The Great New Zealand Robbery Read online

  Using information gleaned from these sources, and with full access to the investigation file, I believe I have pieced together the answers to the questions that were raised back in 1956. I believe I can reveal for the first time the names of those involved in breaking the Waterfront Commission’s safe on Wednesday 28 November 1956, and I believe I can also explain in detail how the man arrested for the crime was able to escape from Mount Eden Prison and spend six months on the run.

  Scott Bainbridge

  2017

  * The total amount of money stolen during the Waterfront payroll robbery was estimated at £19,875. In today’s terms, this would equate to $950,183.50—almost $1 million. The money was stolen in denominations of £10, £5, £1 and ten-shilling notes. For the purpose of comparing the value of money stolen to today’s value, by using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the fourth quarter 1956 to the second quarter 2016, and using the standard conversion rate of £1=$2, the comparisons are: £10= $478.08; £5=$239.04; £1=$47.81; 10 shillings= $4.89. (Source: Statistics New Zealand.)

  CHAPTER 1

  ON THE WATERFRONT

  The Auckland in which the Waterfront payroll robbery of 1956 took place was a very different city to the Auckland of today. Like wider New Zealand, it was smaller and sleepier. The city fathers had lately sold the city’s soul to the motorcar—deciding against the recommendations of the Halcrow–Thomas Report in 1950 that a city-wide light rail system be constructed, and instead preferring to expand the roading network—but the cheque had yet to be cashed. Trams were only just being phased out; the Harbour Bridge was in the process of being built, but wouldn’t be opened until 1959. Quite apart from the townships on the lightly developed North Shore, many of what are today regarded as suburbs were more of a constellation of distinct communities—hamlets, even—connected to lesser Auckland by arterial roads. ‘Motorways’ were a new-fangled thing, and most of them were in the planning stages or in the early throes of construction. The suburbs themselves were smaller and more cohesive; it wasn’t until 1958 that Auckland saw the opening of its first supermarket, so the needs of each neighbourhood were served by local butchers, bakers and grocers. Largely thanks to the need to shop locally and to wait at bus and tram stops, neighbours saw a lot more of each other than they are likely to today.

  The scene of the heist itself was very different, too. You can still see the Northern Steamship Company building—in fact, you can enjoy a very good meal there, in the restaurant that trades under the shipping company’s name.3 But the prospect in every direction has changed beyond recognition. The tallest building in Auckland in 1956 was the Town Hall, although plans had been unveiled for the towering Civic Administration Building that would soon dwarf it. Queen Street was a canyon between three-storey Edwardian frontages capped with frills such as false balustrades and cupolas.

  Much of the major reclamation of Commercial Bay, Auckland’s port area, had yet to be performed, and the cargo wharfs were still traditional ‘tees’ jutting out into the harbour. The shipping tied up at these or waiting its turn was a motley assortment of vessels, ranging from small ‘tramp’ steamers and colliers to large passenger liners and freighters, that plied between domestic and international ports. Before the advent of containers in the 1970s, cargo-handling was a hugely labour-intensive operation, so during daylight hours the wharves thronged with workers.

  Every product that New Zealand imported or exported used to cross the wharves, so it’s no exaggeration to say that the smooth and efficient operation of the waterfront was essential to the entire economy. It was hardly a coincidence that the workforce responsible for handling all this cargo was highly unionised. Partly, this was because manual cargo-handling was difficult and often dirty and dangerous work, and it was necessary for workers to organise to champion their rights to fair pay and decent working conditions in the face of exploitative or indifferent ship-owners. Unions, that is, had their place.

  But it had long been suspected—and not without a grain of truth—that there was also an element in the unions that was dedicated to furthering a political agenda through industrial action. Throughout the 1930s, strikes, go-slows, work-to-rules and other disruptive tactics had dogged the waterfront, and not all of it could be justified as legitimate assertiveness.

