At the end of the war, Parsons and Banks opened Aro Street Motors, a used-car business, but the venture was unsuccessful.25 Meanwhile, they were amongst the first crooks to take advantage of the delayed radio coverage of live horse racing. They purchased two ex-Army ZC1 radios and came up with the rort where one would drive to a vantage point near the racecourse and listen to the call, while the other would stand by their radio in a hotel carpark. Once the result was radioed through, the man outside the hotel would race in and place a last-minute bet on the winner before the results were broadcast. They typically made a substantial sum of money cleaning out bookies before their scam was realised. Then they would hightail it out and hit the next unsuspecting joint.
Banks blew the safe at Woolworths in rats’-arse Masterton and was sent down for a long stretch.26 He successfully applied for a transfer to Mount Eden Prison, whereupon Parsons followed his buddy north. When Banks was released, the pair opened Atlas Motors, a legitimate but less-than-successful venture, made profitable only by the supplementary activities of its proprietors. Both men became respected amongst the criminal fraternity, Banks in particular for his cunning intelligence. He lived at 38 East Street off Karangahape Road with his wife, Kitty, a ‘scrape-nurse’ (practitioner of illegal abortions), and their teenage son, John—later to be a Member of Parliament and mayor of Auckland.
Parsons’ prominence probably had far more to do with his association with Banks than with any aptitude of his own. Many thought poorly of him. One retired criminal described him as a notorious big-noter:
. . . he would always boast about being involved in this crime or that, but it was mostly bullshit. He sucked a lot of people in, talked a lot of shit. We didn’t know whether he could be entirely trusted. There were rumours he would sell his mother up the river just to get off a lag.
Barry Shaw was just as uncomplimentary:
Gus Parsons was your archetypal crook, into every fuckin’ rort going and you couldn’t trust him. He acted the hardarse, but he crumbled inside. He couldn’t handle doing stir and went fizz. Whenever he got sent down, him and [Archie] Banks and Knucklehead [George Walker], they’d all have some sort of system going to make sure they had a cushy stretch. They’d have transistor radios smuggled into the cells to listen to the races and open a book. They’d make a killing on the side ripping off the stupid, dimwit prisoners.
Nor were shoddy repairs and the winding back of odometers just a small part of what was going on behind closed garage doors at Atlas Motors. Police long suspected the business was a front for illegal activity. Rumours were rife that it provided a money-laundering service to crooks at exorbitant interest rates, and that for a stiff fee you could hire one of the cars that was for sale on the lot with plates swapped for another and use it as a getaway car on a weekend job. For a small percentage of the takings, Parsons would even drive it for you.
After the young apprentice jerked the nod on the wrench, detectives swooped on Atlas Motors with a search warrant. An ashen-faced Gus Parsons produced the records for the vehicle in question, including a logbook of its movements, which indicated that the car had been hired out to a man named George Newman. The detectives assumed that this would be the same George Newman whom they knew for his safe-breaking activities, and so it proved. Later that day, they raided the bedsit where Newman was holed up, and underneath his bed they found a shot-firing machine and a black bag containing a large quantity of gelignite, around 200 detonators and an assortment of jewellery. At his later trial, Mr Wily, stipendiary magistrate, commented, ‘These tools can cause an incalculable amount of damage. You’re lucky you didn’t blow yourself up in bed, Newman’.27
That was about all the luck Newman had in the matter. The items recovered were linked with a number of robberies committed in the days after the aggravated robbery of the bus terminal: during the first week of April, there was a break-in at a hardware store in Ngatea, where £258 and a number of socket spanners were stolen. The following night, the railway quarry magazine at Waikino was broken into, where a shot-firing machine, a box of 250 detonators, a large quantity of gelignite, a 300-foot (90-metre) cable and a wrench were taken. The spree continued south to Atiamuri, where gas-cutting equipment was stolen from the Four Square. Then, back in Auckland, the robbers flogged a safe, jewellery, cash and other articles worth £947 from a Chinese fruiterer in New Lynn, along with a number of watches from a jeweller in Wellsford.28
Under questioning, Newman snitched Richard ‘Māori Mac’ MacDonald as his associate. Both men were charged with the Auckland Bus Terminal job, as well as with the other offences. MacDonald was a hardened criminal who ruled his crew ruthlessly. He got the wild bug up his arse and several days out from the trial, two petty criminals named Pennell and McDonnell, both associates of Gus Parsons, came forward and confessed to carrying out the robberies with Newman. Police had their doubts, and sure enough, during the trial, both Pennell and McDonnell recanted their confessions, saying MacDonald had beaten the crap out of them and threatened their families if they didn’t take the rap. Newman, who took the stand with black eyes and a swollen nose had also been ‘got to’ in prison and now refused to stand by his testimony. He, like Gus Parsons, who was dragged in to corroborate leasing the car, refused to testify and both were deemed hostile witnesses. MacDonald and Newman were found guilty of all offences except the bus terminal job, because the offenders were wearing balaclavas and the cleaner couldn’t positively identify his attackers. They were each sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in November, and began their lag just two weeks prior to the Waterfront payroll robbery. There was no way either of them could have been directly involved.
