Source: Radio New Zealand
Ernie agreed to testify in court to what he saw and was moved out of Mt Eden for his own safety. RNZ/Calvin Samuel
A former police commissioner has told RNZ podcast Nark that he’s never seen the letter supposedly sent by him in June 1985, authorising the transfer of a prisoner to a motel in Christchurch.
The prisoner-turned-informant would stay there and in rental accommodation for 18 months, paid for by taxpayers.
Ken Thompson, Police Commissioner from 1983 to 1987, said the details of the investigation into the 1985 murder of Darcy Te Hira uncovered by the RNZ podcast Nark has “an air of Disney about it”.
A prisoner who has permanent name suppression, but is called Ernie in the podcast, claimed to have seen fellow inmate Ross Appelgren murder Te Hira in the kitchen of Mt Eden’s prison in January 1985. Appelgren insisted he wasn’t in the kitchen when Te Hira was attacked.
Ernie agreed to testify in court to what he saw and was moved out of Mt Eden for his own safety; first to New Plymouth prison, then to cells at Takapuna Police Station.
But Ernie described his accommodation in Takapuna as “torture” and pressed police to move him into the Witness Protection Programme and out of prison altogether.
With the agreement of the Department of Justice, police agreed to move Ernie to a $50/night motel on the outskirts of Christchurch, despite him having 18 months of a fraud sentence yet to serve.
Ernie was also promised a cash settlement and relocation overseas. Ernie’s testimony helped convict Appelgren of Te Hira’s murder, but as earlier revealed by Nark, Appelgren’s widow, Julie, is taking his case to the Court of Appeal, claiming Appelgren was innocent.
Nark host Mike Wesley-Smith has reported the motel solution was first proposed in a letter in the name of Thompson, addressed to then-Secretary of Justice, S.J. Callan. It says police were concerned for Ernie’s safety, about the harm being caused by his “solitary confinement in Takapuna”, and that he might refuse to testify.
But when Wesley-Smith approached the now 93-year-old former police commissioner about the letter from his office, Thompson said he knew nothing about it.
“I can recall a lot of things during my time, but certainly not that one… I would really expect to have known of it”.
Archival photo of Ross Appelgren Nick Monro / Julie Appelgren
‘A most unorthodox process’
The guarding of Ernie at a motel under the Witness Protection Programme was called Operation Icing and cost more than $75,000. Thompson said “that fact it was so unusual” and the “shenanigans” of a prisoner being put up in a suburban motel means he should have been briefed.
“I would really expect to have been briefed, even in the broadest terms… It seems like a most unorthodox process to me”.
Other documents sourced in the podcast investigation, including an internal police timeline, back up the suggestion that Thompson wasn’t involved in key decisions involving Ernie and Operation Icing.
The final $30,000 cheque paid to Ernie after he testified was approved by Thompson’s Deputy Commissioner, Mal Churches.
Thompson says he can’t be sure whether or not he would have approved of Operation Icing, but suspects he would have had doubts.
“I don’t like these so-called prison squeaks. They weren’t in my good books”.
He confirmed that, in 1985, police procedure required detectives to first formally record a witness’s account before discussing any deals or benefits for the witness.
Appelgren claimed detectives investigating him for murder did not follow this procedure during their interviews with Ernie.
The latest episode of Nark is out now at rnz.co.nz/nark or wherever you get your podcasts. The series airs 7pm Sundays on RNZ National.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
