ROSS MEURANT: Speech at the funeral of Pat Vesey

Excuse my referring to script. I usually speak from the cuff but there are a couple of points where I need to be specific.

To the family of Pat Vesey – I extend my genuine condolences.

I emphasise “genuine” for once upon a time, Mr Vesey and I were adversaries.

Family of Pat Vesey, you know me not. But some may recall the constable-on-CIB trial - as one of the Scene Detectives - at the homicide site of Jeanette and Harvey Crewe, Pukekawa, June 1970.

I am the officer who during two searches failed to find the 22 cartridge case – later found by Mike Charles (who did not plant the cartridge) after it had been planted on the orders of detective inspector Bruce Hutton – part of a conspiracy among O/C suspects John Hughes and Bob Walton – later commissioner of police.

My name is Ross Meurant – later an inspector in the police. After 21 years I resigned to enter parliament as a National MP, where I served 9 years. I have been a diplomat representative for a Middle East Country. I have foreign business interests.

I attend here today to convey respects to a man, who sooner than did I, recognised that:

*Our system of Justice is widely corrupt

*that for too many people, justice is money – just money

*that the system of justice displays a penchant to preserve the state at the expense of justice

*and that courts find verdicts – they don’t find the truth.

The outstanding contributions Pat Vesey made to rectifying these faults have been well recorded in the annuls of New Zealand history.

Pat Vesey will go down as an icon of justice – and for that, his family must be immensely proud.

For a moment, if I may focus on the Arthur Allan Thomas case, the Crewe homicides, being as it was the case which propelled Pat Vesey into the cross-hairs of police –

who damned him relentlessly.

Why was Pat vilified? Because Pat was right.

Consistent with the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Arthur Allan Thomas case – that ballistic and other evidence presented by the police in both trials were fabricated and false.

Some of the perpetrators, be they principals, deniers of fault or parties committed to protection of the police image - and preservation of the state - are now deceased.

However, their deaths do not exonerate their contributions to the incarceration of Thomas - nor their attacks on men like Pat Vesey – who put himself at considerable risk to find the truth.

FOR

As Voltaire once penned: It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

As Justice Mahon found in the Erebus inquiry, where he identified “a litany of lies”,

the entire judiciary turned on him.

The State was wrong in both cases. In the Crewe case massive humiliation, grief and despair have been carried by the wider Thomas family - none more so that Vivian Thomas, wife of Arthur Allan Thomas at the time of his conviction.

I declined an invitation to be interviewed by police conducting NZ Police Crewe Homicide Review, 2014.

Re-investigating a cold case is appropriate. However, the carefully chosen title of that inquiry, in my view, disguised the true purpose; that being to undermine the findings of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the convictions of Thomas.

I contend that the Police Crewe Homicide Review was, and remains, tantamount to an assault on the pillars of justice.

That there was no way a review of the Crewe homicides, 45 years after the event - during which passage of time eroded the accuracy of many minds, and vital evidence had been destroyed by the police - could overrule the Royal Commission, which had conducted its review a mere 9 years after the murders, when events were still fresh in the minds of most and before all vital evidence had been destroyed by the police.

FINALLY, MAY I SAY

Largely as a result of what former Detective Sergeant Bryan Stewart - my former Drug Squad boss when I was a detective mid 1970s told me in 2007 – when I returned from Syria at his request to hear his dying declaration, I dug deep into the cauldron of disease which harbours the legacy of the Crewe homicides.

Bryan Stewart was Bruce Hutton’s closest mate.

Stewart was also very close to Bob Walton – and often associated with both at Tom Madgwicks bar – where John Hughes reigned supreme (according to the late Sir Bob Jones) and other venues such as the Manukau tavern.

I too attended these soirees – often as chauffeur – and had become close to Hughes and Hutton during the time I was in the C.I.B. – allegedly as an “enforcer”.

But with passage of time and gradual acceptance of things I had denied in the past, I came to realise that I had been used (perhaps Mike Charles has reached the same conclusion).

That at various stages, the leaders whom I had respected and trusted, were prepared to and did try to use me as the fall guy for the disaster that the Crewe homicides turned into.

As a result of what Bryan Stewart told me on his death bed, unequivocally I state:

Len Demler murdered his daughter and her husband. Demler’s female friend Norma Eastman was the woman who fed baby Rochelle Crewe in her cot.

I also know who was the mastermind behind the planting of the cartridge case to get a conviction against a farm worker they described as “halfwit”. And why Commissioner Walton did not charge Bruce Hutton with fabricating the evidence and perjury.

But this I must reserve for another time. I have a book pending – NZ Police Corruption and Judicial Integrity: Where Rule of Police replaces Rule of Law

But I too am mindful of what Voltaire said. Take on the system?

Could I be stopped at a random road check and then have cocaine found in my car?

Whatever - I am disappointed that Pat Vesey is not alive to read a total vindication of his quest for justice and integrity of the system.

As we – all of us - approach the end – what will we be remembered for?

Dr Don Brash - his Orewa speech?

Ross Meurant – Red Squad?

Pat Vesey – To his family I say:

He has left an indelible foot print in the sands of Justice and Time.

Ross Meurant, May 2

Pat Vesey died on April 28, aged 97.