Slain cop related to Molenaar

Len Snee. Photo / Supplied

Murdered Napier police officer Lenny Snee and his killer, Jan Molenaar, were distantly related, as "sons" of the Ngati Kahungunu iwi.

The link came to light yesterday, after friends and family of Molenaar gathered to farewell him at a funeral service in Hastings.

Ngati Kahungunu chairman Ngahiwi Tomoana told the Weekend Herald he did not make the information known until both bodies had been laid to rest. Senior Constable Snee's funeral was held in Napier on Wednesday.

Mr Tomoana said the last few days had been very difficult, burying one son in Mr Snee and another in Molenaar.

"It's bizarre, surreal ... You can't put it into a category. He [Mr Snee] is a hero, the other's zero, but they are both our sons."

Mr Tomoana explained that Kikioterangi, Mr Snee's tipuna (ancestor), and Molenaar's tipuna were brothers, but neither family was aware of the connection.

He attended the Snee funeral and was with the Molenaar family when he spoke to the Weekend Herald last night, having made a deliberate decision not to reveal the ancestral link before both services had been held.

Earlier, in front of a packed funeral home, Jan Molenaar's father begged the people of Napier to forgive his son.

It was a poignant moment within a service dominated by stories about the good times, as well as the dead gunman's flouting of the law as a child.

Dressed in a charcoal suit and striped tie, Mr Molenaar senior - who did not give his first name - said he and Jan had not always seen eye to eye, but were in regular contact in the years before his son died on Friday last week.

Just moments before, an older woman stood and urged the young people of today to get help before it was too late. Jan Molenaar, she said, had been too proud.

It was an entirely different scene from the traditional police funeral for Mr Snee - who was shot dead by Molenaar in a routine cannabis bust nine days ago.

Yesterday, about 11am, engines revved and diesel fumes permeated the air as a black Ford truck bearing the dead gunman's coffin rumbled into Hastings.

Flanked by a team of leather-clad bikers on Harley-Davidsons, the body of the former Territorial soldier was brought into town from the Ruahapia Marae, where it had lain since his post-mortem examination.

Almost exactly a week ago, Molenaar was holed up in his two-storey home in a bulletproof sheet, amongst a myriad of weapons, having shot Mr Snee dead and critically wounded Senior Constables Grant Diver and Bruce Miller.

But yesterday, as more and more guests piled into the modest funeral home on East Heretaunga St, it was clear the standoff was not the gunman's only stamp on the world.

Mourners filled the rows of chairs, crowded all standing space and spilled out into the adjacent room.

A sea of black lined the funeral home as the black shiny coffin bearing a motorcycle hardhat was carried in.

Bishop Paul McKee asked those gathered to put aside the events surrounding the tragedy and remember Molenaar as a friend, father and son.

But there was a common underlying theme to tales of the gunman's life.

Brother Charlie laughed about getting a clock on the head for snoring and learning to steal from his older brother.

"He had this black tin with money in it and of course he had taught us how to pick locks, so we'd take money from it.

"He'd go out and come back and be like, 'I'm sure there was money in there'."

Best mate "Herbert" said he lived by "his fuehrer", and raised his hand in a salute to Molenaar's coffin.

Long-time friend "Lance" remembered "their little thieving gang" and the potential recruit they put on trial, who returned first with a lemon and then a tube of toothpaste, before dobbing them into police.