NEW ZEALAND’S ‘LAST OLD SCHOOL VILLAIN’ DIES AT
Abank robber and suspected killer who was New Zealand’s most wanted criminal throughout the 1990s has died at 82. Leslie Maurice Green died on Friday morning, in Auckland, just two days after concerned friends Arthur Taylor and John Murphy sent him to hospital by ambulance from his Papatoetoe flat.
The pair had not heard from the notorious criminal - suspected to be involved in the disappearances of several people - in over two weeks when they turned up at his heavily barricaded flat.
Mr Taylor said once they finally got inside he ‘looked like a concentration camp survivor’, he told the NZ Herald.
Green spent 30 years behind bars for 46 separate crimes.
His first offence was at 17 in 1954. Authorities believe they only charged him with a fraction of the crimes he was responsible for. In the 1980s he was charged over the country’s biggest armed robbery, when a team of robbers stole $294,524 from a security van in a car park.
He was also involved in a series of high-profile armed robberies that shocked New Zealand in the early 1990s.
Over a two year period, a masked Green would rob seven banks using his silver .44 Magnum pistol.
Many of the brazen robberies involved shoot outs and highspeed chases with police.
The robberies saw him collect more than $500,000 in cash and travellers’ cheques before he was arrested in a foiled car-jacking.
He was jailed for 20 years, but managed to get his sentence reduced to 15 years on appeal.
In probation reports, he was referred to as a ‘villain from the old school’, who prided himself on being honest, stating he was a ‘villain not a liar’.
He claimed he robbed because he felt it was more honourable way to live than taking government benefits.
Green was named by Australian police as a suspect in the death of Australians Bernard Gray and Maria Fiore, who had links to the Mr Asia drug syndicate.
The pair disappeared after having dinner with him while he was in Sydney.
Up until his death, he remained a police interest as they still hoped to solve a number of murders linked to Mr Asia, according to Stuff.
New Zealand Police also had ‘little doubt’ he was involved in the disappearance of Marion Granville who vanished in Naenae in 1980.
But, he was never formally interviewed on the case as there was no evidence to charge him.
Green had kept to himself since he was placed on parole in 2006- having served what was at the time the longest sentence for armed robbery.