New clues Kiwi ‘bros’ take rhino survival to new heights give life to cold case murder
DUNEDIN POLICE will review one of New Zealand’s most notorious cold case murders after a new witness has come forward 43 years later.
The killer’s car registration number may have been uncovered by Oamaru private investigator Cindy Roberts, who is making a film about the 1969 murder of Welsh teacher Jennifer Beard.
Beard, 25, disappeared while hitchhiking down the West Coast on New Year’s Eve on her way to meet her fiance. Her body was found under the Haast River Bridge 19 days later, sparking the country’s biggest manhunt at the time.
Roberts said she had spoken with a former Auckland man who claimed he saw a middle- aged man with a young attractive woman in a Vauxhall car near the bridge on December 31, recalling the car’s registration number started with AD.
Police had never interviewed him but his recollections matched other witnesses’ statements, Roberts said.
Detective Mark Lodge, who is in charge of the file, told Sunday StarTimes he would review the file in the New Year in light of the man’s claims and consider whether to interview him.
‘‘We definitely will look into it.’’ The file had never been closed but ‘‘with the passage of time, it’s even more remote of it being solved’’, he said.
The 75- year- old man, who declined to be named, said he travelled down the West Coast with his wife and three young children in a Bedford bus for the 1969 Christmas holidays.
They pulled off on to a remote side road by Haast River Bridge for a lunch break on New Year’s Eve and drove past the pair sitting talking in a beaten-up Vauxhall Velox car.
They joked about the car’s registration plates starting with AD followed by three numbers, possibly 936 ‘‘or something like that’’. ‘‘We said at least it was an AD not a BC, After Death not Before Christ, because it was so old, it was more BC.’’ He recalled the man was about 50, overweight and balding.
‘‘ We laughed at how he was doing all right for himself having a young woman like that. It wasn’t so amazing at all on reflection.
‘‘ He must have been on the verge of killing her. He probably killed her within minutes. We just happened to be Johnny on the spot in a remote spot.’’
Back then, the man, who now lives in Sydney, ran a car wrecking yard in Auckland and was certain the car was a Vauxhall Velox, probably an EIP series. These were made between 1951 and 1955.
‘‘I probably owned two or three Veloxs at the time and have had dozens.’’ Their family continued their holiday but phoned police when they heard about the murder some months later.
A woman took his call and said police would contact him to discuss what he saw but never did.
While his memory of the car’s colour was vague, he told his sister, Beverley Sinclair, what he saw at the time.
‘‘ He said the car was blue initially but later he thought it might have been two-toned blue and green,’’ Sinclair, 77, said.
She remembered him noting registration started with AD.
The key suspect, Timaru truck driver Gordon Bray, maintained his innocence until he died aged 83 years in 2003 and was never charged.
He had owned a blue Vauxhall Velox, was on the West Coast at the time and a pair of trousers found 100 metres from Beard’s body three days after its discovery contained a receipt with his name.
Roberts said she began probing the murder about three years ago and was amazed at the fresh information she had uncovered. An exnurse had contacted her in recent weeks to claim police committed a Fox Glacier man to Hokitika’s Seaview Hospital for mentally-ill people in 1970, who had confessed to killing Beard.
Roberts’ film will premier ahead of the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival next March.
its RHIANNA THE rhino is petite by her species’ standards. At eight kilograms, she is significantly lighter than the average white rhino, which weighs in at 3500kg.
But ‘‘eight Kiwi bros’’ felt the weight of Rhianna – a purposebuilt endurance rubber rhino suit – for six days through African heat and sub-zero temperatures, as they carried her up the 5895-metre Mt Kilimanjaro to raise money for the Save the Rhino Foundation.
The ‘‘KilimanjaBROs’’ – Michael Brabant, Joshua Preston, Sam Halse, Ollie Wards, Josh Harris, Chris Henderson, Alex Dyson and Michael Grieve – are mates, currently spread across Europe, who came together for an African adventure and a worthy cause.
‘‘We wanted to raise money for a charity that was relevant to the mission. The rhino is in serious danger and it only seemed fitting that this charity [Save the Rhinos] was the benefactor of our efforts,’’ Preston said.
Ravaged by poaching, 95 per cent of all the rhinos across the world have now been killed, according to Save the Rhinos. In Africa, there are now just 4880 black rhino remaining and 20,165 white rhino.
But conservation efforts have seen the populations of white rhino begin to increase by around 9.5 per cent a year, and black rhinos around 6 per cent, since 2007.
The suit was not built for speed or comfort, but the biggest problem was seeing where they were going as they scaled Kilimanjaro.
‘‘The weight was not the issue, visibility was. Being able to move in this suit while still keeping pace was the most challenging part for all the boys,’’ Grieve said.
After night climbs, freezing temperatures and changing weather, the bros reached the summit of the world’s highest free- standing mountain last Sunday.
‘‘Leaving at midnight, six hours later we caught sunrise on the roof of Africa. It was a 13-hour trek, we were exhausted but a day to remember – a huge achievement from all the boys,’’ Grieve said.
The KilmanjaBROs have so far raised $ 15,807 for the Save the Rhinos Foundation.
‘‘ It was a pretty adventure.
‘‘Now that we have completed it, we can look back with a bit of pride, very cool to see what has been accomplished.’’
ridiculous