QUOTE OF THE DAY: "In a preliminary court hearing about Tolley’s murder, one of X’s lawyers, Robert Lithgow, QC, commented that, “the five-year investigation to date has produced an entirely vaporous case”. “You would hope that cases largely turn on true facts, well established,” says Lithgow, reflecting on the inquiry. “They just didn't have that, did they.” He points to the interviews of X, and his supposed confession that was riddled with factual errors, which clearly suggested X was making it up. “I think the police believed the fact he was prepared to talk about the murder scene was a kind of primitive confession, the details of which were not really the point. “But it’s very hard to get past a confession, even if it doesn’t make sense. “It’s like a Greek chorus, whispering in the background, ‘He did it, he said he did it, don’t worry about how, never mind the details, he’s admitted he did it.’ ” Lithgow says the interviewing officers and their boss likely thought their approach and application of CIPEM was an honest way of getting information, even though it wasn’t. “They were like happy clappers, they were like zealots and born-agains – they believed they were doing the right thing. “But they just lost the ability of standing back and thinking through the shortcomings of their own case, and whether what they had, actually amounted to anything.”
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY ONE: (Reason one: The quirky confession of X: "X was in jail on other charges at the time, so police came up with a plan to cold-call him, get him off the prison grounds, put him at ease, and then pressure him to talk. With the collaboration of Rimutaka Prison’s director, two senior officers arrived at the prison on August 15, 2019. X was taken to them, without being told who he was meeting, or what it was about. They then drove him to a police station, and started talking. The officers had been handpicked, and were specialists in a controversial interviewing technique aimed at getting suspects to spill what they know, or confess to crimes. X had no knowledge of this at the time, and the officers went out of their way to make it seem like this wasn’t a normal police interview, half-heartedly reciting his legal rights before immediately asking, “How’s that McChicken?” Within two days, X had been manipulated and cajoled into confessing to shooting Tolley, and was charged with her murder soon after. But it was a confession a judge later ruled was simply not credible, and in November 2021, police were forced to drop all charges against X. Shortly afterwards, they also withdrew charges against the two other men they had charged with Tolley’s murder........."The approach taken by Detective Senior Sergeant Steve Anderson and Detective Sergeant Dylan Ross as they sat down with X was straight from a contentious and secretive police playbook. The Complex Investigation Phase Engagement Model (CIPEM) is the brainchild of the country’s most senior police investigator and head of the Criminal Investigation Branch, Detective Superintendent Tom Fitzgerald. It aims to avoid the usual police interview scenario, make the suspect relaxed (there are comfortable chairs, no desk or paperwork, no note-taking, and shared food), and develop a relationship, which hopefully leads to the suspect confiding what they know – or confessing to the crime. X eventually mentioned the names of four people he thought might have been involved in Tolley’s murder. Anderson and Ross then turned this back on him, suggesting he had snitched on these men, including a close friend, and had now put them in a lot of trouble. X continually denied being involved in the attack (“Honestly, honestly bro, I wasn’t there”), and said what he’d told the officers previously was “only my personal thoughts and opinions on how everything played out, coz it’s all imaginary, imaginative, and that’s why things don’t make sense to yous”. But, thinking he had now committed the cardinal sin of narking on others, X suddenly told the officers he had shot Tolley. “I just prefer to go to jail bro for a long time, to save the people I love.”
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY TWO: (Reason two: The jailhouse snitches): "The other man charged with killing Lois Tolley, AB, had been on detectives’ radar from virtually the start of their investigation. Knowing they suspected him of involvement, AB voluntarily gave police a DNA sample in early 2017, so he could be ruled out, insisting he’d never heard of Tolley, let alone knew her, or killed her. Regardless, police tried to find evidence against him, approaching 10 cellmates AB had been in prison with (on other charges) at various times after Tolley’s murder, to see if he’d blabbed about the crime. None said he had. Eventually, however, police canvasses for information among prisoners bore fruit, when two other inmates came forward claiming AB had confessed to being involved in the murder. Such witnesses, known as “jailhouse snitches”, are considered the most notorious, dangerous and unreliable of witnesses, their evidence being responsible for countless wrongful convictions worldwide. Despite this, they frequently appear in high profile New Zealand investigations, including the cases of Scott Watson, Teina Pora, Mark Lundy, David Tamihere, and Arthur Allan Thomas. Both the prison informants in AB’s case had numerous convictions for dishonesty. In return for his information, one was supported by police at a parole hearing. The second prison witness is understood to have received other incentives. (Police have refused to answer questions about this, and all other aspects of their use of the prison witnesses.) Beyond that, police only had one other witness with evidence that tangentially and tenuously implicated AB in the killing. This man was a habitual, high-profile offender with over 60 dishonesty convictions, but received reduced sentences on multiple charges, on two occasions, for the information he provided to police. On this basis, AB was arrested in August 2020 and charged with aggravated burglary, and assault with intent to rob. He was later also charged with Tolley’s murder.
