The Scene of the Crime

by Steve Braunias

  I searched for people who might have known him, and called a woman in Northland. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m his daughter.’ We didn’t talk for long. ‘He had literary aspirations,’ she said, ‘but his poem was pretty much nonsense. It was like blank-verse poetry. There was an awful lot of it — pages and pages. It was impossible to make sense of it. He was an intelligent person; it had what you’d call classical references in it. He’d ask people for their opinion. But nobody could understand it. I’ve still got some somewhere. Haven’t looked at in years, and no desire to.’

  A misunderstood genius? The only available document in Wasmuth’s oeuvre is his statement to the police. I was shown it in the lobby of an Auckland hotel where I met the late Bill Brien, a former detective who led the inquiry. He gave me a photocopy. The heavy typewriter keys had left ink over the pages; a round stamp from a police inkpad described a circle, like a stain from the bottom of a teacup. It was three pages long and it gave off a kind of crackle of lunacy and violence. You couldn’t make this stuff up because it was so artless. There was nothing contrived about it. It was dreamy, almost whimsical. It told a narrative of elisions. Important facts were missing. It skated over the events of the day, was more concerned with the suspicious behaviour of others. It began: ‘For some years I have been certain that I have been persecuted . . .’ It ended: ‘I have no regrets because I think that the whole thing may have been staged. Except for a pain in my arm, I feel in good health and mentally balanced.’

  I visited May Mackey in her apartment in Parnell. She was 92, and claimed: ‘I’m fading out.’ In fact, she was agile and alert. She made a pot of tea, and put out a plate of custard squares. In 1963 she was married to Detective Inspector Wally Chalmers of the Auckland CIB. ‘He was a real Scotsman,’ said May. He was pipe major of the police pipe band, a big, barrel-chested man with a soft heart. During the war, when there was a shortage of staff, he worked shifts as a police cook in the Auckland barracks; after making arrests, it was his habit to climb the stairs to the fourth-floor kitchens and make a meal for himself and the arrested man. Days before he was called out to Bethells, he led a party to disarm a 22-year-old plasterer, who was holding a couple hostage in their home in Ellerslie.

  May grew up in Dunedin. She was christened Hughina. May and Wally married late in life — she was 40, he was 44 — and adopted. ‘We put our names down, and they gave us Huia, our daughter. Then they rang again, and said. “We’ve got another one.” A baby boy, only 11 months old.’ They called him Wallace.

  They lived in a police house on Forfar Road, Glendowie. I asked her about that summer’s day in 1963, and she said, ‘The children looked so beautiful that day. I had a pram to carry the two of them, and I thought I’d go for a walk to meet Wally. I phoned the station to find out which route he was coming home. They said, “Sorry, he’s not here.” He only went out when there was trouble. The next thing, I get a visit.’ Wally was 46.

  They put her on tranquilisers. The funeral at St David’s Church in downtown Auckland was a vast public ceremony with thousands of people lining Khyber Pass Road, and a cortège that went for 5 kilometres. The police band piped the hearses the length of Khyber Pass. May didn’t remember much about it. ‘I was confused at the time. Grieving. Totally stunned over what had happened. So it’s not terribly clear.’

  I phoned Valerie Bright in Paihia. In 1963 she was married to Detective Sergeant Neville Power. She said, ‘Nev was very studious. He always had his nose in a police manual. Loved cryptic crosswords — he’d puzzle them out over the phone with his dad.’ His father was assistant commissioner of police, and his three brothers were also in the force. He was regarded as a rising star, and was a well-liked, attractive man, tall with fair hair.

  They lived in Alma Street, Te Atatu South. I asked her about that summer’s day in 1963, and she said, ‘I was feeding my six-month-old daughter and 18-month-old son their breakfast. Nev pecked me on the cheek and said, “See you later.” I was at a friend’s house that afternoon when Nev’s parents came around. They said, “You need to sit down.” It was a weird feeling. I thought it might be a vicious joke on someone’s part.’ Neville was 25.

  Valerie didn’t remember much of the funeral, either. She was in a haze of sedatives and grief. Her husband’s brothers — listed in the paper the next day as Constable OW Power of Ohakune, Constable BW Power of Te Kuiti, and police cadet KW Power of Trentham — carried the coffin. Valerie said, ‘When the casket was lowered into the ground, I felt I was going to go down with it.’

