Stranger than fiction
Murders and disappearances happen every day. Some, like Mona Blades or Kirsa Jensen, become embedded in our memories. Deborah Morris looks at some of the cases from New Zealand’s history that remain unsolved.
Thirty-one years later someone did come forward. By leaving a suicide note.
An incident connected years later with the death of 6-yearold Joan Rose Rattray
Jean Marie Martin
Otari-Wilton’s Bush in Wellington would have been irresistible to young botany student Jean Marie Martin. So it wouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone that she went for a hike there on April 8, 1945.
But what happened next was extraordinary. She vanished. Without a trace.
Yes, people go missing all the time but often something is known or suspected. But Jean Marie was just gone. Nothing of her was ever found.
Jean Marie was born in 1922 to Waipawa dairy farmer Montague Martin and his wife, Ethel.
She was the eldest of six children and had moved to Wellington, where she was working as a laboratory technician and studying botany parttime at Victoria University.
She had been living in Glenmore St, near the beautiful Botanic Garden.
On April 8, 1945, she and a companion went for a walk in the native reserve of Ōtari-Wilton’s bush. About 3pm her friend left but Jean Marie kept going.
A little later in the afternoon, near a farm, Jean Marie spoke to someone and indicated an interest in Crows Nest, a 166-metre hill. It wasn’t considered a simple walk and it was already late in the afternoon.
She was never seen again. Jean Marie was five foot two (1.5m) with short, curly, black hair and prominent teeth. She had been wearing a blue jumper, grey skirt, fawn overcoat and a green scarf. She was also supposed to have been carrying a black patent-leather handbag.
Not a single piece of that was ever found. A handbag found nearby turned out not to be hers.
The search that followed was huge. Police and search and rescue-style teams began and were augmented by 70 police recruits and students from Victoria. The search extended as far afield as Makara and Ōhāriu Valley.
Students from the Teachers’ Training College also joined in – Jean Marie’s sister was attending the college at the time.
Her father offered a £100 reward for any information.
There was concern because Jean Marie had a breakdown the November before and her family were worried she had lost her memory. She did not have anything with her to prove her identity.
Police eventually decided she had died of exposure.
Months later, however, there was a sudden revival in interest following two sightings of women in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby who looked like Jean Marie – but neither sighting came to anything.
Many years later, in 1967, there was another sighting which turned out not to be her. Since then, nothing.
Both Montague and Ethel died never knowing what had happened to their eldest daughter.
Ham Sing Tong
Chinese immigrant Ham Sing Tong was, in 1905, found dead in his Tapanui house, bludgeoned, shot and set on fire. Today, 119 years later, his murder is still unsolved despite two men going to trial for it.
Tong was aged between 60 and 65. The newspaper coverage of the day reveals a lot about how Chinese immigrants were viewed back then, reporting that Tong was not involved with opium or sly grogging, which was often the prevailing racist stereotype. Tong was seen by his neighbours as a good-natured, hard-working gold miner and was well respected. He lived alone on the outskirts of Tapanui, in West Otago, and was known for either carrying his money around or having it in his house.
He always locked himself in at night. This was not unusual in that era as many people did not trust banks, or lived so far away that using one was not practical.
Late on the night of August 21, 1905, nearby residents heard a shot ring out. The next day, his friend Ah Chong found Tong’s body in the bedroom. Initially police were unsure what had killed him. There was a large bruise on his forehead and his clothes were nearly burned off. The floor was strewn with the remains of a bottle.
An autopsy revealed a bullet in his right shoulder, which one doctor thought would have left him paralysed as it had severed his spine.
More than £70 was found in his house. But he was believed to be worth about £200 – a big sum in those days.
The police case was that he was bludgeoned with a whiskey bottle first. He resisted, which led to him being shot. Then a lamp was broken to spread kerosene on the bedclothes, and these were set alight.
By the end of August, Thomas Stott, a 38-year-old labourer, and George Hill Bromley, a 17-year-old farmhand, were arrested for his murder. The two lived together in a hut on Bromley’s father’s property.
