Arthur Allan Thomas

Arthur Allan Thomas (born 2 January 1938) is a New Zealand man who was wrongfully convicted twice of the murders of Harvey and Jeannette Crewe in June 1971. Thomas was raised on his parents' 272 acre farm at Mercer Ferry Road, near Pukekawa, eight miles away from the Crewe's farm. On 22 June 1970, police received a phone call describing the Crewe's bloodstained house. When police arrived, they found the Crewe's 18 month old baby, Rochelle in a neglected state, but no dead bodies. Subsequently, there was considerable speculation as to whether the baby had been fed in the five days before she was found.

Mrs Crewe's body was found in the Waikato River two months later with bullet wounds to the head. Mr Crewe's body was also found in the river about a month after that. Initially, the police suspected Jeannette's father, Lenard Demler, who lived alone, had no alibi, and was labelled by one police officer as a 'psycho.' However, when placed under pressure to solve the case more quickly, the police switched their attention on Mr Thomas.

At his trial, the Crown alleged Thomas, who was married at the time, was infatuated with Mrs Crewe, made his way to the their farm house on a stormy night, and shot the couple with his .22 rifle in a fit of jealousy. Thomas said he was home with his wife, Vivien, and his cousin, Peter Thomas at the time of the murders. Vivien and Peter both corroborated his alibi.

Four months after the initial investigation, the police claimed they found a cartridge in the Crewe's garden which fitted the calibre of Thomas rifle and presented it as evidence at his trial that he was the murderer. He was found guilty, but appealed. He was retried in March 1973 and found guilty a second time. The case was controversial, and the subject of much speculation in the media. It was not until journalists Pat Booth and David Yallop conducted their own investigations and published books about the case that, nine years later, Adams-Smith, QC was appointed to conduct a further review. He wrote two reports, the second of which concluded the verdicts were unsafe. Following revelations that crucial evidence against him had been faked by the police, in 1979 Thomas was granted a Royal Pardon.

In 1980, the Government ordered a Royal Commission of Inquiry into his convictions which concluded that Detective Inspector Bruce Hutton and Detective Len Johnston were responsible for planting the cartridge in the garden to incriminate Thomas. Thomas was subsequently awarded NZ$950,000 in compensation for his 9 years in prison and loss of earnings.

In 2010, Rochelle Crewe, asked police to reopen the investigation in a bid to find out who killed her parents. The Police refused, but Deputy Commissioner, Rob Pope, agreed they would conduct a "thorough analysis and assessment of the Crewe homicide file in an endeavour to answer questions raised by Rochelle Crewe". The police report acknowledged mistakes had been made in the police investigation, but still suggested that Thomas was responsible. In May 2012, independent counsel to the police inquiry, David Jones, QC, submitted a 28-page report in which he describes the brass 22 cartridge case and agreed with Adams-Smith that the verdicts against Thomas were unsafe.

Campaign to overturn the convictions

Thomas' conviction in 1971 led to an outcry among his wife and family and elements in the local farming community. That led to the formation of the Arthur Thomas Retrial Committee which campaigned to have his convictions overturned. The campaign was assisted by the work of many journalists. After the first trial, Terry Bell, then deputy editor of the Auckland Star Saturday edition, had to resign in order to publish the 92 page booklet Bitter Hill, - which outlined inconsistencies in the prosecution's case - when his editor told him "it is not the role of the newspapers to attempt to try the courts".

The booklet helped to provide the impetus for a national campaign that eventually led to a controversial retrial where the jury was housed incommunicado with police in a local hotel. Peter Williams, QC said the police wined and dined the jury members and the Justice Department picked up the bill. The jury even attended a boxing match with the police and went to cabarets on Friday nights. At the end of the trial, Thomas was found guilty again.

Role of journalists & Dr Jim Sprott

Pat Booth, the assistant editor of the Auckland Star, attended the retrial and became concerned. He worked closely with forensic scientist, Dr Jim Sprott, who asserted that the cartridge case crucial to the conviction had been planted at the scene by police. As part of a seven-year campaign to have Thomas' convictions overturned, in 1975 Booth published a book, Trial by Ambush.