  The outbreak of war saw the requisitioning of vessels and a drastic reduction in the volume of shipping in New Zealand ports, which in turn led to a reduction in the amount of cargo and therefore work. What’s more, the government’s insistence that loading and unloading be done as swiftly as possible for the sake of the war effort was highly unpopular with the unions, for whom being obstructive had become almost compulsive. With the threat of industrial action in the air, the government stepped in to take control, establishing the Waterfront Emergency Control Commission in 1940, with the power to control loading and unloading of ships, to organise work so a better despatch was obtained, and to ensure reasonable conditions of employment and payment for waterside workers4. Under the commission’s direction, everyone got on with it.

  Dissatisfaction and resentment didn’t just go away when the war ended, however. With an election looming, the Labour Government reorganised the Waterfront Emergency Control Commission into the Waterfront Industry Commission.5 If they hoped to maintain the tight control over the wharves that they had enjoyed during the war, they would have been sorely disappointed. The change did little for industrial relations and in October 1948, following industrial action and protracted negotiations between the union and the government, the role of the commission was revisited again and its powers were limited to administrative matters.6 In essence, the commission collected monies from ship-owners and shipping companies using Auckland’s wharves, and employed and paid the wages of the workers who docked the ships and handled their cargoes. Following the 1948 reorganisation, veteran public servant Arthur Bockett was appointed chairman of the commission. He worked closely with his equally shrewd, business-savvy twin, Herbert Bockett, who was Secretary of Labour in the new Department of Labour.

  New Zealand in the late 1940s was quite bitterly divided. Many of those who had served overseas during World War Two had returned determined to preserve the quiet, peaceful, respectful, orderly and prosperous society they imagined they had left in 1945. But a fair few had returned—or, in the case of expatriate Britons, arrived—with the opposite agenda. The post-war years saw a resurgence in militant unionism, particularly on the waterfront. Frustrations amongst many sectors of New Zealand society—not least farmers, who were our main exporters—saw Labour dumped from power and the National Government led by Sidney Holland installed instead.

  With the world divided into the Cold War camps since the end of World War Two, the spectre of Communist agitation was regularly raised by governments seeking to make political hay. Sidney Holland’s National Government came to power in 1950 on a promise to get tough with militant—by which was meant Communist-controlled—unions, and to wrest back control of the supply chain. Holland was as good as his word. Things came to a head in February 1951 after shipowners refused to yield to the watersiders’ demands for a 15 per cent pay rise. The watersiders reacted by banning all overtime. The shipowners then imposed a lock-out on all workers who refused overtime. Negotiations broke down and the impasse stretched out over a period of 151 days, spreading well beyond the waterfront. Around 20,000 workers associated with a number of different unions went on strike in sympathy with the waterfront workers. The crisis brought the country to a virtual standstill. The National Government imposed emergency regulations that included criminalising support for the strikers, and in the face of this and various other draconian measures designed to strangle the effort, the watersiders buckled.7 The Bockett brothers were instrumental in enforcing the government’s hard-line stance against militant unionism, for which Prime Minister Holland was sincerely grateful.8

  — — —

  Holland’s government set about relaxing some of the tight wartime economies that Labour ha
d introduced, such as butter and petrol rationing. The start of the Korean War, which saw United Nations forces bogged down in a bitter winter, drove a spike in the demand for warm clothing, which in turn produced a boom in wool prices. After the hideously lean war years, it seemed prosperity had returned.

  But, for all that, people were worried. The spectre of Communist agitation on the wharves was like a genie, in that once it was raised it could not so easily be put back into the bottle. And there were other tensions and fears abroad in New Zealand society in the 1950s, too. We were an intensely conservative bunch back then, and certain social trends were beginning to alarm New Zealanders. There was a widely held fear that the moral fabric of society was beginning to fray, as evidenced by a rise in crime and delinquency. Authorities linked the problem with the growing influence of North American popular culture; the advent of rock ’n’ roll music with Bill Haley, Little Richard and (soon after) Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent; and movies such as The Wild One, starring a sneering, leather-clad Marlon Brando, Rebel Without a Cause, featuring a pouting, brooding James Dean, and a number of similar films promoting sex, violence and teenage rebellion. In the early 1950s, the rise of the so-called ‘milk-bar cowboys’ and the antisocial droves of ‘bodgies’ and ‘widgies’ it comprised were unsettling city-dwellers up and down the nation. Then, following claims by an underage girl that the whole scene was rife with sex, drugs and debauchery, the government commissioned an inquiry into the decline of morals in the Hutt Valley. Copies of the Mazengarb Report were sent to every household in the country, and the dogs of moral panic had officially been unleashed.

