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The crime I’ll never forget is a listener.co.nz series where New Zealand police write about cases they’ve investigated which have changed their perspective on life and work. Here, Detective Inspector Rhys Johnston shares his story of investigating the kidnapping, sexual violation and robbery of a young couple honeymooning in New Zealand.
It was 2006, I had recently moved to Northland having worked in the Wellington district for 15 years. I was to be the officer in charge of CIB in Kaikohe, which is quite a change from the big city, but I’d moved because I wanted to live in the Bay of Islands where I could fish and surf.
Call it work-life balance. So, I wasn’t expecting the type of phone call I got in the early hours of a November morning. Two of my detectives had responded to a call about a Dutch couple who related a story so horrendous that quite frankly, it sounded unbelievable.
Things like this just didn’t happen in New Zealand – or at least, they didn’t at the time. These detectives were experienced, trusted staff who knew what they were doing, so for them to call me out in the early hours on a weekend, I knew it had to be something significant.
I was, no doubt, the first of many to hear the account and then ask, “Are you serious? Is this genuine?” As I said, it just didn’t seem that something like this would happen in central Northland or anywhere else in New Zealand. Maybe we were more innocent then, because this has now happened at least twice since.
A young Dutch couple had been on their honeymoon in the Bay of Islands, staying in a campervan at one of our free-camping sites at Haruru Falls, near Waitangi. They told us they’d been kidnapped at gunpoint by two men pretending to be police officers, then driven around for the next three hours while the offenders committed some of the most heinous crimes you could imagine.
The young woman was sexually violated several times, inside the van, while her husband was tied up nearby. They were also threatened with being shot, robbed and forced to withdraw all their funds from ATMs.
At the end of the ordeal, the offenders took significant and callous actions to forensically cover their steps. I can’t go into the details of how they did that for two reasons. First, I want to protect the dignity of the victims and second, I want to prevent others from copying what these guys did. In any event, it was suppressed by the High Court at Whangārei but it did lead to further violation charges.
These men dumped the couple on the side of the road, laughed at them and told them they could “ring the cops now”. So, we swung into action and the following two weeks were the busiest I’ve ever experienced in the job as a small team tried its utmost to find justice for our victims.
All resources gathered
We started Operation Falls and pulled all the Northland district’s resources together to solve this crime, which, at the time, was about 35 staff. It’s hard to describe how motivated the team was to solve this. We felt that we really needed to do so to restore our nation’s reputation as a safe tourist destination. Not to mention keeping the local community safe.
There was intense media pressure, probably not surprising as this was a young couple honeymooning in New Zealand, which was regarded as a safe place for tourists to visit. The Dutch media identified the couple, published photos and went as far as to interview students at the primary school where the woman involved.
The couple were disgusted by how the media in their home country reacted and found our New Zealand media to be far more respectful. Nevertheless, the domestic and international media attention was at fever pitch. It was so intense; I had to hand my mobile phone to one of our station support staff to triage calls and enable me to get on with the inquiry. Calls were coming from all over the world, day, and night.
Calls were also coming from people who wanted to offer up information on who the suspects might be. I distinctly remember one late at night, supposedly from a person with information. No information was provided, but the caller was so upset he just needed to talk and express how sorry he was that something like this had happened in New Zealand. The call was about 10 minutes of crying and two minutes of talking.
It was clear that the impact of this crime was being felt by the public as much as it was by the police staff working on the case. Many current and former police officers, who thought they might know an offender who could fit the profile for such a horrendous attack, contacted us. Every police officer, past and present, felt they needed to do something to help solve this and suggested sex offenders and violent intruder rapists.
Criminal profilers
At this point, we asked for help from Detective Sergeant Dave Henwood. He’s retired now, but helped establish the country’s criminal profiling unit after finding the so-called South Auckland serial rapist Joseph Thompson and the serial rapist Malcolm Rewa.
He and his team reviewed the case and helped with further interviews of our victims to get greater insights into the offending. This input significantly changed the direction of our inquiry. We’d been focused on the sexual aspect of the attacks; but the profilers told us to instead look at the dishonesty offending – the theft of the victims’ property and forcing them to draw money from ATMs.
This changed our thinking and approach. We now looked not just at sex offenders, but at those who had convictions for dishonesty and aggravated robbery. It took a solid week of meticulous scene examination, area inquiries and interviews to start to gain traction on this case.
By now, we’d also found the van. Examining it was challenging because it was essentially a house on wheels with everything the couple owned in it and – once again, this was suppressed – the steps taken by the offenders to deal with forensic evidence meant there were extra health and safety challenges.
At the same time, we tried our very best to care for this young couple whose dream honeymoon trip to New Zealand had been shattered. The Far North community, and members of police staff, went out of their way to try to help them get back on their feet. Everyone had the same message for them, asking them not to judge our country and our society due to the actions of two evil men.
Victim support held an appeal, which raised funds for them to continue their holiday. We had taken their van, all their belongings were in it, and we even took the clothes they were wearing on the day. Local people, including some police staff, put them up for free while others offered them accommodation, travel and excursions right across the country.
Time and attention paid off
While everyone pulled more than their weight, several police staff deserved special attention for their efforts and skills.
Detective Mark Dalzell (now retired) completed the scene examination on the campervan over five days. He was so thorough and patient, and in the end it paid dividends. Despite the extreme lengths that these offenders went to to cover their tracks forensically, Mark was still able to link one of the suspects to the van.
Detective Peter Hayes (also retired) spent several days with the victims, reconstructing their ordeal and identifying other scenes which could be examined. His efforts led to the recovery of a discarded, half-smoked joint. Thanks to DNA profiling, we identified the second man involved.
Detective Sergeant Russell Price had previously dealt with one of the suspects. Because he’d treated him fairly and respectfully in the past, as Russell always did, we knew he was the right person to interview the main suspect. The video confession that followed was the most comprehensive admission I’ve ever seen. We ended up arresting both men on the same day.
After the interviews and the initial court process, we debriefed as a team to reflect on the investigation. When you’ve dealt with an investigation into a crime as cruel and sadistic as this, it’s important to put the tools down for the day, have a drink and a talk. You can’t just trundle off home. Some of the stuff we were dealing with wasn’t the sort of thing you’d talk to family about.
Looking around the room that evening was one of the moments that stays with you and still keeps me in the job nearly 20 years on. I appreciated the immense efforts that everyone had gone to to solve this case and it felt like we had restored some of our nation’s mana by catching the people responsible, being able to say to the world that this behaviour won’t ever be tolerated here.
The trial was held the following year. One man got preventive detention, meaning no parole, and the other spent about nine years in prison. He was released in 2014, but the following year was arrested, charged with manslaughter and later found guilty. He remains in prison.