In 1978, British investigative author David Yallop published Beyond Reasonable Doubt, which was subsequently made into a film of the same name. Yallop's book was a scathing attack on the way the Police had handled the case, and called on the Muldoon government for a pardon.

Muldoon ordered Auckland Robert Adams-Smith, QC to investigate, after which Thomas was pardoned in 1979. Shortly thereafter, a Royal Commission was established which explicitly stated that detectives had used ammunition and a rifle taken from his farm to fabricate false evidence against him. A 2014 police review of the case acknowledged police misconduct was probably the explanation for the key evidence against Thomas: a spent cartridge case.

Royal Commission of inquiry

Report of the Royal Commission to Inquire into the Circumstances of the Convictions of Arthur Allan Thomas for the Murders of David Harvey Crewe and Jeanette Lenore Crewe; 1980

A Royal Commission of Inquiry was established, headed by retired New South Wales Justice Robert Taylor. The hearings were contentious, marked by angry exchanges between the judge and police lawyers and witnesses. In the end, the Commission "rejected entirely the notion that any of the evidence put forward... established a motive by Arthur Allan Thomas to kill the Crewes".

The Commission found that the foreman at Thomas' second trial, Bob Rock was personally acquainted with Detective Sergeant Hughes, who gave evidence in the second trial; they had known each other for years after serving in the navy together. This information was not made available to Thomas' defence team. The Commission was critical of this omission and considered that this issue on its own was sufficient to justify describing the second trial a miscarriage of justice.

It also declared that Thomas had been wrongfully charged and convicted and found among other improprieties, that "Mr Hutton and Mr [Len] Johnston planted the shell case in the Crewe garden and they did so to manufacture evidence that Mr Thomas' rifle had been used for the killings."

The cartridge was found four months and ten days after the area had already been subjected to one of the most intensive police searches ever undertaken - and was said by police to have come from a rifle belonging to Thomas. The Royal Commission said: "We consider that this explains why Mr Hutton described shellcase 350 as containing blue-black corrosion when in fact it did not." It was later established that the case was "clean" and uncorroded when it was found, which was inconsistent with having lain in the garden, exposed to weather and dirt for more than four months.

Police response

The Solicitor-General, Paul Neazor, recommended against prosecuting Hutton and Johnston as a number police officers disputed the claims that the cartridge had been planted, such that it would be too difficult to prove the case against the two detectives. Both men who planted the shell are now dead. Johnston died in 1978. Bruce Hutton, 83, died in Middlemore Hospital in April 2013.

Chris Birt, author of All the Commissioner's Men reported that the police refused to accept the Royal Commission findings; they leaked evidence from closed sessions of the Royal Commission to the media to try and discredit Thomas. They sought an injunction in the High Court to try to halt the Royal Commission's proceedings and openly attacked its findings once they were issued.

In 2013, in the process of their review of the case, the police interviewed Mr Thomas again, as well as two of his brothers, his sister and her husband. In the course of these interviews, the police told Thomas' sister, Margaret Stuckey, that "The Thomas rifle had not been eliminated from the inquiry, that the Crewes were murdered by Arthur Thomas' gun." Mr Stuckey said: "They said to us more than once that the bulk of the evidence still pointed towards Arthur."

A criminal profiler employed by the police as part of their review found up to six criminal acts against the Crewes in the four years before their murders. They included a burglary in 1967, a fire at the Crewes' house in 1968, and the arson of a hay barn in 1969 - the year before the murders. The profiler said the pattern showed "escalating criminal progression. Someone did not like them and their hatred was evolving over time. The burglary and fires were precursor offences by the perpetrator of the murders."

In 2014, the police published their 328-page review of the original investigation, at a cost of $400,000 to New Zealand taxpayers. It cleared all other suspects and implied that Arthur Thomas remained a police suspect.

Commissioner's comments at detective's funeral

At Hutton's funeral in 2013, Deputy Commissioner Mike Bush praised Mr Hutton and said he was known for having "integrity beyond reproach". An editorial in the New Zealand Herald said: "that was clearly absurd. It was also an unthinking or calculated insult to Mr Thomas, who spent nine years in prison before being pardoned". Thomas, then age 75, responded by saying the police were engaged in "a blatant cover up".