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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: (Reason three: Police secrecy and skullduggery): "he strength of Caris’ concerns and comments is echoed by one of the lawyers for CD. Nicholas Wintour says he’s been shocked by what he’s observed and experienced in the Tolley investigation. “I’ve done this for 20 years, and I haven’t seen such skulduggery from police as in this case, in terms of hiding evidence.” Wintour says police redacted or withheld significant amounts of disclosure that would have been very useful for CD’s defence, and tended to show CD wasn’t one of the men at the scene of the murder. “This was deliberate. Absolutely. “That’s what’s so disturbing, that they were prepared to allow someone to go to jail for murder, knowing they had compelling evidence he wasn’t even there – that they hadn't given to the defence. “I think what I’ve learnt is that in a high-profile murder investigation, there’s a real tendency for police to engage in almost corrupt practices.”
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STORY: "An abomination of a murder investigation; How the Lois Tolley murder case collapsed," by Reporter Mike White, published by 'Stuff', on March 19, 2022.
PREFACE: "In December 2016, Lois Tolley was shot point-blank in the living room of her Upper Hutt home. Three men were eventually arrested for her murder, but late last year, police suddenly dropped all charges against them, as their inquiry collapsed. Mike White investigates what went wrong with Operation Archer, and why Lois Tolley’s family are still waiting for justice."
GIST: There were comfortable chairs. There was chit-chat. There was McDonald’s chicken.
It seemed so casual and relaxed and chummy.
In reality, it was rehearsed and choreographed and secretive.
And it broke so many rules that a judge took 50 pages to detail what had happened, what went so wrong, and how police had coaxed a false confession from a murder suspect.
On Friday, December 9, 2016, four men burst in to Lois Tolley’s Upper Hutt flat just before midnight. Within minutes, Tolley had been shot point-blank in the neck, and died in her living room.
Nearly three years later, with police still not having arrested anyone, they got word that X might have been involved. (The names of all those charged by police with Lois Tolley’s murder have been suppressed by the court.)
X was in jail on other charges at the time, so police came up with a plan to cold-call him, get him off the prison grounds, put him at ease, and then pressure him to talk.
With the collaboration of Rimutaka Prison’s director, two senior officers arrived at the prison on August 15, 2019.
X was taken to them, without being told who he was meeting, or what it was about.
They then drove him to a police station, and started talking.
The officers had been handpicked, and were specialists in a controversial interviewing technique aimed at getting suspects to spill what they know, or confess to crimes.
X had no knowledge of this at the time, and the officers went out of their way to make it seem like this wasn’t a normal police interview, half-heartedly reciting his legal rights before immediately asking, “How’s that McChicken?”
Within two days, X had been manipulated and cajoled into confessing to shooting Tolley, and was charged with her murder soon after.
But it was a confession a judge later ruled was simply not credible, and in November 2021, police were forced to drop all charges against X.
Shortly afterwards, they also withdrew charges against the two other men they had charged with Tolley’s murder.
It was a heartbreaking blow for Tolley’s family, who had been waiting five years for justice, accountability, and answers.
And it was a damning judgment on an inquiry that had seemingly gone astray.
But there was much, much more, which can only now be revealed, about how the high-profile police investigation imploded – and the damage that has been done to so many people.
The First Man: “X”
The approach taken by Detective Senior Sergeant Steve Anderson and Detective Sergeant Dylan Ross as they sat down with X was straight from a contentious and secretive police playbook.
