KEY POINTS:
Island-hopping witnesses, crime scene photos being sent to Texas, and a trial delayed by riots weren't enough to stop a Wellington traffic patrol officer from getting his man in a Solomon Islands quadruple murder.
Senior Constable John McGrail, who was posted to the troubled Solomons, solved the 3-year-old
case thanks to a reckless last-minute confession and a lot of hard work. Mr McGrail's efforts led to the killer of four young men being convicted and sentenced last year to four life sentences in Honiara's Rove Prison.
Mr McGrail became a police officer in 1992 and a member of the Wellington Highway Patrol in 2001. Two years later he was assigned to the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (Ramsi).
The posting was partly a result of his peacekeeping experiences in Bougainville and East Timor as a Territorial soldier with the Army.
When Mr McGrail arrived in Gizo, the main town in the northern region, the overloaded Ramsi team leader put him in charge of general duties and criminal investigations, saying, "And by the way, I want you to look through these historic files". One file contained an abandoned murder investigation into the shootings of four members of the Black Sharks gang, found dead in a room at the Gizo Hotel in 2000.
But the room had been renovated, crime scene photos and other evidence had been lost, and witnesses had fled.
Another set of crime scene photos had been taken - by a curious Texan resident who had since died, and whose effects had been sent to the US.
Despite all this Mr McGrail, who had no experience or training in detective work, tracked down four women who had been present when the men were murdered. This was no easy task.
"What I found was [one of the women] was island-hopping to get away ... I would arrive at an island where I believed she was living but the bush telegraph had been beating and she had got the hell out of there."
After a breakthrough in December 2003, Mr McGrail was arriving back in Gizo following an eight-hour interview with one of the women.
Soaked from a stormy boat trip and carrying the murder file, wrapped in plastic, he heard someone calling out to him as he unloaded the boat.
"I looked round and saw this thickset gentleman yelling out from another boat. The motor was running and they looked like they were about to depart. He shook my hand and I was wondering how he knew my name."
The man was Gregory Luavex, a Bougainvillean who remembered Mr McGrail from his time there.
Luavex told Mr McGrail he was about to leave the Solomons for good and return to Bougainville - where Ramsi police had no jurisdiction.
"We talked about Bougainville and then out of the blue he said to me, 'You know John, I'm the one that killed those four men'.
"I couldn't believe what I'd just heard. Here I was with the murder file under my arm in a rubbish bag ... He had been tipped off about the investigation but his boat was packed and I believe he thought he was home and hosed."
Thinking quickly, Mr McGrail offered to buy Luavex a farewell drink at the Gizo Hotel bar. Luavex agreed. "I got up to the bar and he was deciding which drink I was going to shout him ... and then I arrested him. I slapped the handcuffs on from behind; he had no chance."
He marched Luavex to the Gizo police station and barricaded the door. The town was home to a number of Luavex's cronies, and Mr McGrail spent that night at sea with his prisoner, sailing around until morning to dodge their efforts to free him.
The following day Luavex was flown to prison in the capital, but months of hard work followed as Mr McGrail was left with the task of assembling the case against him.
In June 2006, after a week-long delay as riots engulfed Honiara, Luavex pleaded self-defence at his trial in the Solomons' High Court. A reserved decision was released in December 2006, by which time Mr McGrail had returned to New Zealand.
Now back home in Churton Park with wife Debbie and four sons, Mr McGrail said solving the Gizo murders was the highlight of his career, but it hadn't given him an appetite for more detective work.
"When I was in the Solomons I worked my butt off - I didn't have any family commitments. To have to do that sort of stuff here, and try to find time for family, it would just be too hard."
- NZPA