Independent review

David Jones QC was appointed by the police to provide guidance to the police review team. His report, released on 30 July 2014, concluded "In my view, there was sufficient evidence for a prosecution to have been taken against Bruce Hutton based on the available material. It does not appear that there was any real inquiry by the 1970 investigation team into any persons other than Arthur Thomas".

Subsequent events

In 2009 Arthur Allan Thomas travelled to Christchurch to support David Bain, who also had criminal convictions against him overturned. In 2010 he collaborated with investigative journalist Ian Wishart on the book Arthur Allan Thomas. Wishhart suggested that Sergeant Johnston may have been responsible for the murders.

In 2012, Keith Hunter published The Case of the Missing Bloodstain in which he pointed the finger at Jeannette Crewe's father, Lenard Demler - who the police initially suspected - for the murders. Demler's wide died four months before the murders which occurred on 17 June 1970. This was one day after Jeannette Crewe signed the document which made her Trustee for her mother's Will. According to Chris Birt, this meant half of Demler's farm and $12,000 of shares he had paid for were now controlled by Jeanette Crewe. Demler died in 1992 and so the police were unable to interview him again when they conducted their review in 2014.

In late 2019 Thomas, then aged 81, faced one charge of rape and four of indecent assault against two women. The alleged offending occurred many years earlier. Thomas pleaded not guilty and elected trial by jury. The Defence claimed the charges were fabricated and motivated by money. The jury failed to reach a verdict and was discharged on 28 June 2021.

On 14 October 2021 Crown Prosecutor Charlie Piho told the Manukau District Court the Crown wished to continue with the prosecution. However, in September 2022, a stay of prosecution was ordered in response to Thomas now being considered unfit to stand trial due to deteriorating mental health. This in effect ended the prosecution.

Reputational damage to the justice system

In 2012, Keith Hunter said the royal commission finding that our police force framed Arthur Allan Thomas introduced a deep disillusionment, and undermined confidence in police. He says that suspicion of the justice system now exists in the cases of Peter Ellis, Scott Watson, Mark Lundy, John Barlow, Rex Haig, David Tamihere and others.

In 2015, Judy Chu analysed the role of the police, the judges and the jury in the Thomas case and determined that "the conduct of actors within the courts inhibited the fair administration justice and as a result, exposed themselves to profound derision." She noted that:

• the police and the prosecution employed unfair tactics, attempted to fabricate evidence about exhibit 350 and were solely interested in the preservation of their reputations which had been undermined by the extensive litigation;
• that the judiciary was devoted to defending and maintaining the guilty verdict which "rendered the appeals process virtually useless."
• and that evidence showed the jury was also affected by the undeclared relationship between the jury foreman and a Crown witness, and the development of favourable crown-jury relations during the second trial. As a result, the jury was far from impartial.

Chu concluded that the Arthur Allan Thomas case saw public trust in New Zealand’s criminal justice system diminish dramatically. And had it not been for the intervention of Prime Minister Rob Muldoon, Thomas would not have been freed in 1979.

See also

• Beyond Reasonable Doubt, a 1980 film about the conviction of Thomas
• All the Commissioner's Men - the case of Arthur Allan Thomas, Chris Birt
• Crime in New Zealand

Further reading

• Bell, Terry (1972). Bitter Hill: Arthur Thomas—the case for a retrial. Auckland: Avante-Garde Publishing.
• Booth, Pat (1975). Trial by Ambush: the fate of Arthur Thomas. Wellington: South Pacific Press.
• Yallop, David A. (1978). Beyond Reasonable Doubt. Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-23667-1.
• Birt, Chris (2001). The Final Chapter. Auckland: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-100629-3.
• Hunter, Keith (April 2012). The Case of the Missing Bloodstain : Inside an incompetent and corrupt police inquiry: the truth of the Crewe murders. Auckland: Hunter Productions Ltd. ISBN 978-0-473-19646-2.

External links

• Article by Pat Booth in the New Zealand Listener
• Report urging Police to reopen the case in 2006 Based on Chris Birt's investigation into the identity of the unknown woman.
• Report of the Royal Commission to Inquire into the Circumstances of the Convictions of Arthur Allan Thomas for the Murders of David Harvey Crewe and Jeanette Lenore Crewe 1980
• Investigative journalist Pat Booth 40 years on from the Crewe Murders and what he thinks really happened