It was clever to choose Hunterville as the location for a robbery. It was a small township policed by one constable, and surrounded by a maze of roads leading in every direction. The nearest police stations were miles away in Feilding, Kimbolton and Bulls, and by the time they were mobilised to set up roadblocks the robber was long gone.
The next day, however, the motorbike was found abandoned at a makeshift camp in bush near Waituna West, around 9 miles (15 kilometres) along the road to Feilding, along with camping gear, tinned food and a make-up kit that contained, interestingly, a pair of dark glass contact lenses of the kind popular with theatrical groups to change eye colour. Several days later, two taxi drivers in Woodville and Dannevirke respectively reported carrying a passenger about whom they had felt uneasy.
Fingerprints taken from the motorbike and some of the camping gear belonged to Ray Brunel, a notorious old-time safe-breaker, and to Trevor Nash.
At 1 am on 29 December 1967, a police patrol car observed a south-bound vehicle travelling at excessively high speed through the toll plaza on the northern side of Auckland Harbour Bridge. He set off in pursuit. At first, the driver appeared to ignore the lights and siren, but then the car came to a sudden halt in Ponsonby, the door flew open and the driver ran off. The policeman chased him and tackled him. He was identified as Trevor Nash and he was arrested and charged with failing to stop. A subsequent search of his house and garage found a number of items they were able to connect to the makeshift camp, most notably a pair of shoes with built-up rubber soles (to make the wearer appear taller) from which a shoe nail was missing. A matching shoe nail was found at the camp. Nash denied owning a motorbike, but the salesman was able to identify the bike from the frame numbers, and fingered Nash as the Mr Smith who had purchased it two months prior. Auckland optician, Douglas Mortimore, identified the contact lenses as being one set of a number sold to a Mr Burns in 1965. The police brought Mortimore to the Auckland magistrates’ court in time to watch fifteen men climb out of the police van.
‘That’s him,’ Mortimore said.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yep. That’s Mr Burns.’
He was pointing at Nash.
— — —
Nash was charged with committing the Australia and New Zealand Bank Hunterville robbery and stood trial at the Whanganui Supreme Court in March 1968. Acting for Nash, Kevin Ryan was scathing in his cross-examination of witnesses and of the police in particular. He argued that they had violated Nash’s rights: Mortimore’s identification couldn’t be admitted because it had not been done in a structured line-up, as police procedure required. He made sure the jury remembered that evidence had been planted on Nash in 1966, insinuating there was every reason to believe it had happened again in this case.
A number of witnesses claimed to have seen a motorcyclist riding around Hunterville at suspiciously low speeds early in morning before the robbery, but under cross-examination all admitted that they hadn’t seen facial features or even the motorcyclist’s hair because he was wearing a helmet and a scarf that masked the lower part of his face. The taxi drivers agreed with Ryan that they hadn’t identified the suspicious passenger as Nash at the time, but once they had heard of his arrest on the radio they made the connection.
Nash testified in his own defence on 20 December. He said he was still in Auckland and had gone for a haircut in town before drinking at the Queens Ferry Hotel around midday. He had spent the rest of the evening with his family. Maria Nash and their two elder children corroborated this, adding that they first heard about the robbery when watching the news that night.
When asked how his fingerprints came to be on the motorbike and on items of cutlery found at Waituna West, Nash explained they had been brought around to his house on 19 December by a visitor driving a motorbike and he had handled both. Although he didn’t identify the person, the clear inference was that this was Ray Brunel. Nash claimed that he had driven to Feilding the next day, 21 December, to pick Brunel up as the bike had broken down and he was stranded. The story was flimsy, but Ryan emphasised in his closing that Nash had been victimised by his past crimes.
For its part, the Crown conceded that their case was circumstantial, but they were confident there was enough to link Nash to the robbery. The jury didn’t agree and took just three hours to find him not guilty.56
Luck remained on Nash’s side, and although he was suspected of committing various robberies in the 1970s, none of them could be proven.