  Life back at Alma Street was an agony. ‘My son, Ross, stood at the window and waited for his dad to come home. “Daddy come home. Daddy come home.” He did it for ages. It tore me apart.’

  She sold the house the following year. ‘I couldn’t get away quickly enough.’ I asked her about her husband’s killer, and she said, ‘I hated Wasmuth. Hated him. His picture is imprinted in my mind. I can see him now.’

  I was to visit May Mackey twice, in 2012 and again in 2015. I liked her so much; there was such a kindness to her, and she always spoke from the heart. She had arthritis, and one arm was bad. I poured the heavy teapot, and followed her orders to cover it with a ‘coat’, as she put it, to keep the pot warm. We sat next to each other on a narrow couch. She laughed easily, and wasn’t sentimental; she was more practical and honest than that.

  She said about Wally’s murder, ‘Well, it’s history now. But it’s always heavily there. That was my life. Wally and I were soulmates. That’s how it always was with us. I was left alone with two young children, and a totally broken heart.’

  May spoke in a very clear voice. She said: ‘My Christian faith helped me through.’ It gave her strength, and purpose, and led her towards Wasmuth.

  *

  I went out west to Bethells on a beautiful day in late summer. The main road leads up and over hills to black sand and a dramatic surf. It was swampy and scruffy, with pukeko rampaging in the scrub, and the rusted shells of cars dumped in land no good for farming, no good for anything much.

  There was Wasmuth’s bach at the top of the rise. There were fruit trees down the back; Wasmuth’s daughter remembers visiting and seeing plums for sale at the front gate. But now the front gate was decorated with barbed wire and held by two padlocks; there had once been a letterbox in the middle of it, and it looked like a wild animal had clawed it out.

  I talked to neighbours. People said the man who now lived at the bach Wasmuth built was a recluse. They said he’d cut off his phone. They said he was strange. One neighbour claimed two people lived there: ‘We call them the Weird Brothers.’

  The kennels next door were overgrown with gorse — it really was Gorselands. Terangimarie Blake and her two children lived in the homestead once riddled with bullets. She grew lettuces in a wheelbarrow, and gave an articulate speech about why she preferred to be called queer and not lesbian. She was very beautiful.

  Nehe Reuben lived on the other side of the bach. He opened the door fast and hard; all of a sudden, there was a Maori man standing there with a full moko. He was very pleasant. When he moved in five years ago, he said, the house was haunted. It was the year Wasmuth died. ‘The birds weren’t singing. My son was getting visitors at night. The ex, too. They were fucken levitating, mate. I got the Maori ghostbusters in and all that shit. The birds sing now.’

  You could see the bach through bushes on the side of the road. It was small and dark, with the roof at a 15-degree angle. Two tea towels dried on a line tied across the verandah. It was from there that Wasmuth started shooting. Out of the blue, he fired his .303 Enfield rifle on a complete stranger, Harry Petit, who had come to collect his dog from Gorselands. Petit was shot in the arm at the doorway of Jim Berry’s house. Wasmuth continued shooting. Kathleen Berry and Neil Falconer, a 16-year-old who worked at the kennels, crawled on their stomachs into the house as bullets hit the fridge. They phoned the police. Wasmuth went inside his bach, and came back out to empty his teapot.

  Petit was dragg
ed to safety. Wasmuth shouted, ‘Get some Elastoplast, that’ll fix it.’

  The dogs barking in boarding kennels. Jim Berry stepped onto the road to see where the shooting was coming from, and was shot in the heart. He was 37.

  His wife told the police, ‘My husband collapsed in the middle of the road. I ran back to him but he never spoke to me.’

  Wasmuth said in his statement, ‘Berry made a perfect target of himself. I aimed, fired and he fell to the ground.’

  Wasmuth made a pot of tea. Then: ‘Shortly afterwards a man came up to my bach. I do not know who he was, and [he] asked me where there was a phone as a man was dead on the road. I told him there was a phone at the Reynolds’ place. I had no desire to shoot him, so I let him go.’

  The dogs barking in boarding kennels. He waited in his small, dark, hot fibrolite box. ‘I stayed inside and more or less expected the arrival of the police.’

