No one was admitting responsibility yesterday after a triple murderer stole into New Zealand and lived in the Bay of Plenty for two weeks.
Archie "Mad Dog" McCafferty, 53, was removed quietly by police from a Kawerau house on Friday night, after his entry to the country wentunchallenged this month.
The Scotsman, who spent most of his life in Australia, was to have appeared in court on immigration charges but agreed instead to be repatriated to Britain on Saturday.
Embarrassed police and immigration officials had no idea the man who slaughtered three innocent people in drug-induced "revenge" for his baby son's accidental death in 1973 had come here, apparently under his own name.
Alarm bells rang when his wife, Mandy Queen, arrived legally from Australia a few days ago.
Her visit triggered Interpol inquiries that tracked McCafferty to Kawerau, where she had joined him.
A spokesman for Interpol, Detective Sergeant Stuart Mills from the police commissioner's office in Wellington, said McCafferty had been "very co-operative".
Although a police escort accompanied him on the flight at the request of Immigration, he was "not in irons."
Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel could not be contacted, but service spokesman Ian Smith said Immigration would normally rely on police information "to pick up someone like this at the border".
But police could not pass on information they did not have, said Mr Mills. McCafferty was obviously assessed on his completed immigration form and allowed through.
The law requires people to list any convictions on the form.
McCafferty, once considered among the most violent prisoners the Australian penal system had ever seen, posed no danger while he was here and was arrested for failing to declare his convictions on immigration forms.
Kawerau Mayor Malcolm Campbell was bemused when word of the capture got out but wanted to know: "If someone can slip through the immigration system with those sort of credentials, who else could be here in our country?"