The Complex Investigation Phase Engagement Model (CIPEM) is the brainchild of the country’s most senior police investigator and head of the Criminal Investigation Branch, Detective Superintendent Tom Fitzgerald.
It aims to avoid the usual police interview scenario, make the suspect relaxed (there are comfortable chairs, no desk or paperwork, no note-taking, and shared food), and develop a relationship, which hopefully leads to the suspect confiding what they know – or confessing to the crime.
X eventually mentioned the names of four people he thought might have been involved in Tolley’s murder.
Anderson and Ross then turned this back on him, suggesting he had snitched on these men, including a close friend, and had now put them in a lot of trouble.
X continually denied being involved in the attack (“Honestly, honestly bro, I wasn’t there”), and said what he’d told the officers previously was “only my personal thoughts and opinions on how everything played out, coz it’s all imaginary, imaginative, and that’s why things don’t make sense to yous”.
But, thinking he had now committed the cardinal sin of narking on others, X suddenly told the officers he had shot Tolley.
“I just prefer to go to jail bro for a long time, to save the people I love.”
However, numerous descriptions of the crime in his confession simply didn’t match the known facts.
He said he followed four other men into Tolley’s flat – but CCTV footage shows, and police and several witnesses describe, only four people entering her home.
He said he shot Tolley in the head – but she was shot point-blank in the neck.
He said the walls were “painted” with her blood after the shot – but an ESR report described only “numerous small bloodstains” at the scene.
He said Tolley was stabbed in the face – but the only cut to her body was on the back of her right thigh.
Moreover, no witnesses identified X, despite him having some notable features.
As High Court judge Simon France later noted, when ruling whether the confession was legitimate and admissible as evidence: “[X] plainly struggles when pressed for detail, and hops around until he settles on a version [of what happened] at the end.
It is a version different from the one at the start of the interview, and one which has undergone changes all the way through the interview.
“My assessment is that he has claimed things about the shooting, which are just wrong, and known to be so,” Justice France continued.
“My own assessment is that the admissions are not credible.”
Justice France strongly criticised numerous deliberate breaches of guidelines governing police interviewing by Anderson and Ross, including several times when the officers spoke with X at length while the video camera was switched off.
The judge called these breaches “repeated and serious”, with the officers knowing they were breaking guidelines.
He also ruled the officers didn’t advise X of his legal rights during two discussions; engaged in unnecessarily persistent questioning designed to wear down X; misrepresented facts; and their interview style was “unfair and improper”, and the CIPEM technique was used to “unacceptable excess”.
Justice France concluded the “confession” evidence used to charge X with Tolley’s murder had been “improperly obtained by an unfair process involving multiple breaches of the guidelines...” and ruled it couldn’t be used at any trial.
Police had nothing else showing X was involved in Tolley’s murder, and folded their hand.
All charges against X, the crucial trigger-man in the police’s version of events, were dropped, as Operation Archer began to fracture and crumble.
The Second Man: “CD”
At 11.50pm on the night of the murder, CCTV cameras caught four people jogging up to Tolley’s dog-eared red-brick flat at 83 Ward St, one carrying something believed to be a firearm.
They were seen running away at 11.54pm, with one repeating, “What the f...have we done?”
In their wake, they left a smashed front door, and Tolley dead on her living room floor.
Tolley, 30, was a chef, but known to be involved with drugs. And it was always believed the home invasion was related to that – either a “taxing”, or debt recovery, or a thuggish gang standover.
Police dubbed the murder an “execution-type killing”, calling it “brutal” and “horrific”.
And just days after the crime, they were exuding confidence the culprits would be caught.
Outside Tolley’s flat, its broken front door boarded up with plywood, Detective Senior Sergeant Glenn Barnett told media that investigators had lifted forensic material from the crime scene, “which we know will identify our killers”.
He spoke of the many witnesses who had come forward, CCTV footage they had, and the fact they were making progress every day.
And he called on the offenders to come forward and speak with police about what happened “on that fateful night”.
But weeks and months ticked by without any arrests. Months turned into years.
On the second anniversary of Tolley’s death, Barnett said a group of witnesses had “signed up”, and were prepared to give direct evidence against the four culprits. “We are close.”