The burglary spree in April netted considerable quantities of gelignite and detonators plus an assortment of tools and implements favoured by shop-breakers. Police wondered at the time whether the haul was precursory and was being stockpiled for a much bigger job. Now, they wondered whether that job was the Waterfront payroll robbery. MacDonald had more than enough influence to orchestrate the heist from his cell.
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ Māori Mac said when he was interviewed by Walton and Schultz. ‘Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you lot. I wish I had been in on it, though. Good luck to the bastards who pulled it off, whoever they are.’
— — —
Gus Parsons was a fast-moving, smooth-talking type—your stereotypical used-car salesman—and he could easily have got by in that game. But, as with so many criminals, it wasn’t enough. He had his finger in a lot of pies and was making a tidy income from his various nefarious activities. But now he was having trouble with his staff. His new apprentice, the car groomer, had shown promise, but Parsons hadn’t expected the guy to shitcan him. Now the cards had fallen and MacDonald’s crew were on the warpath and holding him responsible. His reputation was in tatters and, worse, he was being compelled to give evidence against Māori Mac and Newman. To add insult to injury, when he refused to testify he was held in contempt of court.
That was the least of his worries.
In August 1956, an alert off-duty policeman noticed a light truck with worn tyres, laden with roofing iron, parked up along Karangahape Road. The truck was traced back to an elderly woman in Kingsland who said she had sold it to the nice man at Atlas Motors. The policeman quizzed the young driver, who admitted he was carting the materials for his boss, Mr Parsons. The truck matched descriptions of a vehicle reportedly involved in the theft of a large bundle of copper wire from the state hydro-electric departments in the South Waikato. When the policeman asked if he knew anything about that, the driver innocently explained that he and his brother made regular journeys to various plants to uplift copper wiring and take them back to Auckland.
‘What happens then?’ the policeman asked.
‘My boss burns the insulation off it and sells it to the New Zealand Farmers Fertiliser Company. It’s all completely legit.’
‘You reckon?’ asked the cop.
‘Fair dinkum.’ The driv
er nodded.
Idiot, thought the cop.
Detectives contacted the New Zealand Farmers Fertiliser Company, who also believed the copper had been legitimately purchased. They produced receipts totalling £19,819 made out over an eighteen-month period to Augustus Parsons, who was promptly arrested. He admitted nothing, but the evidence was stacked against him. His trial came before the courts the same week he was due to testify in the case against Newman and MacDonald, a fact that didn’t escape Truth. They devoted a full page to a man they described as ‘a crime leader of standing in this criminal group’.29
While Parsons languished in prison, he doubtless reflected that it was hard to get good help these days. The dumb fucks he employed all seemed to end up shitcanning him.