A revolver was found in their hut. Also found were some skeleton keys, one of which would have opened Tong’s house.
Stott, an Aboriginal Australian, had lived in Tapanui for several years. Newspapers reported he had a reputation as a fighting man and was known for becoming “ugly’’ when drunk. He was more than six feet tall (1.83m), and had a tattoo of a tombstone on his right arm and one on his left arm stating: DO YOU REMEMBER TOM STOTT.
Stott was known to be broke, but in the day or two after the murder he was seen in the nearby town of Heriot, flush with cash and telling different stories about where he got it.
The Supreme Court trial took place in Dunedin in December 1905, and lasted several days. One of New Zealand’s most noted defence lawyers, Alfred Charles Hanlon, appeared for the two men.
Bloodstains had been found on the clothes of both men, and one of the pair had borrowed a rifle from Tong only two days before he was found dead.
Hanlon had no witnesses to call in defence, but it did not stop him attacking. He challenged a great many aspects of the Crown case.
He also intimated that a Crown witness – a John Reddit – may also have been the killer.
The all-male jury found both men not guilty, although they asked if they could return a verdict of not proven – which the presiding judge said was the same thing.
No other person has been convicted of the crime.
Tong is buried in Tapanui cemetery under the name Am Sing Tong. He has no headstone or grave marker.
Arthur Blomfield
It was a shop assistant who found chemist Arthur Blomfield lying bashed and bleeding in the back of Mackay’s Pharmacy in Wellesley St, Auckland, on October 30, 1931.
Someone had repeatedly hit the 75-yearold over the head and left him to die.
Shortly after 5pm, a customer walked into the dispensary and was told by a man who he thought worked at the pharmacy that Blomfield would be there any moment.
The man then left, disappearing into the crowds on the street.
A few minutes later a shop assistant returned from his dinner break and went to the back of the store. He found Blomfield bleeding and blood spattered around the room.
The till was on the floor and £6 was missing.
Blomfield had 16 wounds to his head and died shortly after being found.
One of the few clues to the murderer’s identity was a fish’n’chip wrapper left in the pharmacy, on top of the safe.
There was a fish’n’chip shop nearby, and a woman who worked there said she had sold fish’n’chips to a young man not long before the attack on Blomfield.
Both the customer at the pharmacy and the fish’n’chip shop employee remembered a young man coming in.
No drugs were taken and the description of the killer – a man aged 22 to 23, about 1.8m, with short, wavy, dark hair – could have matched a lot of men.
Then in November, 22-year-old Oswald Coulton walked into the Remuera branch of the Bank of New Zealand and presented the manager, Fred Youngs, with a note. He wanted £250 to go to another account. The note gave a fake name and address.
Youngs, however, wasn’t having a bar of it. He grabbed a loaded revolver and yelled “stop thief”.
Youngs had been a sniper during World War I – exactly the type of man Coulton did not want to encounter. Coulton ran, but Youngs was quicker. He shot Coulton in the back. Coulton died soon after.
The possibility that Coulton had killed Blomfield was suddenly raised.
In fact, the witnesses were taken to the mortuary to view Coulton’s body. Both were unsure but admitted only a general resemblance.
A motor jack was found in Coulton’s rooms, the type of weapon police thought had been used to attack Blomfield.
But if it were Coulton, it did not match Blomfield’s final words, which were apparently: “Go away, George, don’t do it.” Who was George? No-one knows.
Despite the best efforts of the police, including the offer of a reward, no-one has ever been charged with Blomfield’s murder.
Joan Rose Rattray
Joan Rose Rattray was expected home from school in Hastings, just as she was every day.
But when her two brothers turned up and she didn’t, her mother, Hazel Catherine Rattray, knew something was wrong.
Because it was 1935 and no-one’s first thought back then was foul play, Hazel went looking for her 6-year-old daughter. But on not finding her, she went to the police.
A search was started but it was not until the next day that the little body of Joan was found lying face down at the edge of the Ngaruroro River.
A boy who had joined the search, Frank Shine, found her about 3pm.
