The man who cracked the Coral Burrows case
Former detective makes sobering return to crime scene
The detective who got Coral Burrows’ killer’s confession has returned to the lake where her body was dumped for the first time.
In an exclusive interview, former Detective Sergeant John Gaulter reveals his first encounter with Coral’s stepfather Steven Williams, the importance of the rapport he built with Williams’ mother Robyn leading up to the confession, and the subsequent late-night car trip Williams led him on to where he’d dumped Coral.
Williams was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Coral Burrows in February 2004.
It will be 15 years in September since Gaulter worked on the case that’s stuck with him.
He passes through Featherston every so often for work but hasn’t otherwise been back to Lake Onoke, near Ocean Beach, since the morning after the 6-year-old’s body was found, tucked in a toetoe bush.
Gaulter said he vividly remembered his first encounter with Williams late in the day that Coral went missing.
He and fellow detective Nick Lane were sent from Wellington to Featherston.
“We went to Woodward St to try and find Steven [but] he wasn’t there. When we left the place, he was walking down the street. So we approached him then, and I had a chat to him then. He was fairly unhappy and angry but we managed to quieten things down and agreed to meet the next morning.”
That didn’t occur, he said, as the next morning he went to see Williams but he had been taken to hospital after a breakdown.
“The good side of that was that we got to encounter Robyn Williams, Steven’s mother. And that was an opportunity to talk to her and build some rapport and try and make sense of things.”
Gaulter said he had an opportunity to talk to Williams in hospital and get his DNA.
“Steven was right across the gambit on the emotional front. It was anger to tears . . . It was every emotion possible,” he said. “For me, it was one of the first introductions to methamphetamine and this wild behaviour.”
The following day, Williams was sentenced on an outstanding warrant on an unrelated matter to serve time at Rimutaka Prison.
“Just before Steven actually went to court . . . I’d had a discussion with him and given him a piece of paper with my phone number and nickname on it and said that if he ever wanted to talk a bit further, this is how to contact me — never realising he was going to end up in prison the next day,” he said.
Gaulter said having their top suspect in jail made his job incredibly difficult. The focus turned to building on his relationship with Robyn, who was regularly in contact with Williams in jail.
On the tenth day of the mass search for Coral, Robyn told Gaulter: “He’s asked for you. He’s got something to tell you.”
“And I remember thinking at that point, I knew Steven was going to tell us everything.”
Gaulter drove over to the Upper Hutt Police Station to interview Williams. “I remember when he got to the police van . . . he got straight out and gave me a hug, which I thought was interesting.”
Williams confessed to the murder and agreed to take him to where he had left Coral’s body right away.
That night was dark and windy — in contrast to the humid, overcast morning that Gaulter this week made his return journey from Featherston towards Ocean Beach.
“It’s a strange feeling really to be honest . . . the last time I would’ve driven here was about 8 or 9 o’clock at night with Steven,” he said.
Gaulter said it was a trip that felt like a day.
“My concern was making sure that we weren’t going to get into a situation where suddenly Steven would for some reason decide not to show us or tell us. So the conversation was kept very, very light and very, very busy.
“I can’t remember exactly what we talked about . . . but it was all manner of subjects.”
In the days leading up to the confession — while the mass search for Coral was going on and in between spending time with Robyn — Gaulter said he drove around aimlessly to clear his head.
Bizarrely, Gaulter said he got within a couple of hundred metres of where Williams first dumped Coral — in the bushes off East West Access Rd. This week he pointed to the same bushes, recalling the stick later found there that Williams had used to kill Coral.
Further down the road, Gaulter said memories continued to flood back.
“I’m sure this road was shingle back then, so we came down here and it was like [gasp] . . . Steven was trying to describe particular things and we couldn’t see them . . . We were using the car headlights . . . it was reasonably tense,” he said.
At the scene this week there stands a fence, draped with a number of old and new teddy bears. Coral had loved teddy bears.
Steven was right across the gambit on the emotional front. It was anger to tears.
Gaulter stood rooted to the ground, gazing at them. “I didn’t actually realise that this was all here to be honest. Amazing. It makes the vibe extra sad in lots of respects.”
About 500m ahead was where Coral was found 15 years ago.
“When we got here I knew pretty well this was the place,” Gaulter said. Williams was “pretty calm” and “upset” when they pulled up.
Gaulter recalled how it was too dark to search any further, so the area was cordoned off for a specialist team to locate her at first light.
He said he returned the next morning, wanting to make 100 per cent sure she really had been recovered and that it was all over.
“The scene guys showed me where the toetoe bush was and that put an end to that part of the enquiry anyway for me. Huge relief. Massive relief.”
“If there’s one thing I do remember about that was the overwhelming relief and almost a sense of serenity I suppose, that next day on knowing that we’d found Coral.”
“I felt really — I suppose lucky is not the word — just that I was able to contribute to get Coral back.”
Williams made headlines again last year when he was sentenced to preventive detention on top of his existing life sentence for the attempted murder of inmate Nikki Roper at Auckland Prison.