KEY POINTS:
Convicted cocaine dealer Robin Muller needed a place to hide from American authorities - so he fled to Tonga, then Samoa and finally to his auntie's house in Otahuhu, South Auckland.
He had travelled 11,000km from the city where he was involved in a drug racket that had
dealt up to 150kg of cocaine, which has a street value today in New Zealand of $45 million, back to his childhood home. His auntie, Priscilla Kaho, welcomed him back, not knowing that there was a warrant out for his arrest signed by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Muller, 56, was sought by special agents after failing to front up at a Washington court for sentencing in 1995 on a drug-supplying charge that carried a minimum term of 10 years imprisonment and a maximum of life.
The former South Auckland railway worker fled from the US to Tonga, hiding with relatives, and worked on a farm 11km from the capital Nuku'alofa.
For more than five years, his secret of having fled America was known only to those closest to him - but rumour spread that he was wanted, and Tongan officials issued a warrant for his arrest. The former Blockhouse Bay School pupil - whose auntie remembers him growing up with the dream of becoming a police officer - used a cousin's passport to relocate to Samoa, where friends in Apia harboured him for the next five years. He obtained a Samoan driver's license, the same one he would later tell a New Zealand detective was his own. But by August 2005, a decade after he originally went missing, the net was closing.
The US Marshals Service learned that Muller was in Western Samoa, and a deputy marshal was dispatched to find him, "but he could not be located", according to American court documents.
That Christmas, back in Otahuhu, Auntie Kaho received a telephone call from Muller with news that he was flying home. "I was so happy. He said the drugs thing was all sorted out, I was crying with happiness," Kaho, 67, told the Herald on Sunday.
The devoted Catholic, who broke down last week when talking about the boy she raised as her own son, was unaware Muller had paid $150 to an RSA punter in Samoa in exchange for a passport in the name of deceased man Solofa Milo. "I never knew when he came here that it wasn't his passport; I always want him to be a good person."
Waiting on the border at Auckland International Airport was a Customs officer who stamped the Milo passport with a three-month visitor permit.
It is believed that once in New Zealand, Muller lived the simple life, working as a painter and relying on a series of false travel documents that allowed him to remain below the radar of frustrated law enforcers. "To look at him, he doesn't look like he would be a criminal, just an older Tongan who was well respected [by] family and community," Detective Sergeant Geoff Baber, a former officer of the Organised Crime Squad, said. Interpol had enlisted Baber to search for Muller after FBI intelligence suggested he was hiding in South Auckland. "He hadn't gone to get a driver's license, he hadn't let Inland Revenue know he was here. He stayed away from getting into trouble and didn't come to anyone's attention." Then, for the first time in 12 years - as a result of Baber's "covert surveillance operation" - a manhunt lasting years and costing thousands concluded. On a morning last June, Detective Sheree Gray pulled Muller's 1988 Toyota Corona over in Glen Innes' infamous "Mad Ave" (renamed Mt Taylor Dr) and asked him for his name and driver's license. "Peter Francis," answered the driver.
Gray politely asked if Robin Muller was the man's real name, to which he conceded defeat. Fifty dollars, a cardholder and a pocket knife were taken from Muller, then a call was made to the FBI to announce victory.
"I don't think he would have been complacent, but he would have been comfortable. After all that time, with no inclination that we were even interested, and then all of a sudden you're driving along one day, get stopped, and low and behold they know who you are, and it's not the name you've given," Baber said.
Forty minutes later, inside the CIB interview room at Auckland Central police station, with the legal right to say nothing to anybody, Muller admitted his movements from the day he fled the US and confessed to buying, obtaining and using travel documents to sneak unnoticed from America to Auckland.
"I met this person that - ah, ah - we talk. It is some stranger I don't even know in Samoa, and he said he can fix me up with a passport. And I gave him money, and he did," Muller told police. He also protested his innocence, claiming: "I don't deserve to go to jail" and "somebody else set me up".
Meanwhile at Auntie Kaho's Jolson Rd home, officers were executing a search warrant - "I nearly died. The police turned up and showed me a [surveillance] photo of Robin and told me about the different names. I never knew anything. I'm very sad because I looked after this one since he was a baby, he's like a son to me," she said.
One of the several lawyers to have represented Muller described his client as "quite an affable, very quiet, nice chap, if you met him you would think he was a normal average guy".
It started out with poker at a casino in Reno: "Just friendly games," is how Elizabeth, 17, Muller's adopted cousin, describes the beginnings of a pathway into drug dealing.
"But he became a professional player, and another guy was paying him to play. I think then he just got caught up with the wrong people."
The FBI claimed that Muller was among a group of 21 arrested on August 17, 1994, after a cooperative investigation with the Spokane Regional Drug Task Force in Washington state.
The investigation showed that James Larsen headed a conspiracy to distribute cocaine in the Spokane region over the 10 years prior to 1994. Muller, who was living in an apartment, was identified as one of Larsen's suppliers.
Baber said because of "the quantities involved and the sort of people Muller was dealing with, I suggest it definitely wasn't a one-off, and he was involved with a criminal enterprise to make substantial money. You can live up the high life in the States, but Otahuhu will always be home.
The story unfolds
1951: Robin Muller is born in Tonga.
1974: Muller is arrested for theft in Auckland.
1980s: Moves to America.
1993: FBI agents launch a covert investigation into cocaine dealing in Spokane, Washington state.
May 19, 1995: Muller pleads guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
May 31, 1995: Muller arrives in Tonga.
September 2000: US officials learn that Muller is in Tonga; the Tongan Court issues an arrest warrant.
August 2005: US officials learn that Muller is in Western Samoa. Officials are unable to locate him.
June 2006: Muller is seen driving in Glen Innes; he is takeninto custody.
The cost of keeping fugitive locked up
Corrections officials have advised the Herald on Sunday that the cost of incarcerating Robin Muller at Mt Eden prison since June last year is $57,049.30 - this includes transportation, food and security arrangements - and the bill will be paid by the New Zealand taxpayer.
Also covered are the prisoner's legal bills. It's estimated that lawyers have so far been paid just under $10,000 in legal aid to act for the Tongan national at extradition proceedings in the District and High Court. Now representing himself, Muller is understood to be preparing to head to the Court of Appeal. If Muller returns to America, authorities there will pay to move him.