  The censorship department was overworked. The Minister of Justice, Jack Marshall, jumped on the moral bandwagon after being handed a biography titled The Boss of the British Underworld by English gangster Billy Hill. Marshall read it in one night and was horrified. After criticising its weak literary merit, he likened it to nothing more than a handbook for budding burglars. Thus began a crusade to stop the book getting into the hands of local villains. An Indecent Publications Tribunal was established with a mandate to prohibit or restrict the distribution of books or sound recordings dealing with matters of sex, horror, crime, cruelty or violence in a manner injurious to the public good.9 It was the role of the Justice Department to enforce the indecency law, and officers trawled and purged the nation’s book stores of books by crime writer Mickey Spillane, who had seven bestsellers, and his peers, adding them to the fast-growing list of banned books. Marshall threw his weight behind his crusade and was prepared to prosecute any shop that dared to sell such books, which expanded to include pulp dime-store detective magazines.10 In later years, he justified his stance saying, with particular reference to the Billy Hill biography, ‘I did wish to stop the book from getting into the hands of the local villains, with whom it would have been a bestseller.’11

  People were very worried about the villains. New Zealand had suffered its fair share of serious and even horrific crime throughout its history, but to your average reader of newspapers by the mid-1950s it seemed we were suddenly going to hell in a handcart. There was a spate of particularly troubling crimes: the brutal rape and murder of 47-year-old Katherine Cranston on Wellington’s Mount Victoria in 1948; the 1954 Parker–Hulme sensation, in which two teenage girls bludgeoned Honora Rieper, Pauline Parker’s mother, to death; the so-called ‘Jukebox Murder’ in 1955, in which a bodgie named Albert Black stabbed another in the neck as he leaned over a jukebox to choose a tune. There was also a sharp increase in the number of high-profile robberies and burglaries.

  A tough stance on law and order was a key plank in Sidney Holland’s election campaign, and as soon as National found itself on the government benches it reinstated the death penalty for murder, which had been phased out by the Labour Government in 1935. Holland himself was probably instrumental in this, but so too was Jack Marshall.

  John Marshall—universally known as Jack—detested crime, and was a fervent supporter of the reinstatement of hanging.12 The Cranston murder, described at the time as the most heinous crime of the post-war era,13 had happened in his own constituency, which may have influenced his stance. In 1955, as Attorney-General, Marshall sent no fewer than four men to the gallows. In the case of one of them, Freddie Foster, he listened carefully to Foster’s mother, who flown from England to plead clemency, but refused, unwavering in his belief the law was just.14

  Marshall was to be a key figure in the way events unfolded following the Waterfront payroll robbery. The year of the robbery, 1956, was a tough one for Sid Holland. He was three-quarters of the way through his third term as prime minister when a sharp decline in the overseas demand for dairy exports led to a balance of payments crisis. With the country due to go the polls in 1957, even the most sanguine National Party figures were pessimistic about their prospects of re-election. The pressure was taking its toll on the prime minister. He had become forgetful and started making unusual comments or suggestions. Cabinet was concerned and there were backroom whispers even before the Suez Crisis erupted.