Even Parsons’ estranged wife was making the headlines, and he was drawn into that scandal, too. Nancy Parsons had decided to make a quick buck by opening a sly-grog in Gus’s Freemans Bay house, employing a number of comely ‘waitresses’, ‘kitchen-hands’ and ‘typists’ to provide light relief to patrons. On 12 October 1956, her establishment played host to a dozen US Airforce personnel assigned to Operation ‘Deep Freeze’, lately back from Antarctica and starved of female company. The beer flowed freely, as did tempers later on in the night. Nancy’s boyfriend Neville Hassett got into a blue with an American serviceman, Reg Green, and beat him to death. Everyone scattered, but Hassett was soon caught. The US Embassy was keen to cover it up, so the Jacks threw the book at Hassett while Nancy played dumb, making him take the rap.30
Gus Parsons heard the news through the prison grapevine and was desperate to get out. A prison fizz whispered that he was big-noting that he planned the whole Waterfront job, knew who was in on it and, as soon as he was released, would be given a sizeable drink. Parsons claimed he knew the identities of the robbers because he had seen the unusual brick bolster and small red-handled breadknife in the boot of a car that had been traded in. He reckoned the seller had smiled and winked and said they were ‘going to be used on a job shortly’.
Les Schultz recorded that he was ‘quite sure that Parsons has some knowledge of at least one of the offenders, and possibly of two of them. His knowledge was apparently gained through seeing some of the tools that were used and left at the scene of the crime.’ He was confident he could get Parsons to spill his guts.
Parsons agreed to name names, and in return demanded that his sentence be reduced and served out in the minimum-security wing. Schultz didn’t have the authority to make that call, but said he would do his best.
Two days later, two letters arrived on Schultz’s desk. One was a shakily handwritten letter from Gus Parsons, part of which read:
I am definitely not going through with it. I know deep down in Nancy’s heart she doesn’t want me to put anyone in here. I think I know how she feels losing me and she is only thinking of someone else being in here and my surcancances [circumstances]. If I was around and about things would be entirely different, I couldn’t protect her here if anything should come of it. I will promise you this, that one day when I am around again if still want [sic] when full time is up I will give you a good lead then. If you can obtain my sales book you may find a lead in it, it up to you. Please don’t call and see me again on this matter, it only makes it harder for me under the surcancances. Please respect my wishes, Les, after all it is your job to find out who done it.
The second letter was from Prison Superintendent Haywood, informing that Gus Parsons was convalescing in the hospital wing having been beaten by a group of unidentified prisoners.
— — —
Walton visited his nemesis, Archie Banks, at his home. Unsurprisingly, Banks was able to account for his whereabouts on the night of the robbery. Walton summed up the conversation in a file note: ‘Banks would inform if he knew anything of this matter, particularly if offenders were persons unknown or disliked by him. Says no word from criminals he is consorting or dealing with in business.’
‘No, it wasn’t me,’ Banks said. ‘I had nothing to do with it and I don’t know who was involved either. But I tell you, Mr Walton, I’d like to know. Plenty of other fellas would like to know, too. I mean, no one can carry out any job or shift any stuff while you lot are out on the streets in force. Fellas are coming to me to put the pressure on to expose these guys quickly so things can get back to normal and we can carry on. After all, Christmas is coming.’
Walton tried hard not to smile.
CHAPTER 4
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Many of the inquiry team wondered if the robbers knew exactly how much they had got away with when they committed the crime. They might not have realised the payroll was quite as large as it was. The size of the loot placed it—and the offenders—in a special category. A haul of a couple of thousand could easily be frittered away, written off and forgotten by insurance companies, but no one was going to write off £20,000. No business could sustain a loss so significant. Exhilaration at having carried off a record grab would quickly turn to anxiety once the thieves realised that they were now the most hunted men in the country. The Jacks would be relentless in their pursuit and were unlikely to give up, and the robbers were at the mercy of the criminal fraternity, who would be lining up to extort a piece of the takings or sell them out. As Archie Banks had told detectives as soon as 24 hours after the robbery, certain gangsters had already initiated their own enquiries to discover the identities of the suddenly flush perpetrators.
