Bouwer discussed 'perfect crime', court told

Dunedin psychiatrist Colin Bouwer told his wife's sister it would be "easy to commit the perfect crime in New Zealand" because police could not cope with complicated investigations, the High Court at Christchurch was told yesterday.

Bouwer is accused of murdering his wife Annette with a cocktail of drugs that replicated the symptoms of an insulin-producing tumour but could not be detected in normal blood tests.

The prosecution claims he was motivated by a $262,000 insurance policy on his wife and his affair with another Dunedin psychiatrist.

Mrs Bouwer's older sister, Brenda Ruddock, said she spoke to Bouwer by telephone from her home in Johannesburg before the onset of Mrs Bouwer's mystery illness in late 1999.

While discussing the David Bain murder case in Dunedin, she said Bouwer told her: "It would be easy to commit the perfect crime in New Zealand because the police were not equipped to handle complicated cases of that nature".

"He said the South African police were used to dealing with complicated crimes, which the New Zealand police were not," she added.

Her husband, Arthur Ruddock, told the court Bouwer said during a visit to South Africa last year that Mrs Bouwer had not been in hospital on the night she died because "medical services were pretty poor in New Zealand and everything was closed over the holiday period and there were no doctors available".

Mrs Bouwer's mother, Madeleine Langford, told the jury she considered at first that her daughter might have committed suicide because an empty pill bottle had been found.

However, Mrs Langford was now adamant that it was not possible "unless she was brain damaged and didn't know what she was doing".

"She was a Christian and she wouldn't have committed suicide."

Presented with a brief note by Annette Bouwer which was supposedly a suicide note, Mrs Langford replied: "Annette would have written a book to explain why and to beg forgiveness and get me to pray for her."

Mrs Langford also said Bouwer telephoned her at her home in South Africa in January last year to express his concern that caring for his wife and their family was becoming too much.

"I said I'd get a flight the next day to look after my child myself. He said 'you will be too late - she's dying'.

"Then I heard from him a few hours later and he said he had found Annette dead in her bed," she said.

- NZPA