Massacre scars linger
As the 80th anniversary looms for one of our most notorious mass shootings, Amy Wright discovers a community still reluctant to talk.
The winter of 1941 was a wet one in Ko¯ whitirangi, a remote valley on the West Coast. The relentless rain had made farming difficult and the cows at Stanley and Dorothy Graham’s farm were looking thin. Graham had been threatening his neighbours for months. It was a household under severe stress, but no help came.
Instead, as New Zealanders fought in a war on the other side of the world, the pressure at the farm erupted in shocking violence.
In a confrontation with four policemen, Stanley Graham, a well-known member of the community, shot and killed Constable Ted Best, Sergeant William Cooper, Constable Percy Tulloch, and Constable Frederick Jordan.
He also wounded civilian George Ridley who tried to help the officers (Ridley died of his wounds in 1942).
Graham fled into thick bush, returning the next evening to shoot and kill two members of the Home Guard who were guarding his home, Richard Coulson and Gregory Hutchison.
Graham was wounded in the second confrontation, but stayed on the run in the rugged bush a further 11 days, triggering the country’s biggest manhunt.
He was finally shot down by Auckland constable James Quirke, alongside Ko¯ whitirangi farmer Henry Growcott. Graham died in hospital in Hokitika the following morning.
The 80th anniversary of the massacre, considered New Zealand’s first mass murder , is this October, but reluctance to discuss the incident means there is little local acknowledgement.
Visitors to nearby Hokitika will not find any direction to the police memorial at Ko¯ whitirangi, at the site of the Grahams’ property.
Only locals know about Graham’s grave in the Hokitika Cemetery, which is well-tended and where flowers are often left.
A stained-glass window dedicated to Constable Best sits in storage in Hokitika with an unknown future after the hall it was installed in was demolished.
Former Tasman district police commander Grant O’Fee, now retired, was surprised at the lack of acknowledgment of the murdered policemen when he took on the job in 2000.
O’Fee, a history enthusiast, had interest in the massacre through his previous work with police tactical training.
‘‘I went looking, to see if I could find anything. I was directed to a little hall at Kaniere. It was a dirty wet day. I found the hall and there was a foundation stone in memory of those who were killed. Just as I got out of the car to look a truck drove past and splashed mud all over it and I thought ‘bloody hell, we’ve got to be able to do better than this. It’s deserving of something better.’.’’
O’Fee went on to work with retired policeman Barry Thomson and other groups to establish the large memorial at the scene of the shootings in Ko¯ whitirangi in 2004.
The Stanley Graham case had a lasting impact on New Zealand police, he says.
‘‘It’s my belief – others would disagree – that the shooting of Stan Graham cast a huge shadow over New Zealand police as far as our tactical use of firearms goes.’’
O’Fee is referring to the public backlash Constable Quirke experienced. Many had felt at the time police should have merely wounded Graham to bring him in.
Awareness of that backlash is believed to have influenced some police officers’ willingness to shoot armed, dangerous offenders in some instances, O’Fee believes.
‘‘Stan Graham has had an impact, just how big I don’t think anyone really knows, but it has echoed down through a few decades. Obviously, no-one joins the police to kill people, it’s a terrible decision.’’
However, officers needed to have a greater feeling of confidence in that situation, to protect the public and themselves, he says.
‘‘We can’t just stand there and wait to be shot.’’ More than 100 people, including many relatives of Graham’s victims, attended the memorial’s unveiling in 2004, O’Fee recalls.
‘‘They were really grateful, they thought it was a good thing that something was finally done. There was a lot of emotion there.’’
O’Fee said it was rumoured that one of Graham’s two children, who witnessed the massacre, attended the ceremony, but that has not been confirmed. Since the memorial was installed, police have held a remembrance service there each year.
The reluctance of locals to discuss or commemorate the massacre is likely due to sensitivity towards the relatives of both Graham and his victims still living in the district.
A Kokatahi resident, who asked not to be named, was nine in 1941 and remembers the shootings well. The Grahams had a daughter her age.
‘‘We lived near Mt Graham, which had a family link for Stanley. Police were concerned he might return there, so we had to stay with our aunt and uncle,’’ she says.
‘‘I remember being driven home to milk our cows with guns in the car. I remember feeling nervous.’’
