A riddle of ash and bone
Few crimes in New Zealand are as shocking as the grisly killings of eight people at a rural Manawatu¯ property in 1929. Ninety years later, Sam Kilmister retraces the unsolved murders.
It was the perfect crime. When a lonely farmhouse between Himatangi and Rangiotu burnt to the ground one night in September 1929, police found the charred remains of eight bodies. One of them – farmer Thomas Wright – had been shot in the back of his head with a shotgun.
Who pulled the trigger? Who started the fire? Why did three other adults and four children also perish?
Had Thomas Wright gone mad, killing his family and the farmhand before taking his own life? Or was Wright the target, and the others witnesses to his murder, loose ends that needed tying?
The mystery has never been solved.
Among the ruins of the gutted shack were Wright’s wife, Catherine, and their four children. They lived with John Brown Westlake, a wealthy farmer and justice of the peace who owned the property, and Samuel Hewitt Thompson, a 23-year-old farmhand.
Had Catherine and Westlake been having an affair? Or he and Wright?
The bodies of the deceased family were so unidentifiable that police had little to work with during their investigations, but officers ruled out any possibility of suicide.
‘‘What was left of their bodies’’, the Manawatu¯ Times reported,
‘‘could have been packed in a portmanteau.’’
A man who had been convicted of a similar murder was suspected and questioned, but nothing could link him to the scene.
Police combed the Manawatu¯ district in their effort to solve the crime and the coroner even had a special word of commendation for how the constabulary handled the investigation.
However, he believed the answer to the riddle would never be found.
‘‘In all my 25 years as a coroner, I have never had a case more baffling,’’ Alf Fraser said during the inquest at the Foxton Courthouse.
National newspapers ran with the mystery, with headlines such as: ‘‘Eight victims perish in outback blaze’’, ‘‘Unsolved riddle of charred bones in ruins of cottage’’ and ‘‘Tragic fire left ashes of mystery’’.
The shepherd who discovered the fire on Paranui Rd told police it was intense and made fiercer by high winds and a supply of kerosene.
He had smelled smoke long before he reached the farmhouse, which was buried behind several sand hills about 1 kilometre off the road. He rode on, but, a few hours later, he raised the alarm when he saw the cows in a neighbouring paddock hadn’t been milked.
The house had been labelled a ‘‘death trap’’. The only entrance was through the kitchen and Westlake, who owned the property, had nailed the windows shut to keep out intruders.
The victims’ bodies were in three groups. Westlake was five feet from the entrance, the four children were in their bedroom and the remaining bones were in the Wrights’ bedroom.
Judging by the angle of his body, Thomas Wright, who had been shot in the head, was lying or stooping when the bullet went off. Pellets from an empty doublebarrelled shotgun were found in Westlake’s room.
Had there been a murder before the fire? And, if so, who had pulled the trigger?
At the coroner’s inquest, it was established that no stranger had been seen near the property and, according to neighbours, it would be impossible for a stranger to find Westlake’s farm without first asking.
It had been a calculated move, the constabulary ruled.
According to one neighbour, Catherine Wright had become frightened of her husband, an Englishman and returned soldier whose post-war trauma prompted mood swings.
They quarrelled often. Catherine had lived in a large homestead on their previous farm in Rongotea, which they had sold due to growing debt. Now, she was trapped in a cramped cabin with four children and an unpredictable husband.
Theories arose about an inhouse spat that turned fateful, but none were able to be substantiated.
The land has changed hands several times since.
SOLVING THE MURDERS
There are 66 unsolved homicides in New Zealand, dating back to 1914.
It’s unknown exactly how the police pursued the Himatangi investigation, but University of Otago forensic anthropologist Angela Clark says officers would have had few tools in their armoury in 1929.
DNA testing hadn’t been invented and there were no forensic laboratories where evidence could be scientifically analysed.
Instead, they would have looked at the burn pattern on the victims’ bodies. This would have indicated whether the fire caused their death or whether they were killed before it started.
Clark says it is likely the victims were alive when the fire started, based on newspaper descriptions of charred bodies and the children found with clenched fists.
The body contracts under fire and, if the victims were already deceased, that contraction wouldn’t occur.
‘‘Children don’t have large muscles so . . . that means the fire started around the time of death, before rigor mortis set in.’’
The colour of the bone also reveals how long the bodies are in an inferno and whether they have been moved. Other details, such as the bones flaking, fracturing, shrinking and warping also help.
‘‘You would have to think of alternatives. Did they all die in the fire? Did someone light the fire to cover it up? It raises more questions than answers.’’
Clark says the descriptions of a medium-sized hole in Wright’s skull seemed strange, given the significant damage a shotgun typically caused at close range.
LIVING ON PARANUI RD
Five homes, two dairy sheds and several blocks of forestry surround Paranui Rd today.
Resident Ann Swan recalls seeing the chimney to the old farmhouse when she bought a home and 30 hectares on Paranui Rd in 1981.
But the chimney has since been buried and nothing remains of the burnt shack.
Swan learnt of murders from Hilder Pratt, who once owned the land where the farmhouse stood.
‘‘We found out about it when we moved here. We may have all talked about it at one stage.’’
Down the road, David Eaton and his two children have explored surrounding farmland in the hope of stumbling across pieces of the old home. He read of the murders in a book about the history of Foxton in the 1990s.
Eaton, who moved from Wellington 30 years ago to grow trees, says his children were always fascinated with mysteries.
‘‘There were a few less houses here in those days,’’ he said.
‘‘It sounded like a brutal murder and we speculated about where it was but we didn’t get far. If the building was still there it would be a little spooky.’’
Although they stumbled across some concrete ruins in a nearby paddock, Eaton believes they most likely belonged to an old cow shed.