  Constable Norm Sowter was dispatched to pick up Detective Sergeant Bill Brien from his home in St Heliers. I phoned Sowter in Ahipara. He said, ‘It was a magnificently sunny day. Not a cloud. I shot out to get Bill, but it was such a lovely day, and you know what it’s like on a Sunday in Mission Bay. Crowded, packed. I was permanently on the horn, driving on the footpath, doing anything to get there as quickly as I could.’ Police had temporarily banned the use of sirens.

  Another car was sent to get Detective Ross Dallow. I visited Ross at his home in Te Atatu; he is the father of newsreader Simon Dallow, and there were family photographs of his famous son throughout the house. Ross said, ‘I was doing some gardening around the back of the house, and suddenly heard a commotion at the front. I saw a police car taking off. Plain-coloured car. Unmarked car. I was part of a rapid-response team, so I got on the phone to central. I had a very quick shower, and the next car came in about five minutes. I was told there had been an incident, that it was very serious.’

  The first policeman Wasmuth shot was Neville Power. He approached Wasmuth’s bach with Constable John Langham, and fired a tear-gas canister through a window. Wasmuth stepped out onto his porch, and shot Power through the corner of the bach. Wall particles and bullet fragments were found in his heart at the autopsy.

  Wasmuth, in his statement: ‘He exposed most of his body from behind the corner of the bach, and he too made a perfect target. At this stage I didn’t care who I shot, and whether they were policemen or not.’

  Power lay dying. He called out to Langham, ‘Help me, John.’

  Langham called back, ‘Stay where you are, Neville. Don’t move.’

  Wasmuth went outside and stood over Power’s body. Langham heard him say, ‘Is it cold down there, sonny?’

  And then the killer went for Langham, who was hiding in long grass. He would have executed him. But Wally Chalmers arrived, and shouted at Wasmuth to get his attention. He saved Langham’s life and sacrificed his own. He retreated, tripped in a ditch, and fell backwards. Wasmuth advanced with his Enfield rifle. Chalmers died within minutes.

  Wasmuth, in his statement: ‘I saw a big man with red or fairish hair. He was about middle-aged and dressed in a light-coloured shirt. He stumbled and fell. I shot him as he lay on the ground.’

  Langham managed to get to Neville Power. He told the coroners court, ‘I lifted his head and turned him around. He shuddered a couple of times and died in my arms.’

  Paul Church — the seven-year-old mucking around by the garage — saw the police arrive. In all, 16 officers were at the crime scene. He said, ‘They came straight through the front gates, they were in the bush — they were just everywhere. More and more. Something was escalating quite quickly. They wanted a word with Father Cronin. They asked him to minister the dead. He said, “Yes, of course.” He got his purple stole and said, “Stay here.” I remember him walking up the road.’

  The priest in his purple stole — ‘all priest’, ‘the most amazing man’ — walking up the valley of death that Sunday in the Waitakere Ranges to give the last rites to Berry, Chalmers and Power. He was in full view of Wasmuth. ‘But he didn’t shoot,’ Paul said. ‘Maybe there was still some decency left in him. He could easily have killed the Father.’

  The dogs barking in boarding kennels. Dallow was still racing to the scene. He heard that his fellow officers had been killed over the car radio. They travelled the rest of the way in complete silence. He remembered that very clearly. He said, ‘Even now, I . . .’ He put his head in his hands.

  Detective Constable Graham Johanson arrived. I called him at his home. He said, ‘After Wasmuth shot Wally, he walked up the road to where I was. Our NCO said, “Take cover!” Officers ran for the ferns on the side of the road.’

  Johanson, a former air-force marksman, was armed with a .32 Browning semi-automatic. He was 40 feet away. He fired at Wasmuth’s legs, then his torso, and the third bullet hit Wasmuth’s elbow. He said, ‘I was shooting to kill.’

  I said, ‘Did you regret you didn’t kill him?’

  He said, ‘Very much so. He killed my mates. Neville was a good friend. We visited him and Val at their home. He was a gentleman.’

  Later reports claimed Wasmuth came at Johanson swinging his rifle like a club, and fought like a tiger when he was arrested. ‘Rubbish,’ said Johanson. ‘Total rubbish. But he was quite wild. His looks were scary. He said, “Look out. I’m a dangerous man. I’ll spit in your eye.”