He last made the headlines in 1977, when he filed a writ and statement of claim to the Supreme Court that, as a result of taking a compulsory polio vaccine while an inmate of Mount Eden Prison, he had contracted polio and was now wholly dependent upon the Sickness Benefit. He sought damages of $450,000 from the attorney-general in respect of the Justice Department and Health Department. His application was dismissed.57
It wasn’t just the state that Trevor Nash tried to rip off, either. His nephew Warren Nash remembers that the family were targeted, too.
Dad refused to be drawn into any conversation about Trevor, other than to say he was a thieving little bugger. I think Dad was embarrassed by him. For us, with the farm, it was always work for everything. Trevor seemed to have the attitude that he could just take whatever he wanted. After his final release, Dad caught him a few times at Otahuhu late at night going through our packing shed and implement storage. That eventually stopped.
I only ever met Trevor a few times, twice when he found my address after Dad died, after which we had to chase him off our property at Stanmore Bay late at night. This happened on a regular basis, every month for about a year.
Nash continued living at 8 Bridge Street, Papatoetoe, outliving his wife and youngest daughter. In his later years, his exploits and derring-do were largely forgotten by the public. He maintained contact with several close mates with criminal ties, and steadfastly refused to talk about what really happened on the waterfront in 1956. Trevor Nash died on New Year’s Eve 2001, aged 73.
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One of the friends with whom Nash maintained close contact was Leonard Evans, who assisted his escape in 1961. After a prolific criminal career, Evans retired to a remote village on the outskirts of Auckland.
When Nash escaped, Evans was one of a number of convicts questioned by police but he denied any knowledge. He kept his involvement secret until his admission to the author of this book in 2016. Evans was released shortly after the escape but returned to the Big House in September 1964 after an address in Mount Eden was raided and police found him and Barry Shaw with an array of stolen goods and house-breaking tools.
On 4 February 1965, Evans and fellow prisoners George Wilder and John Gillies overpowered a guard, taking him hostage at the point of a sawn-off shotgun that had been smuggled in. They busted out of the maximum-security wing, commandeered a prison truck and drove through the main gates at top speed. They careered through the quiet, leafy streets of suburban Mount Eden until they lost control rounding a corner into Horoeka Avenue and crashed through a front yard. The fugitives rushed into the nearest house and took the elderly woman who lived there hostage, too. The men and their hostages remained inside while the house was surrounded by members of the Armed Offenders Squad. The stand-off lasted for several hours but ended peacefully when the fugitives were provided bottles of whiskey and gin in return for giving themselves up.58
On the night of 21 September 1971, it was alleged that a number of gangsters met for a high-powered summit to discuss what was going on around town. Trevor ‘Too-Fats’ Smith complained about the constant swish he was getting from Detective John Hughes and his ‘goons’. Others agreed. With the Nash escape investigation all over, Hughes had been promoted to the rank of detective. After a stint on the Shop-breaking Squad, he transferred to the Armed Robbery Squad. Tough and fearless, he regularly went head-to-head with the criminal underworld, who were genuinely afraid of him.
Evans and veteran safe-breaker Jack West allegedly told the meetin
g that they would address the Hughes problem. In those days, police officers’ addresses were routinely listed in the telephone directory so that they could be contacted in case of an emergency. Later that night, someone rang the doorbell at the address of J. R. Hughes in New North Road. As the resident walked towards the door, there was an explosion that wrecked part of the house and injured the resident, an elderly man named John Hughes—not Detective John Rex Hughes who, at that time, lived in Mount Albert. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out who the bomb was meant for and most of the criminal underworld were quick to distance themselves from the crime, knowing full well the wrath that would soon fall upon those responsible. The naturally outraged Hughes led the investigation, arresting Evans and West, who were acquitted after Kevin Ryan argued that evidence found later was planted.59
At the time of writing, Evans lives reclusively and only a few of his neighbours know his true identity. He prefers not to dwell on his past and is following a different path in life.
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After stabbing Mrs Bailey with the kitchen knife in the Star Hotel—she lived, forgave and even married him—Gus Parsons found himself at the centre of intense public attention at his trial. Witnesses were reluctant to testify and there were conflicting versions about what went on that day in June 1961. He was found not guilty of attempted murder, but guilty of wounding with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm. He was sentenced to a long stretch in Mount Eden Prison.
