Cops on trial: 1985 murder file shows cops knew of damaging witness statement

It was 8pm on October 13, 1985 - just minutes after the nearby stabbing death of Arthur Easton by an intruder in his Papakura home - when a motorist noticed a stranger in “rather suspicious circumstances” that prompted him to call police.

“I observed a male Māori person cross the road...” the man said, according to a typed account of his initial police tip. “He was running when I first saw him, but then turned around and started to walk.”

The stranger then turned down a walkway and started to run again, Ronald Turner told police, describing the man as someone in his 20s whose height was about 5-foot-6 or 5-foot-7.

“He was continually looking over his shoulder.”

The document, which appeared to be written with a typewriter on bright yellow parchment, was one of many time capsules from the original police investigation file unearthed in the High Court at Auckland today as the first witness began giving evidence in the judge-alone trial of two elderly former officers accused of scheming to pervert justice.

Alan Hall was later charged with murder and found guilty by a jury in the same courthouse where the two officers are now on trial.

He spent 17 years in prison and more years under lifetime parole conditions until the Supreme Court issued an exoneration in 2022. The court found that there were only two possible explanations for the miscarriage of justice: “extreme incompetence or a deliberate and wrongful strategy to secure a conviction”.

Hall now sits in the courtroom gallery, next to a victim coordinator.

Two elderly former police officers are on trial in the High Court at Auckland accused of perverting the course of justice during the 1986 murder trial of Alan Hall. Photo / Dean Purcell

Prosecutors John Billington, KC, and Grant Burston have pointed out repeatedly that Hall is not Māori and is about 6 feet tall - contradicting the initial witness account of the person running several hundred metres from the victim’s home.

It is alleged the defendants purposely did not disclose the contradictory description to the defence, the judge or the jury at the 1986 murder trial or during Hall’s unsuccessful Court of Appeal bid.

A written statement by the witness was read aloud to the jury at Hall’s trial, but it had been stripped of the description of race.

The defendants cannot yet be named and, although media can now refer to them as police officers, their ranks and specific roles in the investigation cannot be published.

Senior Sergeant Robert Cleary, during his trip to the witness box today, told Justice Iain Gault that he was absolutely certain the men would have been aware of the witness statements, which would have been “flagged” to everyone involved with the case.

The first statement was far from the only reference to the suspect’s race and height in the police file, including a transcript of the 111 call by the victim’s son.

“At 2005hrs an offender described as being male Māori, 18 years, 6′ wearing jeans, dark top and balaclava entered the back door,“ noted another document from the very start of the investigation.

”Offender went into one bedroom occupied by 16yr old male. Fight ensued offender stabbed 16yr old once in back and once in thigh. Offender then went down passage way confronted by deceased...

“Offender stabbed Easton twice in chest and upper body. Another son joined in the fight and was stabbed once in the back.”

Turner, the motorist who saw the man running in the neighbourhood, was re-interviewed four months later in February 1986.

It ended up “confirming [the] person he saw was a Māori”, another document states.

Another officer involved in the investigation reported in the file that Turner’s height estimate morphed to become more generalised - between 5-foot-7 and 6 feet - but he remained adamant that the person he saw was “definitely dark skinned”.

But the witness couldn’t see the man’s facial features and would not be able to point him out again, he said, because he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt.

Police also interviewed Turner’s wife, who was in the car with him.

“He said something like, ‘Look at that Māori guy there,’” she told police, according to yet another document. “When he said this I looked all around but I didn’t see anything.”

Cleary, who has been a police officer since 1997, told Justice Gault from the witness box that it’s not uncommon for there so sometimes be contradictions in witness statements. But it’s common knowledge those contradictions need to be aired out in court, he testified.

Justice Ian Gault is overseeing the Auckland High Court trial of two former police officers accused of perverting justice in the now-discredited Alan Hall murder case. Photo / Dean Purcell

Both defendants, now aged 76 and 83, could face up to seven years’ imprisonment if the judge finds them guilty of perverting justice. Both men have pleaded not guilty. A third defendant, who also has ongoing name suppression, died prior to trial.

In a brief opening address yesterday, defence lawyer David Jones, KC, said Turner’s statement could easily have been viewed as irrelevant given the man’s distance from the house.

Other evidence still strongly suggested that Hall was the killer, Jones said.

He described the Crown case as “hyperbolic” and “reverse engineered” to fit the Supreme Court narrative rather than considering the circumstances as law enforcement knew them at the time.

The Crown, however, suggested the statements would have “destroyed” the case against Hall had it seen the light of day.

Cleary, who has not yet been cross-examined by the defence, is expected to continue giving evidence when the trial resumes tomorrow.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.