Security guard gave burglar safe codes
Under the cover of darkness, Lewis Robertson approached The Warehouse in Richmond, carrying a large duffel bag and a hammer he’d bought from a hardware store the previous day.
In the weeks leading up to Christmas, the 37-year-old had travelled south from the North Island and turned up unannounced at the Giblin St home of Jennifer Valk, his cousin’s partner.
While there, a plan was hatched to burgle The Warehouse, where Valk had worked as a security guard since February.
The 34-year-old was among only 10 people who knew the codes to two safes in a locked office, known to employees as the ‘‘cash room’’.
On the evening of December 23,
Valk helped another staff member secure the day’s takings in the safes before she headed home. Shortly after midnight on Christmas Eve, Robertson left her home and made the 1km walk to the Warehouse.
Valk lay nervously awake in bed. She’d given him the codes to the safes.
Robertson scaled an external ladder, climbed on to the store’s roof and forced a window. Once inside, he made his way to the cash room, and used the hammer to jemmy the door. He then opened the safes, using the codes provided by Valk, and filled his duffel bag with cash totalling $50,808.
By 2am, Robertson was back at Valk’s home. He showed her and his cousin the cash, and gave her $3000 for the part she’d played in the crime.
Later that day, Robertson was driven to Blenheim by his cousin, where it is understood he bought a
Subaru car for about
$4000. He then drove south on State Highway 1, and was last seen on his own in Amberley on Christmas Day.
In the days that followed, locals started finding cash littered among the rocks and sand at nearby Leithfield Beach, 40km north of Christchurch.
On January 6, a woman walking her dog at the northern end of the beach came upon what appeared to be the partial skeletal remains of a person at the high tide mark. More body parts washed ashore in the days that followed.
Investigators eventually established, with the help of forensic testing, that the remains, and a Subaru sedan found abandoned several kilometres north at Amberley Beach, belonged to Robertson. About $11,000 worth of banknotes stolen from The Warehouse, found in and around a bag on Leithfield Beach, were handed in to the police by member of the public. Some of the outstanding stolen cash is thought to have been pocketed by others who ventured to the beach to try their luck.
Because of the circumstances of Robertson’s death, and the events that preceded it, police dedicated significant resource to piecing together his final movements, to ensure he hadn’t been murdered.
He is believed to have entered the water on December 26, but it’s unclear exactly where.
Detective Sergeant Dan Isherwood, the officer in charge of the investigation, said there was no evidence to suggest that Robertson was a victim of foul play. His death was not being treated as suspicious, and a coronial inquiry would determine how he died.
Given the small pool of people who knew the codes to the safes at The Warehouse, police quickly zeroed in on Valk.
She told them that she knew what she had done was wrong, but offered no explanation for her actions.
Security footage at The Warehouse confirmed Robertson’s role in the burglary.
He and Valk were charged jointly with the crime, court documents show.
Valk first appeared in the Nelson District Court on January 17. Yesterday, she pleaded guilty, and was remanded on bail for sentencing next month.
The burglary at The Warehouse was far from Robertson’s first foray into crime. His record lists convictions for robbery, fraud, drink-driving, threatening to kill a partner, and breaching a protection order.
In January 2019, Robertson disabled an alarm and broke into a rural Hastings home – stealing guns, ammunition, a bank card, and two locked safes containing valuable jewellery, Hawke’s Bay Today reported at the time. He was sentenced to two years and three months in prison for what his lawyer described as an opportunistic crime.