Unless it had already been arranged through trusted sources, this quantity of stolen money would be difficult to launder. It would have to be done almost immediately, because once the serial numbers of the stolen notes were identified and the information circulated, everyone would be on the lookout.
Detective Errol Jones was in charge of tracing the stolen money. He presumed the banknotes would already be in circulation or would be in the process of being laundered. But, before they could even begin to try to trace them, the serial numbers of the stolen banknotes needed to be determined. This was no easy task. In 1956, banking systems were primitive by today’s standards; with computer technology many years off; record keeping was entirely manual and done in bulky books and ledgers.
All the same, the efforts to identify the numerical sequence of the stolen banknotes looked as though it might bear fruit. On 21 November, seven days prior to the robbery, Mr Ormsby, head teller of the Bank of New Zealand Queen Street branch, drew £60,000 in £10 notes from the Reserve Bank Depot. In his ledger, Ormsby recorded that the banknotes were serialised 4/F 879501 to 4/F 885500 and that they were brand-new notes bound in bundles of 100. He then split each bundle in half, creating bundles of £5000, which he sealed.
On the morning of 27 November, Ormsby received an order for £10,000 in £10 notes from the Bank of New Zealand branch in Customs Street. Ormsby filled the order by making up twenty blocks of £500, each in £10 notes. While the majority of the notes he used were in splendid numerical sequence, he ran out midway through creating one of the blocks. He used older stock to make up the rest, including a combination of new notes left over from an earlier order and older, used banknotes. Once bundled together, this was referred to by the banking fraternity as a ‘composite block’.
It was Mr Roberts, a teller from Bank of New Zealand Customs Street, who had placed the order of £10,000 in £10 notes and £33,000 in other denominations from the main branch on Tuesday 27 November. It was when Roberts received the money that the system broke down, because at branch level there was neither a requirement to record serial numbers nor a procedure for doing it. Roberts remembered the bundles of notes were mainly brand new but he couldn’t recall how many—if any—were composite blocks. On the morning of 27 November, he handed over the sum of £900 in £10 notes to the Railways Department for wages, but he couldn’t say whether this was paid out of the money received earlier from the Reserve Bank. In the afternoon, he paid a total of £41,000 to Ronald Vincent, the Waterfront Industry Commission cashier. Mr Vincent handed him seven 14-in
ch by 9-inch (35-centimetre by 23-centimetre) canvas bags with specific instructions on how much to place in each bag and in what denominations—how many £10, £5, £1 and 10s. notes. To furnish the correct number of £10 notes per bag, Roberts broke the seals on each £500 block. This had the effect of further scrambling what remained of the sequential order, and the bank had absolutely no way of telling which notes went where.
Vincent didn’t make a record of the particular serial sequences of the notes either. He recalled receiving the majority of the £10 notes made up in bundles of £1000. At least £8000 were brand-new notes, with the balance made up of old issue. He knew this because some of the ten payroll clerks whose job it was to make up staff wages did not like handling brand-new notes, so Vincent mixed the notes up to give those particular staff bundles containing composite or old issue. Once individual pay packets were made up, these were placed back into the canvas bags, sealed and each bag initialled by the clerk responsible for that particular bag. Vincent then placed the bags in the safe and locked it. The next morning, once the money had been retrieved from the safe, the clerks would prepare to pay the early shift of cargo workers from the pay cart from 8 am on Wednesday morning.
All of the commission pay clerks were interviewed, but only Herbert Heyder could recall with any certainty the serial numbers of the money he had checked in his bag. He checked around £1100 in £10 notes, of which he was certain £1000 was in brand-new notes. He recalled the last three digits on some of these notes ran in sequence from 701 to 800. He didn’t check each individual note in these blocks, but he could tell from quickly skimming through that these were from an unbroken block and therefore still in sequence. He also remembered checking £3000 in £5 notes. He had noticed these because they were also brand-new notes, and he remembered that the last three digits in their serial numbers ran consecutively from 101 to 700.
The Great New Zealand Robbery Page 6
