The Snowman and a plot to shoot the Queen
The Snowman and the Queen is a fivepart series looking at the life and crimes of Christopher John Lewis, whose bizarre criminal antics kept police busy from his school days until his suicide in prison.
At just 17, Christopher John Lewis fears nothing. Nothing except one person. ‘‘I have no unnatural phobias at all. I am scared of the Snowman,’’ he tells police.
The Snowman is English, about 22 years old, 172 centimetres tall, of average build, with short black hair and a ‘‘rough temper’’, teen criminal Lewis says.
He first meets the Snowman by chance at Dunedin’s Manor House Coffee Lounge. Snowman tells Lewis about the pro-Nazi, right-wing National Front in England and says similar groups are ‘‘sprouting up’’ across New Zealand. Lewis is keen to get involved, and has visions of leading his own terrorist cell.
When the Snowman asks Lewis whether the Queen should be ‘‘knocked off’’, the young bandit knows this is his chance for a promotion.
He starts planning to kill Queen Elizabeth II.
THE ORDER
One might have expected panic among the 3500-strong crowd when the crack of gunfire rang out across the Otago Museum Reserve on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 14, 1981.
Engraver Garth Simpson and two workmates had just downed tools to watch the Rolls Royce cruise along Malcolm St.
They waved, but Queen Elizabeth II did not return their greeting.
Annoyed, Simpson turned his back. That’s when he heard it.
‘‘It was clearly a gunshot.’’
A former territorial soldier for more than a decade, Simpson was adamant the shot came from a .22 calibre rifle.
‘‘I assumed it was a shot at the Queen.’’
Media reports later quoted police saying the noise was merely a council sign falling over, launched.
Eight days later, police stumbled across 17-year-old Christopher Lewis by chance.
Officers were going door-to-door to find possible witnesses to an unrelated armed robbery when they discovered nervous schoolboy Geoffrey Rothwell, wearing a camouflage jacket matching the description of the robbers.
Rothwell, Lewis, and another mate, Paul Taane, were taken in for questioning.
Soon the boys were talking - none more so than Lewis.
Described by police as looking like ‘‘something out of a boy scout manual’’, he admitted to a string of burglaries, and to being the supposed head of the National Imperial Guerilla Army (N.I.G.A), which only months earlier had sent letters to police threatening violence over the Springbok tour.
Officers seized a cache of weapons from the teen’s flat, but something was missing: a BSA .22 bolt action.
Later, Lewis led police to the nondescript Adams Building, to a toilet overlooking the Queen’s route through Dunedin. There police found the weapon, along with a spent .22 cartridge.
At Lewis’ flat, officers found newspaper clippings on the royal family and a hand-drawn map of the Octagon with the but an inquiry was words: Operation = Ass QUEB.
They realised this sandy-haired schoolboy was not just a robber, but a would-be assassin.
Lewis was officially interviewed eight times over a 13-day period, on suspicion of attempting to kill the Queen, the police file shows.
The teen potentially faced a charge of treason. The penalty? Death.
Lewis claimed the order for the assassination came from the Snowman.
Transcripts of those interviews, obtained for the first time under the Official Information Act, said Lewis portrayed ‘‘a real fear’’ of the Snowman.
‘‘He … considers him to be very powerful, with access to firearms,’’ a detective noted.
According to Lewis, school mates Taane, 17, and Rothwell, 16, were directly under his command in N.I.G.A, with another person, the Polar Bear, higher ranked in the group.
The Snowman was the leader, and under his orders the fledgling army aimed ‘‘to terrorise Dunedin’’ and police with ‘‘fear tactics, terrorism, firearms and explosives’’.
He told police he thought killing the Queen would get him promoted within N.I.G.A.
Detectives had ‘‘grave doubts’’ about the existence of the Snowman and the Polar Bear.
One interviewing detective put it to Lewis that if the Snowman wanted a person of such international prestige as the Queen assassinated he wouldn’t get a boy to do the job for him.
‘‘I ... suggested that he was the Snowman,’’ the officer said.
But Lewis put on a convincing show. Lewis said his last meeting with the Snowman was on Monday October 12, 1981, two days before the royal visit.
‘‘It was his idea that I shoot the Queen.’’
THE PLOT
In several statements to police between October 22 to November 3, 1981, Lewis gave varying versions of how he carried out his plot.
Lewis maintained he had no idea where the Queen was when he fired the shot and he ‘‘definitely could not see her’’.
Later, when shown three photos in order to pinpoint the location of the bullet, Lewis could not orientate himself and asked to be taken to the Adams Building.
In the toilet cubicle, he demonstrated how he latched the window, before simulating firing a gun.
Eventually, Lewis gave the police the true identity of the Snowman: his imagination.
On November 2, Lewis was charged with the possession of a .22 rifle in a public place, and another charge of discharging it.
He seemed disappointed. ‘‘Only two charges, what?’’ Lewis said, before letting out a long whistle. ‘‘Had the bullet hit her, would it be treason?’’ he asked.
‘‘I ignored the question,’’ the officer wrote.
THE SHED
The bedroom is bare apart from a bed, and bullet holes from a .22 rifle peppering the walls.
It is the day after Lewis is charged and he guides police working on the case outside to a small shed at the rear of his ramshackled villa in the heart of Dunedin’s student quarter.
It’s in this shed, where the budding scientist carries out experiments, the 17-year-old tells the officers.
Among the books and chemicals he uses for his correspondence schooling are his mice which he uses for testing.
Lewis, concerned that no-one will be able to look after the two mice while he is in prison, says he will have to kill them.
Without hesitation he picks up a live mouse and pulls its head clean off in front of his guarding officers, before doing the same to the other.
Police have the boy who took a shot at Queen Elizabeth II, but they’re discovering this young, bookish criminal is more fearsome than he looks, and they don’t want the world to know about him.
***
Lewis, his lawyer, and a senior officerturned-whistleblower, claim the truth never came out. Why was Lewis allegedly told by police officers he would suffer a ‘‘fate worse than death’’ if he talked?
If they didn’t believe he had really tried to assassinate the Queen, what were police trying to protect by sending Lewis on a publically-funded island holiday during a future royal visit?
And what other criminal exploits meant Lewis spent most of his 20s in and out of jail?
TOMORROW: The Shot.