  On 29 October 1956, Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt to wrest back control of the Suez Canal. Still regarded as an outpost of the British Empire, New Zealand was expected to support England if conflict escalated.15 Holland remained at his post throughout the entire crisis, refusing to rest. Several days before a ceasefire was agreed, he collapsed with what was thought to have been a mild heart attack or stroke.16 The seriousness of the prime minister’s condition was largely suppressed from the public lest it incite panic or further loss in confidence. Within weeks he would return, attending public events, but during the period of his convalescence, New Zealand was in effect being run by a small junta of cabinet ministers acting as caretakers of his various portfolios. One of these was Jack Marshall, and it was he who received the news from Arthur Bockett about the Waterfront payroll robbery. Much of the character of the official response was determined by Marshall’s conviction that New Zealand was under siege from the forces of lawlessness and disorder.

  — — —

  It didn’t help ease public anxiety that confidence in the entire police force had recently received a blow. In 1952, Eric Compton was appointed police commissioner. He was an unpopular choice amongst police, as he was widely regarded as a mediocre wartime detective who had been promoted beyond his abilities and over the claims of far more experienced and capable officers. Rumours of improper conduct and alleged collusion in organised crime began practically as soon as Compton began his tenure. These soon reached a volume that Holland’s government could no longer ignore. Holland himself assumed the police portfolio, and a very public commission of inquiry was held. Although Compton was exonerated, he retired and was replaced by the Secretary for Justice, Mr Samuel Barnett, as controller-general, a kind of caretaker head of police. Barnett’s appointment was viewed cautiously as he wasn’t a policeman, but he very quickly worked a number of improvements in police conditions and won over the rank and file. By 1956, public respect for and confidence in the force had been somewhat restored.17

  Nevertheless, the Auckland Detective Bureau was going through a period of transition. One of Barnett’s reforms was to make the career of a policeman attractive by encouraging promotion on merit. According to this policy, throughout the 1950s, a number of bright young men—many of whom had seen active service during World War Two—were singled out for promotion because of their strengths in detection, their forward thinking or their tendency to be ‘direct’. The internal shake-up had also seen a number of older, Depression-era and wartime detectives nearing the end of their careers or transitioning to political appointment. Frank Aplin had been promoted to detective superintendent as the national head of the newly established Criminal Investigation Branch. Bill Fell would shortly be promoted to head up Wellington CIB. Tom Allsop left to become a senior racecourse inspector at Addington. Sub-Inspector J. B. Finlay assumed overall charge of the Auckland Police District, and Chief Detective Frank Brady was appointed head o
f Auckland’s CIB.

  — — —

  A sign that not everyone was thoroughly reassured by the shake-ups at police HQ was that on 26 July 1956, Chief Detective Brady was invited to address the Catholic Men’s Luncheon Club, which largely comprised central-city business owners. They were concerned that there seemed to be a rise in the amount of ‘counting-house breaking’ going on.

  ‘Counting-house breaking’ was the quaint term for the criminal offence of breaking into a shop or office and busting the safe (the ‘counting house’ being the building or office where the accounting operation of a business is housed). In the 1950s, most buildings were kept secure by locks and chains that even the most amateur thief could easily defeat. Some more expensive security systems included burglar alarms, but these were prone to malfunction and tended to be ignored. Besides, they were hardly sophisticated pieces of electrical engineering, and once inside a building a burglar could easily locate and disable them.

  The most sophisticated anti-theft devices then available were safes: steel boxes designed to protect valuables against the most determined robbers and, in many cases, even fires. And, because they were so formidable, if you happened to have the skills necessary to break into a safe, you could expect to be treated as top dog by lesser crooks. Walk into a sly-grog full of kite-flyers (cheque fraudsters), stair-dancers (opportunist burglars) and fencers (people who bought or acquired stolen goods and sold them on to unsuspecting buyers) and you certainly wouldn’t have to wait in line.

  Partly, as Brady told the luncheon club meeting, this status was down to the fact that not everyone was cut out to be a safe-cracker. For the previous 80 years (and especially since the invention of nitroglycerin in 1847), the most popular method of breaking into a safe was by blowing it open. This had become much safer with the advent of first gelignite, then electric detonators, but it still wasn’t for the clumsy or faint-hearted. ‘There was this guy,’ recalled retired safe-breaker Ray Jennings.