However, it wasn’t until nearly three years after Tolley’s murder that police made their crucial breakthrough, with X’s confession, which led to his arrest in September 2019.
At that time, the officer in charge of the investigation, Inspector Scott Miller, continued to be bullish, suggesting police had effectively cracked the case.
"My message to the other three is, I know their names, and we will continue to pursue them actively."
In December 2019, another man, known as “CD” in court documents, was arrested in relation to Tolley’s killing, and later charged with her murder.
CD was one of the four people X had mentioned in his interviews with police, as possibly being part of the attack.
But without witnesses or any forensic link, the case against him relied primarily on a statement by a woman claiming CD confessed to her in 2017 that he had been involved in the killing.
However, when it became known that the woman had twice before been charged with perverting the course of justice, the case against CD foundered amid concerns about her reliability.
On December 10, 2021, two weeks after police dropped charges against X, they suddenly announced they were withdrawing all charges against CD also.
At the same time, they dropped charges against the remaining man they had accused of being involved, AB, saying there was no chance a jury could convict him on the evidence they had.
The trial that had been scheduled for February this year, was cancelled.
Just the day before, Lois Tolley’s family had marked the fifth anniversary of her death.
Now, they were faced with the fact that the arduous, tortuous investigation into her murder, had collapsed.
The Third Man: “AB”
The other man charged with killing Lois Tolley, AB, had been on detectives’ radar from virtually the start of their investigation.
Knowing they suspected him of involvement, AB voluntarily gave police a DNA sample in early 2017, so he could be ruled out, insisting he’d never heard of Tolley, let alone knew her, or killed her.
Regardless, police tried to find evidence against him, approaching 10 cellmates AB had been in prison with (on other charges) at various times after Tolley’s murder, to see if he’d blabbed about the crime.
None said he had.
Eventually, however, police canvasses for information among prisoners bore fruit, when two other inmates came forward claiming AB had confessed to being involved in the murder.
Such witnesses, known as “jailhouse snitches”, are considered the most notorious, dangerous and unreliable of witnesses, their evidence being responsible for countless wrongful convictions worldwide.
Despite this, they frequently appear in high profile New Zealand investigations, including the cases of Scott Watson, Teina Pora, Mark Lundy, David Tamihere, and Arthur Allan Thomas.
Both the prison informants in AB’s case had numerous convictions for dishonesty.
In return for his information, one was supported by police at a parole hearing.
The second prison witness is understood to have received other incentives. (Police have refused to answer questions about this, and all other aspects of their use of the prison witnesses.)
Beyond that, police only had one other witness with evidence that tangentially and tenuously implicated AB in the killing.
This man was a habitual, high-profile offender with over 60 dishonesty convictions, but received reduced sentences on multiple charges, on two occasions, for the information he provided to police.
On this basis, AB was arrested in August 2020 and charged with aggravated burglary, and assault with intent to rob. He was later also charged with Tolley’s murder.
However, what investigators did have was a crucial statement from a police officer, who claimed he had visited AB in prison in April 2018, seeking to question him on other matters.
AB and his lawyers say there don’t appear to be any notebook entries from the time, or prison records confirming this visit, that have been disclosed to them. (Police were asked specifically about this, but refused to answer any questions.)
But more than two years later, on August 31, 2020 – three weeks after AB was arrested in relation to Tolley’s murder – the constable made a formal written statement claiming that during his 2018 visit to see AB in prison, AB had raised the possibility of a deal.
Supposedly, AB had indicated he would divulge who was involved in Lois Tolley’s murder, in return for being granted bail.
The officer’s statement says he rejected the idea of bail, but supposedly AB continued anyway, allegedly naming several people, including X and CD.
When AB refused to say anything else, the officer left the prison.
AB denies this event ever happened.
And he strongly questions why the officer only made a formal statement about it more than two years after the supposed prison interview.
AB says he wasn’t visited by a single officer while in prison at this time (there are nearly always two officers, he says); never proposed any deal over getting bail; never had any evidence about Lois Tolley’s murder to bargain with; and never suggested the names of any people who might have been involved in the crime.