Parsons was released in the late 1960s. Times had changed and he struggled to find a place in the new-look organised criminal hierarchy. Always looking for that idea which would make him millions, Parsons dabbled here and there, often starting up businesses apparently with the intention of going straight, but something would invariably draw him back into criminality. He admired young fellows like Rainton Hastie and Garry Collecutt, mere apprentices to the scene in the early sixties, who were now making good running the sex joints of Karangahape Road. Parsons decided to cut himself into the action, opening Pandora’s Box, one of Auckland’s first massage parlours, in Richmond Road, Ponsonby. It was a big success. He had noted how Hastie and his peers were regularly harassed by police and vilified by the media, and took the precaution of installing a lackey manager to run his own operation. The enterprising Parsons bought shares in a taxi and became a driver. In the evenings, he would pick up drunken young men and, instead of heading home, he would divert to Pandora’s or other establishments, where they would spend up and Gus would take a cut of the profits.
Parsons drove his taxi for over 40 years and became one of Auckland’s more colourful characters. Many crooks regarded him as an elder statesman of sorts and, big-noter to the last, he would regale his passengers with stories—often exaggerated—of his younger years when gangsters ruled the city. In 1987, he made Truth headlines at the age of 73 by marrying his latest flame, nineteen-year-old beauty, Toni Smith, in a double ceremony with one of his working girls.60 Toni would become his seventh wife, and when Gus Parsons died on Christmas Day 1993 his eulogy in the papers described him as the most married man in New Zealand history.
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Harold Kendall was never heard from again in New Zealand. After Nash’s arrest in 1957, all efforts to track Kendall ceased, as authorities were content to let Nash take sole responsibility. The trans-Tasman interactions over Nash’s extradition served to confirm the rumour that Kendall was living in Perth. Detective Senior Sergeant Schultz had been instructed to leave it alone but he continued to probe. Everything he heard back from Australia corroborated those unconfirmed stories—that Kendall had been acquainted with Nash from an earlier job and he had handpicked the rest of the crew. Kendall had made arrangements well ahead of time to shift his money and exit the country immediately when the job was done. Victoria Police intelligence suggested Robert ‘Jacky’ Steele was the Waterfront payroll robbers’ connection to ring-bolting rackets, alleging he was responsible for assisting both Kendall in 1956 and Nash in 1961 to leave New Zealand and set up a new life. Kendall accumulated several minor offences in Western Australia in the mid 1960s, but did not come to the attention of police again after that. Kendall’s family lived in the Taranaki region, but all efforts to trace his relatives in the course of research for this book have been unsuccessful.
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Robert Lawrence ‘Jacky’ Steele lay low in Australia and was suspected to be living off the proceeds of the Costume Jewellery heist, although his involvement in that unsolved crime was never proved. He served a stretch in Sydney for armed robbery and safe-breaking in the late 1950s and early 1960s. When he was released, he picked up where he had left off, but his clandestine visits to New Zealand grew less frequent. Pooch Quintal recalled drinking with him some time in Auckland in 1963 when Steele said he had ‘something on the go’. In the middle of this conversation, detectives called him out of the pub and he came back spooked. He left the country soon afterward. Several days later, a group of criminals were arrested, and Steele was blamed for turning fizz.
