Family in anguish clings to hope as a nation waits

MONIQUE DEVEREUX traces how an incident in a quiet suburban street became a drama which engaged the country.

St Albans Grove was unusually quiet last Saturday when Steve Ranson began hosing his Harley-Davidson on the grass verge outside his home. The sun was shining and there was only a little wind.

On most Saturdays a steady stream of cars cruises the small Lower Hutt cul-de-sac in search of parking.

Out of those cars spill scores of children and their parents, all pounding up the steep concrete steps that mark the end of St Albans Grove.

Over the paved stopbank at the top is Strand Park - a long, thin greenbelt bordering part of the Hutt River, running between the Ewen and Ava bridges.

In term time the 100m-wide strip of land is engulfed by a colourful sea of sports uniforms as hundreds of children thunder up and down the playing fields. Only when the games are over does the grove, lined on both sides by ancient pohutukawa trees, reclaim the peace and quiet which attracted many of its residents in the first place.

Many are retired and several are well-known, including former New Zealand representative softballer Mark Sorenson.

But last Saturday was school holiday time. The only people around later in the morning were residents and a few city shoppers taking advantage of the free parking just a few minutes' walk from the shops.

Steve Ranson had just seen his wife, June, pull up outside the front fence of their house, the corner property on St Albans Grove and the busy arterial route of Woburn Rd.

He stopped briefly, walking over to chat to her before returning to his pride and joy, the gleaming midnight-blue Harley he bought two years ago.

It was then he heard the anguished scream of a woman 150m away at the end of the street, "My baby's gone! He took my baby!"

Less than 15 minutes earlier, prominent Maori lawyer Donna Hall had bundled her 8-month-old daughter, Kahurautete, into her blue pram. Along with her two nieces, who were staying for part of the school holidays, and the family collie dog, Manawa, she headed out the gates of 19 Myrtle St.

Kahurautete, known by the family as Kahu, is a chubby, healthy child. Various photos released to the media show her giggling and smiling in the arms of family members.

She cannot yet crawl but her mother thinks that stepping stone is not far off.

The progress of most babies is watched with fond family eyes, but Kahu is the focus of particular affection.

She entered the world on August 15 last year, but even before she was born her extended whanau had made specific plans for her life, starting with who would be her parents.

Donna Hall and her husband, the controversial High Court judge Eddie Durie, had lost their own child to spina bifida when Hall was more than seven months pregnant in 1998.

The loss was almost unbearable. Says Hall: "At that time I thought the world had ended."

The next baby to arrive in the family, Hall's parents decided, would be placed with Hall and Durie.

It was planned to be a home birth at 19 Myrtle St, the family home where the baby would grow up.

But last-minute complications interfered with those plans and Kahu was born by caesarean section at Wellington Hospital.

Her biological parents are Hall's sister Anaha Morehu and her partner, Kihi Piripi, who live in Rotorua.

This type of informal adoption - known as whangai - is common in Maori culture although it falls outside New Zealand adoption law.

Whangai children such as Kahu are accepted as members of the new family and, under the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993, are usually given equal rights to any land their new parents own.

Kahu is not an only child - Hall has a 20-year-old and Durie has two children from a previous marriage - but thanks to the circumstances of her placement with Hall and Durie, she is exceptionally precious.

She is named after Eddie Durie's grandmother and family matriarch, Kahurautete, a founding patron of the Maori Women's Welfare League.

The extended Hall and Durie families are very close. Last weekend two of Durie's nieces - children of his brother, New Zealand Maori rugby team doctor Ra Durie - were down from Palmerston North on holiday.

The girls, aged 12 and 14, helped to dress Kahu in her navy, one-piece babysuit over her dark pink skivvy. Her outfit was completed with a pink hooded jacket.

It was distinctive - the hood had fluffy rabbit ears and the jacket buttons were dog paws.

Hall and her nieces, one girl pushing the pram, the other leading the dog, headed down the driveway of their elegant colonial home to begin their walk.

Turning left they walked along Myrtle St, in the heart of the most affluent part of Lower Hutt.

Number 25 is up for sale. It must be expensive - no asking price is advertised.

But the large, colourful real estate billboard on the fence offers a tempting description.

"The address says it all ... this is a top executive home nestled in parklike grounds."

Recent events may well have stalled the sale. Attached diagonally across the billboard this week was the stark statement in capital letters: "Open Home cancelled".

Past Number 25, around a slight bend in the road, the little family group would have reached the corner of busy Woburn Rd where a steady stream of traffic takes cars to the seaside suburb of Eastbourne or out to the hill-encased Wainuiomata. In the other direction is the link to the motorway back to Wellington city or further into the Hutt Valley.