She had a gash on her forehead and appeared to have had her face deliberately pushed into the muddy bank.
The mud held other things – including the impression of a man’s size-9 boot. An undergarment of Joan’s was found in the grass, along with her hat, although police did not think she had been interfered with. She was otherwise fully dressed.
The search then began for her killer. Initially, one theory was that she had been knocked over by a motorist, who panicked and then moved the body, but that was discounted.
An autopsy established that she died of asphyxiation.
Despite police hunting around the country for anyone who might have been involved, no-one was ever arrested. A £200 reward resulted in no leads.
But 31 years later someone did come forward. By leaving a suicide note.
Arthur Henderson Smith was a former soldier, railway worker and labourer.
A suicide note left upon his death at the age of 62 said that he felt he had gone insane with his wicked ways. He thought he had committed the murder at Karamu Creek years ago but could not remember taking the child off the road and did not know for sure that he had.
Smith was mentally unwell and under care. There was no evidence one way or the other that he was involved in Joan’s death.
At an inquest it was noted that the mentally unwell can sometimes confess to crimes they had not committed.
Joan’s killer has never been identified. She is buried in Hastings Cemetery. And not far away in the same cemetery is Arthur Smith.
Archibald Milne
It was an argument with his father that caused Scottish-born Archibald Milne to sail to the other side of the world, arriving in Wellington aboard the Lady Nugent on March 17, 1841. Within nine months he would be dead.
His death remains one of New Zealand’s earliest unsolved murders and sparked conflict between Māori and settlers.
Milne and his fellow “intermediate-class” passengers were filled with optimism on their journey to New Zealand, but optimism soon turned to despair when they found the land that they had been promised and purchased from the New Zealand Company was not forthcoming.
In a letter dated
August 26, 1841, to
Colonel William
Wakefield, the
New Zealand
Company’s principal agent, Milne and other settlers complained about the lack of surveyed sections in Wellington available to them. Milne, who had been a magistrate in England, was unhappy with Wellington and had planned to return to his homeland. He never made the journey.
A few months later, on December 15, his body was found partly submerged on the beach just over a kilometre south of Petone.
He was 35 years old. He had been beaten around the head and face and his skull fractured. He was partly clothed; his blue jacket, cap, white moleskin trousers, one sock and his watch were missing.
There were two suspects: Milne’s friend John Osborne, with whom he had argued in the days before the murder; and a young Māori man named Awaho.
At the inquest, several witnesses described seeing a Māori man following Archibald along the beach shortly before his death. They identified Awaho as the man, but Awaho testified that he had not been on the beach and they were mistaken.
The coroner gave the jury a stern warning about the need to avoid bringing Māori and settlers into “collision by an imprudent or injudicious act”, because the result might be “melancholy and disastrous”. The jury found a verdict of “wilful murder against some person or persons unknown”.
With the case unsolved, a reward of £50 was offered for information that would lead to the conviction of the guilty party. No-one came forward.
The case created some disagreement among the settlers. Some felt police had failed in their investigation of the case and failed to charge Awaho with the murders; others felt that Awaho was implicated simply because he was Māori.
For a brief moment in 1842 there seemed to be a breakthrough in the case. Osborne was arrested as he left Wellington for Nelson and charged with the theft of a coat and tablecloth belonging to Milne. But he was acquitted as there was no proof that he had actually stolen the items.
In December 1843, Awaho became the prime suspect in the theft of a gown and cape, two nightgowns, a waistcoat and two silk handkerchiefs, the property of Emma Stutfield.
Efforts to arrest him resulted in conflict between police, soldiers and Māori. The New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator reported that when the clothes taken from Mrs Stutfield were retrieved from a box belonging to Awaho, Milne’s stolen clothing was also seen in the box, but when it was searched again several days later by police and Milne’s cousin, James Smith, the clothing was not found.
Awaho was found guilty of the theft of Mrs Stutfield’s property and sentenced to two months’ imprisonment.
Milne’s murder gradually faded from memory and on January 2, 1845,
Awaho committed suicide.