By late 1963, Steele inveigled his way into the darker reaches of the Victorian racing industry and looked to establish a business importing horse-doping materials into New Zealand. This was potentially lucrative and it was believed he had associates ready to go in Auckland. Then an unexpected event exposed the syndicate before it had time to get off the ground. On 7 December 1963, the bodies of George ‘Knucklehead’ Walker and Kevin Speight were found riddled with bullets in a sly-grog at 115 Bassett Road, Remuera. The detectives investigating pulled toll-call records from 115 Bassett Road and discovered Walker had phoned a Melbourne mobster and bookie named Ken Mitchell four days before he was murdered. Mitchell was Steele’s right-hand man in the horse-doping racket, and it was surmised Walker was going to handle the New Zealand side of the operation. The murders put the heat on criminal activities big and small, and Steele did not pursue his New Zealand venture.61
Steele was a respected underworld figure in Australia but had the propensity to big-note. In October 1965, he began a war of words with rival Lennie McPherson, possibly over an article in the satirical magazine Oz that listed the top twenty Sydney-based criminals. ‘Lennie’ was placed at number two and a question mark occupied the number one spot. Steele taunted McPherson that he was number one and a month later, while he was walking home from the pub in Woollahra, he was slowly followed by a car bearing police number plates. That they weren’t police became obvious when the occupants opened fire and Steele received wounds from 50 pellets and bullets of assorted calibres. He survived, and a few days later he was joking with reporters from his hospital bed. He was given the nickname ‘Iron Man’.62 Steele never saw the shooters and the case went unsolved, but everyone knew who was behind it. He survived a second attack a year later when he and two associates were set upon by a gang of nine at Kings Cross.
In 1968, Maltese-born gangster Joseph Borg died when his van exploded outside his home in North Bondi when he placed his key in the ignition. Steele was charged with planting the device, but died during the trial from complications due to his 1965 gunshot wounds.63
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No one knows what happened to the stolen loot. During the bankruptcy hearing, it was estimated around £18,213 was unaccounted for. If one assumes Nash did not commit the robbery by himself and received a share, then he would have had much less than this. What’s more, it’s likely Nash had spent a sizeable portion on the arrangements by which he hid out and then skipped across to Australia. When he was arrested in Melbourne, he was found to have £2600 plus £93 Australian. It’s unlikely he had any more stashed in Australia, but it was rumoured he stashed a substantial balance in New Zealand. If his plan was to sit on it for a while after his release, before he attempted to spend or launder it, the advent of decimal currency would have put paid to that. Compiling a summary history of the Waterfront payroll robbery for police archives in the 1980s, Detective John Hughes wrote, ‘When Nash was released it was said he destroyed the mo
ney because he could not have changed the money into dollars because he would have to explain how he came into it.’
But Warren Nash recalls:
I remember Dad having a row with Trevor at some stage about 1966 or 1967, when Trevor approached Dad about changing the money he had to decimal currency through the farm accounts. Dad said Trevor had the money in a plastic-wrapped suitcase buried in the septic tank at Bridge Street. I do not know if this was true but I gather Trevor trusted Dad enough to tell him where it was. I do know Trevor lost half of it when he managed to get it changed in 1967, whether through someone else or by whatever means.
— — —
Enquiries made with the descendants of Thomas Shortcliffe say they heard rumours he was involved in a big heist, but don’t know the full story or what happened to his share of the money. If Shortcliffe had taken his share in £5 notes or lesser denominations, they would have been easier to trade without arousing much suspicion. It is likely the £5 notes thought to be connected with the robbery that were found in Northland in May and June 1961 had been in circulation for a while. Before his death, Shortcliffe was adamant there was a sizeable chunk of money hidden in his car, but somebody else had got there first.
— — —
None of the original team of detectives tasked with investigating the Waterfront payroll robbery remain alive, but some went on to have long, distinguished careers. Tom Irving, Ivan Hoy and Harold McCombe remained in the CIB throughout the 1960s. McCombe died in 1976.
Detective Sergeant Bob Walton was only 35 at the time of the heist, but his arrest rate and brilliant detective mind earmarked him for higher honours early on and he swiftly rose through the ranks, surpassing experienced old-timers like Tom Irving. Walton headed the Bassett Road machine-gun murder investigation in 1963 and his handpicked team of 35 detectives worked around the clock to secure arrests. He was assistant commissioner when the infamous murder of Jeanette and Harvey Crewe occurred in 1970, and by the time the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Crewe murders (and Arthur Allan Thomas’s conviction for them) was ordered in 1978, he was commissioner of police. He was still in that role when Thomas was pardoned in 1979. Other high-profile events during his tenure included the Māori occupation of Bastion Point from 1977 to 1978, and the Springbok Rugby Tour of 1981. Walton retired in 1983, staunchly respected by many police who served under him. He was awarded CMG, OBE, QPM, ED and died in 2008.64
The Great New Zealand Robbery Page 24