Who told this ‘boy scout’ to kill a royal?
At just 17, Christopher Lewis fears nothing. Nothing except the man who told him to shoot the Queen. By Hamish McNeilly.
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 local 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 the Queen 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.’’
Sue Cutfield, who was near the reserve, heard the shot as the Queen, wearing her trademark matching hat, coat and dress, emerged from the car.
Former Constable Frank Van Der Eik, one of hundreds of officers at the scene, described it as a ‘‘crack’’.
‘‘You hear that noise and all the cops are looking around: scanning, scanning, scanning,’’ he said.
But nothing happened. ‘‘The Queen just carried on.’’
Media reports later quoted police saying the noise was merely a council sign falling over, but an inquiry was 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 robber’s one.
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’s flat, officers found newspaper clippings on the royal family and a hand-drawn map of the Octagon with the 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. In one interview, he asked to sit away from the window over fears he would be shot by a sniper. If the Snowman found out Lewis had exposed him, he would be killed, he said.
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 and November 3, 1981, Lewis gave varying versions of how he carried out his plot to assassinate the Queen.
He first said he originally planned to shoot the monarch in the Octagon, but aborted the location because there wasn’t an escape route. ‘‘I wanted to find a good place to get her from. I wanted to find a place where I wouldn’t get caught.’’
When he realised the Octagon wouldn’t work, he biked to the Adams Building, his Plan B. With no-one around he walked up to the fifth floor and then into a toilet block.
There he found a window facing towards the museum. ‘‘The window was open just a fraction, I didn’t open it any further, just a fraction was enough for what I wanted it for.’’
Lewis told detectives he waited a few minutes for the Queen to arrive before letting a shot off. ‘‘I don’t know if I hit anything or not.’’
Lewis left the rifle in a locker just outside the toilet, and took the lift to the ground floor, before cycling back to his flat.
Two days later he gave another version of events. This time he told detectives that on the day of the attempt he went to scope out the museum before playing Space Invaders in the foyer of the nearby University Union.
Walking back to his flat he changed into his dark blue suit trousers, jersey and gym shoes. He then went to his garden, dug up a stolen .22 rifle, and gave it a clean.
Wrapping the rifle up in a pair of old jeans he placed it on the handlebars of his green 10 speed Healing and headed to the Adams Building.
‘‘Right up until this stage it was my intention to kill the Queen by shooting her with the loaded .22 calibre I was carrying. At about the fifth floor I changed my mind.’’
Lewis told police that he could no longer see the museum reserve, and developed second thoughts. ‘‘My mind was in turmoil. I was tearing my insides out. I didn’t know what to do.’’
Regardless, he unwrapped the gun, putting gloves on to avoid fingerprints. Opening the window a fraction, he waited in the locked toilet area with his gun aimed at the street below.
‘‘I was going to make a spur of the moment decision if I saw her.’’
Five minutes later that opportunity came. A car travelled down Malcolm St. ‘‘I had no idea who was in this car,’’ Lewis said. ‘‘I never thought it was the Queen.’’
He put the rifle against his shoulder, sighted the road and fired a shot.
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.
Lewis told police he was confused and uncertain as to where he had fired the shot. Eventually, he gave the police the true identity of the Snowman: his imagination.
‘‘I have been telling a number of untruths . . . I now wish to correct a few things. The major issue concerns two persons I have codenamed the Snowman and Polar Bear. These persons do not exist. They are a figment of my imagination.’’
On November 2, Lewis was charged with possession of a .22 rifle in a public place, and another charge of discharging it.
He seemed disappointed. ‘‘Only two charges, what?
‘‘S...,’’ he 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 ramshackle 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 the Queen, 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 officer-turned-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 that day, what were police trying to protect by sending Lewis on a publicly 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?
The Snowman and the Queen is a five-part Stuff series looking at the life and crimes of Christopher John Lewis, a self-styled teen terrorist and trained ‘ninja’ whose bizarre criminal antics kept police busy from his school days until his strange suicide in prison at age 33. Tomorrow: chapter 3.