2, 1987. She was held in bush for two nights before police rescued her.

Mr Miller, now retired, said the kidnapping squad "flew by the seat of our pants" as the hours ticked by. Even though there had been a similar ransom case four years before when Oamaru schoolgirl Gloria Kong was snatched, there was no blueprint for police to follow.

The incident began when two Hamilton fitter welders, Fred Orrell, then 54, and Dean Ronald Cree, then 24, rang Mrs Gallagher, wife of prominent Hamilton businessman Bill Gallagher, posing as writers for a British magazine composing an article on successful Waikato families.

Mrs Gallagher, whose husband was overseas, agreed to an interview. When the pair turned up at her house, they pointed a shotgun at her.

She was bundled into her car and driven to a bush campsite at Te Pahu, 20km southwest of Hamilton, where she was kept bound and blindfolded.

A ransom demand was phoned to the business of Mrs Gallagher's brother-in-law, John Gallagher. He immediately called an old friend in the police.

Mr Miller said the kidnappers demanded $500,000 in used bank notes and $500,000 worth of uncut diamonds. They threatened to kill Mrs Gallagher if police were called.

Because of this, Mr Miller said, police decided on a complete media blackout and for the first 12 hours only two police officers knew what was going on.

"We knew we had to hit it hard the next morning, so I put out a notice to all staff that there was going to be a major operation. I made it look like it was going to be a drug operation, and they all had to be in the office at 5.30 the next morning."

All available criminal investigation branch and uniformed staff were called in, as well as technical experts from Telecom. Everyone was sworn to secrecy.

All negotiations were done by Mr Gallagher, who was with a police officer the whole time and was told what to say. Mr Gallagher later said he tried to act "a bit slow, like a bungling idiot", to buy time.

Mr Miller said police "acquired" the cash from a private source, but could not get the diamonds. "We had the money ready to go, or a downpayment, but we were reluctant to let it go in case it disappeared - that's the fear you've got."

All ransom calls were made from phone boxes. Because only part of Hamilton was covered by an automatic exchange, police officers with radios had to sit in three manual exchanges waiting for the calls.

When the calls were traced, police would swoop on the phone box but arrived too late.

Mr Miller said Mr Gallagher continued to delay the kidnappers, saying it was difficult to get the money. A language expert was called in to try to trace the South African-British accented voice of one of the men.

The key, Mr Miller said, was to draw the men out. It was decided to ask them to collect medication and fresh clothes for Mrs Gallagher from a rubbish bin in Dinsdale Rd.

The trap worked. When a man arrived to collect the bundle, he was watched by a number of plainclothes officers. An aircraft buzzed overhead and the man was tailed to the bush hideout.

"They heard the plane and they thought it was the police looking for drug plots, they didn't know we were on to them," Mr Miller said. "They were a couple of bumblers - they weren't arch crims."

The armed offenders squad entered the bush, finding Cree quickly and Orrell a few hours later. Mrs Gallagher was found still blindfolded but well.

The case has become part of the police training programme, and Mr Miller has spoken about it at Police College.

Orrell and Cree each got nine years' jail.

Meanwhile, Detective Sergeant George Koria, the officer in charge of the Asian Crime Squad in Auckland, said in Asian countries crimes such as kidnapping and extortion were commonplace.

But because people were afraid of threats to their families they often paid up without reporting incidents to the police.

A Hong Kong businessman had recently paid HK$1 million ($290,000 ) to get his son back without going to the police, said Mr Koria.

In Auckland between one and three cases of kidnapping involving Asians are reported each month. Those taken are often students.

National Party MP Pansy Wong said part of the cure was to raise the awareness of Asians coming to New Zealand that such crimes were not tolerated here and that they must report them.