The time I was the Wrong Man
Theatre artistic director Ross Gumbley was watching the news one night in 1996 when an item came on about a strange crime. It was in Palmerston North, where he then lived.
‘‘They started outlining this terrible crime that had happened to [police detective] Brent Garner. His arms had been tied up, his back had been slashed with a razor blade and his house had been burnt down. They said the suspect was tall, heavy set, with dark hair and an English, well-rounded accent,’’ he said. ‘‘And then they put the identikit picture up and I thought: ‘f ...... hell’.’’
The image of the suspect looked almost exactly like Gumbley, right down to the goatee beard he sported at the time.
Gumbley had nothing to do with the crime. The night of the supposed attack in Palmerston North, Gumbley was performing on stage at The Court Theatre in Christchurch. But his friends in Palmerston North started getting visits from police officers asking strange questions.
‘‘I got a call from an old flatmate who said the police had visited and ‘were asking about you’. Another friend rang and said the police had visited and were asking if I was a diabolist and all this sort of stuff.’’
There were strange links between Gumbley and the case. Before the fire, Garner received threatening letters signed in the name of Gilles de Rais, a 15th century serial killer, occultist and inspiration for the French wife murdering folk figure Bluebeard.
Gumbley had played Bluebeard in a production of the play Saint Joan.
‘‘I started to get so freaked out and I am paranoid at the best of times. The police didn’t contact me but I knew they were asking people about me.
‘‘The weirdest thing was I started to feel guilty. It was at that point that I could understand why someone would sign a false confession. Up till then, I always thought that no-one would ever do that. ‘‘It was all a bit spooky.’’ Eventually a police detective rang Gumbley to ask his whereabouts on the night in question.
‘‘I ended the call by saying to him: ‘Gee, I really hope you catch the b ....... ’ I remember thinking that is exactly what a guilty man would say.’’
It eventually emerged that Gumbley was never a serious suspect. Garner later confessed to faking the letters, slashing himself on the back with a razor on a stick, tying his own hands and burning his own house down. The whole attack was faked by Garner so he could claim the insurance money and start a new life without his wife and children. Garner was sentenced to five years in prison in 1996 and released in 1998. He died in 2003.
But the episode gave Gumbley a strange insight into the fate of a recurring character in the films of Alfred Hitchcock – a man wrongly suspected of a bizarre crime.
‘‘If [Garner] had the opportunity to throw me under the bus, if I had been in a lineup and he had picked me out, where could it have ended?’’
Now, Gumbley has teamed up with playwright and dramaturge Allison Horsley to write a black comedy inspired by Hitchcock.
Ropable began life as an adaptation of the 1929 play Rope, which was made into a film starring James Stewart by Hitchcock in 1948. It features two brilliant young men who attempt to commit the perfect murder as a coldly clinical intellectual exercise.
‘‘The content is still fairly cutting-edge. It’s a thrill kill. I thought there has to be some juice in that.’’
Ropable will be performed at The Court Theatre in Christchurch from February 11 to March 4.