Fishing boat victim had criminal past

The Mi Jay

One of the crewmen found dead in a liferaft from the missing fishing boat Mi Jay had been accused of killing a child murderer and rapist while serving time in Auckland Prison.

Cedric Albert James, 52, was found not guilty of murdering Keith Ross Hall in the prison's recreation room in July 1979.

Mr James was serving a sentence for aggravated robbery at the time.

On Monday - 27 days after the Mi Jay left Nelson on a fishing trip - he and Wiremu Te Kapu Tawhiti, 53, were found dead in the liferaft about 13km off Kaikoura.

A preliminary ruling from North Canterbury coroner David Crerar said they died from exposure seven to 10 days before their bodies were found.

One body was dressed only in underpants, and of the survival equipment belonging to the raft, only two paddles were still inside.

The 13m steel-hulled Mi Jay and skipper Paul Rees, 52, have not been found.

The vessel had a radio on board but the liferaft did not have a distress beacon, and was not legally required to have one.

Maritime New Zealand has launched an accident investigation.

Director Russell Kilvington said a scientific analysis should reveal how long the liferaft was in the water, allowing the Rescue Co-ordination Centre to work out its drift.

That should give authorities a better indication of where the Mi Jay might have gone down.

Mr Kilvington said the search had been made difficult by a lack of information about where the crew went fishing, and the fact that the vessel was not reported missing until 14 days after it left Nelson.

Sergeant Ian Langridge, of Nelson, said he understood the boat had been leased from owner Warwick Loader, director of Crusader Fisheries, who did not know where the men intended to fish.

Maritime NZ said the Mi Jay liferaft had contained food, water, flares, medical equipment, a knife, paddles and a book on survival.

All the items except the two paddles were gone when the raft was discovered.

"All sorts of things may have happened to the liferaft," said a spokeswoman for Maritime NZ. "It may have flipped over and they may have lost all of that equipment."

Mr James' father, Cedric Ngawaka, said yesterday that it was a relief to learn what had happened.

"Now I can really come away with an end to it all," he said.

He had given a description of his son's tattoos to police, which they confirmed were on one of the bodies.

Mr James was found not guilty of murder after a trial in the High Court at Auckland which heard that Hall had been found beaten and stabbed, lying in a pool of blood in the recreation room.

Six years later, in 1986, Mr James was discharged without conviction after admitting escaping from Mt Eden Prison. The court heard that he had been granted a day's leave from jail and was involved in a car accident in which a pedestrian was killed.

Police were driving him back to prison when he ran off.

He turned up at Mt Eden the next day saying he had been too upset to return straight after the accident.

Mr James' family said last night they did not want to discuss his time in prison. It was well in his past.

"[Fishing] was what he chose to do in his life and he enjoyed it and he has many friends," said his foster mother, who wouldn't give her name.

"He was a people person in his own way. He loved going out on the boats and that's what he spoke about most of all, going out on the trawlers."