The Hall family had crossed into St Albans Grove.

Directly opposite where they entered the grove, Steve Ranson was busy, having just spoken to his wife. Neither group noticed the other.

Hall and her family continued, negotiating the pushchair over some of the large pohutukawa roots sprouting through the footpath.

It would have taken less than a minute to get to the end of the grove where, on the left side, stands the Lower Hutt City Child Care and Education Centre.

Here, the car parking changes from the standard parallel residential to slightly angled.

A few cars were parked here last Saturday. One, thought to be a blue and silver two-toned, late-model Mitsubishi, was probably backed into position, facing outwards. But there was nothing to draw the Hall family's attention to it.

They crossed the road at the point where the angle parking began, heading diagonally across to the base of the steep concrete steps leading up to Strand Park.

It was here, under a rusting, twisted Neighbourhood Support sign, that they were confronted by an agitated man wearing a loose black balaclava and holding a double-barrel shotgun.

What happened next would shatter the peaceful weekend in the leafy Lower Hutt street, devastate a family and engage the attention of the nation.

"My baby's gone! He took my baby!"

It was the pitch of the cry that told Steve Ranson this was "not just someone skylarking about".

Leaving his motorbike on the grass verge, he sprinted to the end of the street.

Ranson, a Lower Hutt businessman, had never met Hall but knew of her through her highly publicised legal work.

He reached the end of the street to see her being comforted by another woman, with her young nieces hugging each other.

An empty pram sat alone near the base of the concrete steps.

It was obvious what had happened and Ranson offered to run home to call the police. The woman comforting Hall told him there was no need, the police were on their way.

Police will not confirm who made the initial call, which came in at 11.29am.

"This must have all been within five minutes or so of everything happening," said Ranson. "The police arrived very, very quickly after I got there."

St Albans Grove was cordoned off almost immediately. Ranson spoke to one of the first police officers to arrive, and agreed to stay home for a while to wait for a detective to call.

"What amazes me is how quickly it all happened. I didn't notice the [getaway] car driving past me, but it must have done so," he told the Herald this week.

"It was a relatively quiet Saturday morning. He can't have been driving very fast or very erratically. He would have had to slow down for the corner right beside me. I didn't see it. I didn't hear it."

Shaking his head, Ranson said he could not believe it when he watched the television news that night and heard more about what had happened.

"I can't imagine what that family is feeling right now. The first thing she said when the police arrived was, 'Please find my husband'.

"It must be just so surreal for the whole family."

It was more than 24 hours before New Zealand began to hear the full story of what had happened in St Albans Grove just before midday on Saturday.

The first reports spoke of Kahu as the daughter of Donna Hall, prominent Maori lawyer and Eddie Durie, the High Court judge.

They said the baby had been abducted at gunpoint by a man wearing a black balaclava. The man had threatened Hall's dog and one of her nieces before snatching the child out of her pram, tucking her under his arm, jumping into his car and driving away.

The gunman had exchanged words with Hall, mainly about the presence of Manawa, the dog, but there seemed to be no obvious explanation for the abduction.

Further information has been drip-fed.

Until Wednesday police did not offer any more than the basic description of the kidnapper - Caucasian, late 30s to early 40s, about 1.72m tall of slim build, wearing black jeans and a black jacket - a picture that might well have described many other men in Lower Hutt.

Later in the week police revealed the man had some other distinctive features.

* Bad teeth, and perhaps a missing front tooth.

* A spot under his left eye, perhaps a tattoo, but possibly a mole or birthmark.

* A "turkey" neck, as in excess, wrinkly skin hanging beneath his jaw.

While the information was drip-fed the police were quick to enlist the help of the media in broadcasting the pleas to the kidnapper, which were immediate and detailed.

On Monday morning Donna Hall was at a media conference at the Lower Hutt police station.

After describing the basic events of Kahu's abduction she began a heartfelt, personal address to the kidnapper.

"You know who you are and you know me," she said.

"You can put this right now because if she's frightened and I'm frightened, I would think that you would be frightened too.

"You can put right the wrong you have done to her and myself and my husband by wrapping her in a blanket and putting her somewhere safe and dry."

Hall's manner was controlled and calm. She spoke slowly and clearly.

In painstaking detail Hall went through the items Kahu would need - what baby formula she should be fed, what the alternatives were, how to feed her the mashed Weetbix she had recently started eating.

Hall stressed that Kahu was not a threat to the abductor as the baby would not be able to identify him.

"I'm asking that you send her back to us."

Later that night, Hall completed the television media circuit, juggling space on TV3 News before appearing on the Holmes show.