And he claims he wouldn’t speak with a police officer about such matters without his lawyer being present.
He says the officer’s statement makes no logical sense: in the constable’s account, AB has already refused to speak about the other matters the officer intended to interview him about, wants a deal on getting bail if he shares crucial information about the Tolley case, but when this is refused, he tells the officer the information anyway – meaning he has gained nothing.
“I don’t know how that even sounds plausible,” says AB incredulously.
Not only has he gained nothing, but such snitching would automatically place him at enormous risk within the prison and outside, if it was known he was implicating others.
And that’s exactly what happened, AB says.
Copies of the constable’s 2020 written statement, including allegations AB had snitched, were somehow leaked, and began circulating in the gang and criminal community around Wellington. (AB was shown photos of it while he was still in prison.)
As a result, AB says he has suffered numerous serious physical assaults, in prison while on remand for Tolley’s murder, and after being released, because people thought he was a nark.
These included being knocked unconscious when “a bunch of people ran up and soccer-kicked my head off”, and another attack in which he was so badly beaten that he believes it was an attempt on his life.
In February 2021, police offered AB immunity and said they could relocate him and his family to Australia, if he testified against the others.
“I said, ‘What, if I agree and say I played a part in the murder, you’d let me go right now with no charges? But if I tell the truth, you’re going to hold me in prison?’
“It was extortion. If I did that to someone, I’d be thrown in prison.
“I’ve never named names in my life. If I wanted to name names, I wouldn't have been in jail for 18 months (on remand for Tolley’s murder) – I’d be in Australia by now.
“If I’m an informant, I must be the worst one in the world, coz of the amount of prison time I’ve done.”
AB insists he never met the two prisoners who claimed he confessed to Tolley’s murder, and says he wasn’t even in the same prison area as one of them.
“So this conversation could never even have happened.”
The two prison witnesses’ statements tell fundamentally different stories of AB’s role in the murder, and both contradict the police version that AB never entered the house, and was only ever in a car outside.
One snitch says AB and three other offenders drove to Tolley’s home in a car that police later discovered was actually impounded at the time.
AB says police knew they were putting him at risk by alleging he had snitched, but believes they didn't care, and just hoped it would force him to agree to their version of events.
“I know you won’t believe this, but I had a police officer tell me, ‘I don’t give a f... whether you did it or not, we’re going to do what we have to do to achieve our goal.’ ”
(A relative of AB has also provided an affidavit stating: “In 2017, [a police officer] came to my home and stood in front of me and said, ‘We will do whatever we have to do to keep [AB] in jail until he tells us what we want to know.’ ”)
“They damage more than the people they’re targeting,” says AB. “My daughter, my mother. Financially I lost everything while I was inside.”
And he insists he’s not just reinventing what happened, to protect himself from those seeking to punish him for being a nark.
“I never made a statement, I never informed on anybody, and anybody who says otherwise is a liar.”
As the case against all three men quickly collapsed, police and the Crown offered AB one last inducement to admit he was involved in Tolley’s murder.
In late-2021, AB had a plea deal dangled in front of him: plead guilty to being a party to assault with intent to rob, cop a sentence equivalent to the time he’d already served in jail, and walk free.
AB said he wouldn’t admit to something he hadn't done, or falsely implicate others accused of the crime, or give Tolley’s family hollow hope the crime had been solved.
Instead, he turned his back on the deal, on police, and went back to prison.
The evidence
Of course, who are the public going to believe in all of this? Cops in uniforms, or a career crim who claims he’s been set up?
AB says he understands this, and how their relative reputations stack up, but believes police exploit that to get away with illegal actions and false accusations.
And the reality is, not only is there virtually no reliable evidence implicating AB, many facts suggest it would have been almost impossible for him to be involved in Tolley’s murder.
On the night of the crime, AB says he was at home, more than 10km away from Tolley’s flat. No CCTV footage catches him leaving prior to midnight, or returning soon after.
No cars captured on CCTV footage in the area around Tolley’s home were seen coming or going from AB’s house.
But just over 25 minutes after the murder, cameras show AB leaving his flat with two other people and driving to a service station, and McDonald’s.