  ‘That day was the worst thing in my 25 years in the police. It hit me hard for months and months. I did it cold turkey — they didn’t have counselling then. I couldn’t attend the funeral. Just couldn’t. Even today, I . . .’ Like Dallow, he gasped for breath. Two weeping ex-cops, 50 years after that slaughter in the bush.

  Norm Sowter went with Wasmuth to hospital. He said, ‘I remember him well. Tall guy, strapping build; well put together. He was very serious in everything he said. A very, very dour sort of guy. He just didn’t give a stuff. He was complaining about his arm and all that sort of shit. The nurse grabbed his arm, gave it a bit of a twist, and said, “Is that where it hurts?” I’d have liked to have given her a medal. That was quite pleasing.’

  Ross Dallow remembered arriving at the killing fields in Bethells. The whole scene struck him as feral. ‘No one went to Bethells then. It was like going to Great Barrier Island! So you get there that day, and you had the heat, you had the flies, you had the sound of the dogs wailing and crying down there — I thought, “I wouldn’t want to live here.” You wouldn’t have slept all that well at night.

  ‘There’d been a heavy summer shower that afternoon. It was sticky and steamy. You know what Auckland’s like up in the hills.’

  *

  Poor Jim Berry’s death has been recorded almost as an aside to the shootings of the two policemen. He was a casualty of madness and isolation and summer; his death was a private affair. The deaths of Chalmers and Power were public. It shocked the nation, and led directly to the formation of the Armed Offenders Squad (AOS) in 1964. Wasmuth’s massacre was a pivotal moment in New Zealand policing history.

  ‘It changed the whole of the history of the police insofar as firearms are concerned,’ as Bill Brien put it, in a letter he sent to me before we met at an Auckland hotel to talk about the killings, and where he gave me Wasmuth’s crazed statement. Brien was in charge of the police inquiry, and subsequently wrote a report calling for the AOS to be established.

  One of the New Zealand ways of death in public life is to fashion a plaque on a great big rock. Two great big rocks are dedicated to the two policemen at Te Atatu’s Neville Power Park, named in 1965. There was no reference to Wally Chalmers until volunteer park ranger Christine Julian took action. She said, ‘I thought it was fitting that the two men who died together should be memorialised together.’

  She chose Wally’s rock from the quarry at Bethells. ‘I thought that the rock should come from the place where he died. I went to the quarry, and the manager was about to drive me in and look at thousands of rocks, when I saw a particular rock leaning against his hut. I
said, “That’s the one.” It has a certain presence to it.’

  The inscriptions on the rocks for Neville Power and Wally Chalmers read: KILLED ON DUTY. The massive slabs face the blue, smoky hills of the Waitakere Ranges, towards Bethells.

  *

  What do you do when lives are broken and shattered? What kind of shape do you make when you reassemble the pieces?

  Wasmuth stayed broken. He was all sharp edges, scattered. He was declared mentally unfit to stand trial. ‘I was 17 at the time of the killings,’ his daughter said. ‘I went to see him in prison. He was joking about it, saying it was a lot of bother over nothing. “It’ll all go away soon,” he said.’

  They locked him up in Auckland’s Oakley Hospital and more or less threw away the key. A psych nurse who knew him said, ‘He was in the right place. He was a nutter. He was quite well-spoken, but he talked shit the whole time.’

  His daughter visited. ‘You could talk to him like a normal person, but then he’d start raving and saying things that were totally unrealistic.’ He told her they let him out at night. Like the nurse, she said he refused to take medication.

  He was in the M3 ward, or Male Three, which housed patients with severe psychiatric disorders. When Oakley closed in 1992, Wasmuth and the others were cuffed and taken by bus to the Lake Alice asylum in Whanganui; when that closed in 1999, he returned to Auckland, by aircraft, to the Mason Clinic (‘Improving Lives through Responsive Forensic Services’).

  Another psych nurse, who knew him at Mason, said Wasmuth could do one-armed push-ups well into his eighties — that splendid physique, the sprinter’s body. He was eventually released to a rest home with a secure unit in New Lynn, and then to a similar facility in Red Beach, on the Whangaparaoa coast, to be near his younger brother.