Would-be Queen killer died in prison

He was sent to jail for a murder he claimed he didn’t commit. Before the trial, he was found dead. Hamish McNeilly explains.

It’s 1pm at Mt Eden Prison when guards unlock the room of murder-accused Christopher John Lewis and his cellmate.

It is a chance for them to stretch their legs in the small exercise yard, after lunch.

But Lewis wishes to stay in his room with a newspaper and biscuits for ‘‘some time’’ to himself.

Earlier that day, his girlfriend visited. The woman, who calls him ‘‘Chris’’, is deeply in love with him, and doesn’t notice signs of anything out of the ordinary, despite her lover turning down an offer to put money in his account.

Lewis’ shared cell in the maximum security wing has artist’s paints set up, a TV and a typewriter in the corner, where Lewis has been working on his memoir.

About 3.15pm, when a Corrections Officer checks the cell, Lewis is slumped in a metal chair ‘‘in a lifeless state’’. The guard initially thinks Lewis is asleep. Then he notices his colour. At 33, the man infamous for attempting to assassinate the Queen in Dunedin, is dead.

The murder

It came down to a pair of shoes: Reebok sneakers that would connect Lewis to the murder of

27-year-old Auckland mother-ofthree Tania Furlan, though he always denied killing her.

Furlan was bashed to death with a hammer in her Howick home in July 1996. Her then

6-week-old daughter, Tiffany, was later found at a church, some 18 kilometres from her home.

Police were puzzled over the brutal death, but their investigation soon zeroed in on Lewis, after they talked to one of his former Paremoremo cellmates.

Lewis had served five years in Paremoremo – the country’s toughest prison – from 1987, for a string of robberies and burglaries.

Although Lewis, a bookish, sandy-haired man who wore glasses, had a police record spanning two decades back to his early teens, extreme violence was not his usual MO. He was most well-known for plots to kill the Queen and Prince Charles, as well as numerous bank robberies, arsons and elaborate escapes from authorities.

During pre-trial depositions hearings, his former jail mate, who had name suppression at the time, claimed Lewis confessed to murdering Furlan.

He alleged Lewis posed as a delivery man, with a hammer in a cardboard box. When Furlan answered the door, Lewis asked for a pen and then hit her on the head, intending just to knock her out.

‘‘He said he must have hit her too hard because the blood was p… ing out,’’ NZPA reported the witness saying.

‘‘He hit her another five times, because he knew he had f….. up.’’

The informant alleged Lewis, who was a self-proclaimed ninja and survival expert, needed money for a martial arts centre. As part of the plot Lewis wanted to take Furlan hostage to extort money from her husband, Victor, who managed his local Big Fresh supermarket in Glenfield.

After taking baby Tiffany instead, and leaving a ransom note, he changed his mind, dropped the girl at the Royal Oak Baptist Church and returned to the house to retrieve the note.

The police case centred around a shoe print forensic scientists found at the crime scene, which matched a pair of Reebok Aztrek Plus sneakers Lewis owned. Police also recovered a notepad from Lewis’ home with indentation, indicating a ransom note had been written.

Lewis and his partner were staying with his mother in Christchurch when police came for him.

The couple were planning a sailing holiday to South America, but were struggling to get a passport for Lewis due to his criminal convictions. They offered money to a mate to get one under his name, but the friend got cold feet.

When the cops came knocking, Lewis was wearing his Reeboks. Both Lewis and his partner were initially arrested on passport charges, but police soon began asking about Lewis’ whereabouts on the night Furlan was bludgeoned to death.

On Friday November 1, 1996, Lewis was sent to jail for six weeks after admitting making a false statement for procuring a New Zealand passport.

His partner, a first offender, was fined $350 plus court costs.

Later that day, after he was taken to Addington Prison, a police officer with results from testing his pair of Reeboks visited.

‘‘You killed Tania Furlan,’’ the officer said.

Lewis, who avoided a charge of treason as a teen, was charged with murder.

The next day he was transferred to Mt Eden Prison, Auckland.

In his memoir Last Words, Lewis maintained his former Paremoremo cellmate, who he dubbed ‘‘Jimmy the Weasel’’, framed him.