If AB was involved in the murder, he would have had to return to his flat directly from the crime, in a time significantly quicker than appears possible, given cellphone data, and drive times estimated by police, and leave almost immediately with two people who weren’t part of the killing.
His phone data suggests he wasn't in Upper Hutt at the time of the murder.
No calls or texts at the time indicate anything to do with Tolley, or the other men charged with her murder.
Nobody identified him as one of the people at Tolley’s house, or picked out AB when shown photo montages including him.
His car was seized and examined but nothing found.
No DNA, fingerprint or shoe prints from the scene matched AB.
Police intercepted his phone conversations over several years, and listened to his prison phone calls, but AB never said anything incriminating.
One of AB’s lawyers, Lara Caris, says she has been “completely shocked and dismayed” by the police investigation and prosecution, and feels detectives were more intent on a conviction at any cost, rather than the truth.
“I don't know whether they thought these were the easiest individuals to secure convictions against, but I struggle to believe police actually believe they had the right three people.
“And at this stage you have to consider whether complete indifference to what’s actually happened, is the position police are currently at.”
Caris accepts AB and the other men charged were legitimate people to investigate, given their backgrounds.
“They weren't your conventional, law-abiding, gainfully employed members of the community. But my belief is that at some point, police have decided to resort to cynical tactics to secure a conviction.
“When you have to resort to the dregs of the voluntary segregation units in prison and paid prison informants as a source of evidence against someone, it simply demonstrates the abject desperation to pursue someone they’ve deemed expedient to take the fall.”
Caris has no doubt police tried to pressure AB into providing a statement that backed up the “confession” made by X.
But she says this raises serious concerns, given X’s confession was clearly false, and ruled not credible by the High Court.
Moreover, X’s description of those involved didn't include AB, raising fundamental questions of whether police were picking and choosing what pieces of X’s evidence were convenient to use.
It also muddies the issue of how many people were actually directly involved in the crime.
“I still don’t understand what the Crown case is,” says Caris. “I don't think the Crown understand what their case is – or was. There are so many factors that just make no sense at all.”
Having spent years examining huge amounts of evidence, Caris believes AB is innocent – “1000 per cent. I remain of the view, even more than I ever have through this investigation, that he should never have been charged.”
And she says Lois Tolley’s family are “simply another victim of this abomination of an investigation”.
“They’re further away from receiving justice for what happened than they have ever been in the last five years.
“If the police have been conveying to them that they’ve charged the right people, and it’s not due to their own incompetent investigation that matters are where they are, then they’re misleading Ms Tolley’s family.”
But Caris says she has no faith police will stop their “sustained and vigorous pursuit” of AB.
“It’s very difficult to conceive that there’s anything other than very firm blinkers at the head of this investigation.
“And the unavoidable conclusion is that, given the wholesale lack of any compelling evidence against the three individuals charged, the people actually responsible remain out there. And that’s something I think falls squarely at the feet of the New Zealand Police.
“What’s happened here should not be allowed to happen. And my concern is currently, no answers have been provided and there’s nothing that stops this sort of would-be miscarriage of justice being repeated.”
Secrets and “skulduggery”
The strength of Caris’ concerns and comments is echoed by one of the lawyers for CD.
Nicholas Wintour says he’s been shocked by what he’s observed and experienced in the Tolley investigation.
“I’ve done this for 20 years, and I haven’t seen such skulduggery from police as in this case, in terms of hiding evidence.”
Wintour says police redacted or withheld significant amounts of disclosure that would have been very useful for CD’s defence, and tended to show CD wasn’t one of the men at the scene of the murder.
“This was deliberate. Absolutely.
“That’s what’s so disturbing, that they were prepared to allow someone to go to jail for murder, knowing they had compelling evidence he wasn’t even there – that they hadn't given to the defence.
“I think what I’ve learnt is that in a high-profile murder investigation, there’s a real tendency for police to engage in almost corrupt practices.”
Wintour says police have to bear the entire blame for the fact nobody has been held accountable for Lois Tolley’s murder, after more than five years.
“I think what the police have done is engage in very, very bad policing. They’ve decided who is responsible, and then they’ve fitted the evidence around it, and ignored evidence that shows they’re not the men. I think that's the simple answer.