Times were very different in 1941, she says. ‘‘He was a very sick man. It had been a very wet season on the farm, his stock were not being fed properly, but he accused his neighbours of poisoning them. It wouldn’t happen today, someone would have realised, and he would have had help.’’
She recalls an element of sympathy in the community for Graham despite the horrific impact of his actions. She believed he had walked many miles across the valley, affected by gangrene and delirium.
‘‘He never bothered anyone other than those that were on his property. I think my father felt sorry for him, and other people too.’’
Locals believed Graham’s ‘‘highly strung’’ wife had not helped her husband’s mental state.
Beryl Agnew’s father, Henry Growcott, was present when Graham was finally shot by police.
Growcott and Quirke had spotted him crossing a fence near Growcott’s farm.
Using a .303 rifle, Quirke shot Graham, blowing him off the fence.
Agnew recalls her father saying that if Quirke had missed, he didn’t know what would have happened, as Graham was still armed.
As he lay wounded, Graham told the men he could have shot more people, which Growcott had believed meant he had the opportunity to shoot, but chose not to.
During the manhunt Growcott had been tasked with feeding his neighbour’s chickens. He carried on to work on another farm. He left the chickens’ eggs and returned to collect them on the way back, only to find the eggs gone.
‘‘Stan had been watching him.’’
It was a widely-held view that Dorothy Graham had been involved in the initial confrontation, and had shot Constable Best in the hand.
She and her two young children moved to Canterbury, changing their last name. Their
Ko¯ whitirangi house was burnt down soon after. Dorothy Graham never faced any charges in relation to the shootings.
As children, Agnew and her siblings were fascinated with the Stanley Graham story.
After the manhunt, it was discovered the Growcotts’ farm had provided Graham the perfect hiding place. An odd, hollow tree had given him shelter and the perfect elevation to see all directions, complete with natural peepholes.
However, the children found their father
‘‘In some ways I am sympathetic . . . but I have spoken to the family of the victims and have seen the damage he did.’’ Documentary maker Howard Willis
reluctant to talk about the subject.
‘‘He did say it could have been handled better and I feel he was meaning by the police. It was very, very scary for them.
‘‘Dad never talked about it, that sort of thing wasn’t openly discussed in those days. We were keen to delve into it, but it was a no-no.’’
Documentary maker Howard Willis found the same reluctance when he arrived in Ko¯ whitirangi in 1974 to make a short film about the incident.
Willis, who went on write the definitive book on the case, Manhunt, later made into the 1981 film Bad Blood, recalls the difficulty in getting people to speak on camera.
Fortunately, Henry Growcott was willing to share his story, and that encouraged others to trust Willis and his colleague Mike Glynn.
The pair also had a lucky break in befriending a photographer called Dave Stevenson, who was in the Home Guard at the time and had photographed the manhunt. No-one had ever seen his photos. ‘‘The images gave us the film.’’ Unfortunately, their 28-minute film cannot be viewed by the public, despite it being of historic significance, as it was commissioned by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, which owned the rights.
The film now belongs to TVNZ, and the cost of converting it into a digital file would be thousands of dollars.
This saddens Willis, who would like the film available for public viewing.
After completing the documentary, Willis felt there was more to say on the story. He asked police for their file and was told it was lost. He fortunately found an employee of Archives New Zealand who knew of the file and was happy to provide Willis with a copy.
Manhunt is based mostly on that police file, and brought the incident back in the public consciousness before the details were lost to time.
‘‘I got there at the right time. I was working on the edge of living memory. Memories start to fade and some of the (people involved) were starting to die. One died while I was there.’’
Willis had some empathy for Graham.
‘‘In some ways I am sympathetic . . . but I have spoken to the family of the victims and have seen the damage he did . . . my feeling was this guy should have been dealt with sooner. Stan Graham was a madman and his wife stirred it along.
‘‘The ones I felt sympathy for were his children.’’
Although there is little commemoration on the West Coast, the New Zealand Police Museum in Wellington hosts a display within its armed offenders squad exhibition.
On display is the firearm Graham used to shoot his victims, photos of the four slain police, his wanted notice, and police notebooks from the manhunt.
Museum director Rowan Carroll says the display holds a lot of interest to the visiting public.
‘‘For a lot of people it is still within living memory because it was such a massive event (with) movies created and books written.
‘‘For eight people to die in an event is not a common thing in New Zealand, so we do remember those mass murders.
‘‘It seems that legend will never die, it just keeps on keeping on.’’