Each time she was controlled and calm, refusing to deviate along paths of questioning about what particular legal cases she and Durie had worked on that might attract such a reaction from an aggrieved party.

Later in the week police confirmed the legal couple's caseload was still being investigated but they refused to say what timeframe the spotlight fell on.

One case in particular had already attracted threats.

Hall confirmed the case was hers, rather than Durie's.

"[It was] my work and one very large file I work with which is being investigated now, so we'll leave it there," she instructed Paul Holmes.

This was no hysterical mother. There were no public tears, no obvious hiccups in getting her message across to the kidnapper.

Perhaps drawing on her years of experience in the legal world, she summoned the strength to get the message across.

Although Donna Hall made herself available to seek public support, the family has remained private.

Durie has not faced the public, and few of the other close family or friends are speaking either - an approach understood to be following a directive from Durie.

The family have not been taking visitors either, but it has made public its acknowledgment of the flood of sympathy.

A large handwritten note was taped to the front gate of 19 Myrtle St earlier in the week.

"To all friends and whanau," it read. "At the request of Donna and Eddie it would be appreciated if all visits are held off until matters improve.

"We are thankful and certainly appreciate the support and love received by all."

The note was signed The Brady Bunch - a reference that confused several of the close family members who spoke to the Weekend Herald.

None of them - and all had been at Myrtle St over the previous days - were aware who had written or posted the note.

But police spokeswoman Kaye Calder later confirmed it was a genuine message from the family.

The Brady Bunch was a 1970s television comedy about a couple who had married, each bringing three children to the union, and Calder described the reference as the family's "small attempt at some light relief in this terrible, grief-stricken time".

The note has since been removed.

Police relayed the message on Tuesday, saying the family needed to be left alone now, and there would be no personal appearances in the foreseeable future.

About the time that a team of police were closing off St Albans Grove, another call was directed to the Lower Hutt police.

A 36-year-old woman had not returned from a morning walk.

Kate Alkema had left her home in Oxford Tce, on the northeast side of Lower Hutt city, about 9am but was expected home to cook lunch.

By midday, when she had not returned, family became concerned and called the police.

A small search team, mainly family and a few police, began driving around the area and walking the route Alkema was likely to have taken.

At 4pm Alkema's brother discovered her body lying beneath the willows on the western banks of the Hutt River near the Melling Bridge. She had been sexually attacked and garrotted in broad daylight.

Operation Melling was under way.

Alkema's murder and Kahu Durie's abduction were committed barely 1km apart, although on opposite sides of the river.

From the top of the concrete steps on St Albans Grove it is easy to see the police cars parked across the river, marking the start of the area being searched for clues to Alkema's violent murder.

A link between the crimes has not been ruled out by police. But other than the fact that they happened at similar times and close together, and were almost certainly committed by men, there is little to suggest what the connection might be.

Alkema was killed in broad daylight in an area where there had been 60 rapes and sexual attacks since January last year, and police have not dismissed the possibility of a serial sex offender.

Whether linked or not, the crimes have provoked a huge police operation. By Wednesday Operation St Albans and Operation Melling were being staffed by 260 police officers and recruits.

Staff had been brought in from around the country - Invercargill, Rotorua and Gisborne.

One of the country's top police, Detective Superintendent Larry Reid, was appointed to oversee both operations.

But one week on there is no sign of any new leads.

It is Friday, 11am.

Detective Inspector Stuart Wildon faces the media scrum for the fourth time this week. Wildon is media-savvy. He looks weary but not disheartened.

A $10,000 reward has been posted for the recovery of the car which Wildon says is Operation St Albans' main focus.

"We know that that car will lead us to baby Kahu."

Today is another ordinary Saturday morning in St Albans Grove.

Parents have been driving up and down the tiny cul-de-sac hoping to park close to the shortcut up the steps to Strand Park.

By midday the games will be over, the extra cars will have disappeared.

But there will be one major difference today. Before they head up the steps, the residents, the children and parents, the city shoppers, the runners and the dog walkers, will have stopped to glance at the police caravan set up at the end of the street.

They will all see the noticeboard displaying the little pink clothes and they might pick up a copy of the flyer that shows a car similar to one parked here briefly last week.

Out of all of these people maybe one will have their memory jogged.

Perhaps, police hope, one person will offer that crucial snippet of information that will lead them to that balaclava-clad man who was here a week ago, waving a shotgun and snatching a helpless child.

Flier distributed by police

Description of suspect

Picture: Kahurautete Durie

Picture: Kahurautete's clothing

Picture: the car being sought by police

Map

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