“There are a lot of factors in this case that are quite disturbing, and I’ve thought about it a lot, because it's something I’ve not come across before – this is exceptional.
“I think someone should lose their job over it, or a number of people. That’s my view.
“There needs to be some inquiry as to how this happened. It's such poor policing.”
A “vaporous case”
In a preliminary court hearing about Tolley’s murder, one of X’s lawyers, Robert Lithgow, QC, commented that, “the five-year investigation to date has produced an entirely vaporous case”.
“You would hope that cases largely turn on true facts, well established,” says Lithgow, reflecting on the inquiry. “They just didn't have that, did they.”
He points to the interviews of X, and his supposed confession that was riddled with factual errors, which clearly suggested X was making it up.
“I think the police believed the fact he was prepared to talk about the murder scene was a kind of primitive confession, the details of which were not really the point.
“But it’s very hard to get past a confession, even if it doesn’t make sense.
“It’s like a Greek chorus, whispering in the background, ‘He did it, he said he did it, don’t worry about how, never mind the details, he’s admitted he did it.’ ”
Lithgow says the interviewing officers and their boss likely thought their approach and application of CIPEM was an honest way of getting information, even though it wasn’t.
“They were like happy clappers, they were like zealots and born-agains – they believed they were doing the right thing.
“But they just lost the ability of standing back and thinking through the shortcomings of their own case, and whether what they had, actually amounted to anything.”
The end of the line?
Police wouldn’t agree to an interview about the case, and refused to answer virtually every question Stuff sent them about the inquiry, saying it remained an active investigation.
However, Wellington Crown prosecutor Grant Burston pushes back against any claims the prosecution of the three men was misguided or unfair.
Once the “confession” evidence against X that police had extracted, was ruled inadmissible, the Crown withdrew charges against him.
Recent guidelines from the solicitor-general advise that it isn’t in the public interest to proceed with a case based entirely on cellmate confessions, and as this was essentially the only evidence against AB, a decision was made to drop charges against him.
However, Burston notes that AB’s lawyers made an earlier application to have charges dismissed, on the basis there wasn’t sufficient evidence, and the court rejected this.
In respect of CD, Burston says “the information that was properly disclosable was disclosed as soon as practicable after the Crown became aware of it from the police. “There was no deliberate withholding of material that was properly disclosable, by the Crown.”
Charges were withdrawn against CD because there was insufficient reliable evidence.
In allowing the charges against the three men to be withdrawn, rather than completely dismissed, Justice Simon France indicated the investigation was ongoing, and there was a chance more evidence could come to light against the men.
But as AB says, this just leaves him one more lying witness away from being charged again for something he insists he had nothing to do with.
Meanwhile, he has virtually no scope to claim compensation for the time he spent in jail, awaiting a trial that never happened, let alone the financial impact on him and his family.
That something has clearly gone wrong with the investigation into Lois Tolley’s murder seems undeniable.
In a rare move, police have appointed Auckland QC and former Crown prosecutor Aaron Perkins to undertake “an independent review of aspects of the police inquiry”, with support from retired assistant police commissioner Gavin Jones.
And police say the CIPEM interviewing technique was independently reviewed last year, and recommendations from that are currently being worked through.
Nobody is suggesting it was for want of trying by police that Tolley’s murder remains unsolved.
Nobody is arguing they weren’t likely trawling the right criminal milieu, a seedy soup of gangs and guns and grifting, for the culprits.
Or that getting reliable information from these circles, with their crude codes of silence, is extremely difficult.
But after five painful, frustrating and fruitless years, faith that there will be “Justice for you, Loie”, as the tee-shirts worn by her family and friends at court appearances demanded, still seems out of reach.
(Tolley’s family did not respond to requests for comment, but previously said they were devastated by the dropping of charges against the men and felt the justice system had let them down, while praising the investigation team’s dedication.)
On March 10, Justice France issued the final judgment on the case for the time being, granting permanent name suppression to the three men who have for years been at the centre of the police inquiry.
In doing so, he succinctly summed up the investigation’s current position.
“Here, the prosecution accepts there is not sufficient evidence to even put the men on trial.
“My assessment is, there is presently really no evidence against any of them.""
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