‘‘Words alone cannot express the feelings of fear and anxiety that weigh upon me as I write this book,’’ Lewis’ opening sentence read.

‘‘I have tossed and turned, sleeping briefly then staring blankly into the cell ceiling wondering how I can possibly cope with this accusation levelled against me by an ex-inmate and former rapist and violent thug.’’

That ‘‘thug’’ informant was later revealed to have been paid $30,000 by police for accusing Lewis of Furlan’s murder.

The ‘Weasel’

The man who pointed the finger at Lewis to police was later revealed to be Travis Burns, a former Paremoremo prison mate who shared Lewis’ interest in martial arts and cannabis.

Lewis, who claimed he could smash bricks and punch concrete blocks without flinching, argued his ninja training meant he would not have killed Furlan by battering her with a hammer.

‘‘If I had wanted to kill her, I could have done so in a hundred more able, efficient and cleaner ways,’’ he wrote in his book.

Lewis’ mother, who declined to be named, said her son was no killer and ‘‘got hung out to dry’’. ‘‘He told me he didn’t do it.’’ The now Christchurch-based woman said her son was diagnosed with a mental disorder as a preteen, and was involved with criminal activity, but ‘‘never hurt anyone ever’’.

Lewis maintained his innocence. He believed Burns, who had the same shoe size as him, wore his sneakers during the murder and secretly returned them to Lewis’ flat.

Lewis claimed he and his former cellmate ‘‘often borrowed each other’s shoes and prison clothing anyway, so it wasn’t such a big thing to do’’. Lewis alleged Burns wrote notes on a pad at his home, but took the piece of paper with him.

Those impressions on the note pad included the references ‘‘come alone’’, ‘‘when you get money you will get child 36 hours later’’ and ‘‘no ringing pigs’’.

Lewis’ ex-partner believes in his innocence. She said she would have taken the stand in his defence.

The woman, who The Press is not naming, said Lewis was driving her to a yoga class at the time police say Furlan was murdered.

‘‘Potentially he orchestrated it, but did he do it? I still don’t believe that.

‘‘I think that would have been beneath him to do something so stupid.’’

Two years after Furlan’s murder, Whangaparaoa mother Joanna McCarthy was battered to death in front of her two children in a flurry of hammer blows, kicks and punches in November 1998.

DNA later identified Travis Burns as her killer.

In August 1997, Lewis wrote in his memoir a message to Furlan’s husband and family: ‘‘May your hearts be softened by my sincere words, and I hope to one day look you in the eye and say with infinite truth that I did not commit this crime, not ever would I do such a thing.’’

A month later Lewis would take his own life.

Death of Lewis

A Mt Eden prison guard finds Lewis in a ‘‘lifeless state in his cell’’ about 3.15pm on Tuesday September 23, 1997.

The inmate, who has a Japanese Kanji tattoo on the right side of his chest and a wizard on his thigh, is sitting on a metal chair, slumped forward towards his bed.

‘‘My first impression was that Lewis was asleep,’’ the guard said, according to the coroner’s report.

But noticing the murderaccused prisoner looks off-white, he calls for help.

Attempts to resuscitate Lewis fail and he is declared dead at 4.10pm.

With permission from the coroner, The Press can report that Lewis committed suicide in his prison cell by tampering with a junction box and electrocuting himself.

Other details of his death remain suppressed.

After his suicide at Mt Eden the coroner made three recommendations to reduce the chances of further deaths occurring in similar circumstances, which led to a nationwide change to ensure prisoners were unable to access the junction boxes.

A suicide note was recovered from the cellroom toilet, next to Lewis’ body.

Lewis’ ex-partner, who visited him that morning, saw a copy of the note and said it ‘‘stated that he had nothing to do with the [Furlan] crime’’.

She described Lewis as a highly intelligent but manipulative person who was damaged mentally and emotionally by a violent upbringing.

‘‘He could have done really good things, but he chose to do really bad things.’’

She said with Lewis, it was always ‘‘hard to tell what is true and what isn’t true’’.

That included his notorious attempt to shoot the Queen in Dunedin, back in 1981.

Lewis confessed to her he did not shoot at the road, or at some seagulls, but at the Queen herself.

‘‘Damn,’’ he told her ‘‘damn . . . I missed.’’