Kahu's kidnapping: A crime long in the planning

By JAN CORBETT

By the time Terry Traynor pulled his Mitsubishi Magna into the quiet, leafy Lower Hutt street that Saturday morning he was more than ready.

For months, this slightly built man with close-cropped, greying hair and a goatee beard had been making regular trips from Taumarunui to Wellington to keep an eye on his prey.

He would watch the family's regular movements in and out of their palatial, turreted home and keep notes about them. It was the mother he wanted, not the baby.

During these visits he would stay at a local camping ground popular among school groups, the Hutt Park Top 10 Holiday Park, where he booked in under the name Reg Baker. Donna Hall and Justice Eddie Durie lived about a five-minute drive away.

Of all the people who appear in lists of the rich and famous, Donna Hall was remarkable for two things, and it wasn't her comparatively modest $10 million estimated wealth. She was unique for being a Maori woman of considerable means. And controversial for having earned that money through the Waitangi Tribunal claims process.

Traynor said it was from a rich list that he selected her. He found her address on the electoral roll.

After months of work back in Taumarunui, he had a house ready for her.

Late last year, he took out a mortgage and paid Taupo-based builder and entrepreneur Graeme Stewart $45,000 for the 70-year-old house in secluded Hikumutu Rd. He paid $6000 below its registered valuation.

Built on the outskirts of town and nestled among trees, the house was away from the neighbours' view. Traynor was able to set about his macabre renovations without anyone noticing. He nailed sheets of plywood over the gib board, to improve the soundproofing. He also installed plywood shutters inside the windows, so they could still be opened but also padlocked shut, preventing a hostage from smashing a way out.

He altered the layout so that once he had Donna Hall captive, she could use the toilet and bathroom without being able to escape into the rest of the house.

It wasn't just the image of a rich and confident Donna Hall peering out of the newspaper at him which incited the 54 year-old, unemployed Traynor to kidnap. He had been thinking of attempting this rare crime with some famous New Zealander for at least four years. Up until then, he had confined himself to firearms offences.

Late in 1998, as the first recorded step in his plan, he stole a registration plate, UL3802, from a car parked in Freemans Bay, Auckland.

At the time, Traynor was living on Waiheke Island, estranged from his Wellington-based parents for years, and an ex-wife and one child.

He knew something about caring for babies.

He took a rented house overlooking Surfdale Beach. Another man lived in an attached unit. The section slopes back to bush where Traynor cut out walking tracks and planted native trees. Then he would retreat to the house and shoot his slug-gun out the window at the birds. He cleaned motel rooms a couple of days each week and spent a lot of time in Auckland.

Although Traynor had lived on Waiheke for more than seven years, he kept pretty much to himself. When his neighbours set up a Neighbourhood Watch group, he didn't take part.

Norm Burnand and his wife, Anne, bought the Waiheke house last year. Traynor asked to stay on for a few months and the Burnands agreed on condition he leave behind his furniture in lieu of rent. He said he was looking for a boat to live on. He showed them around the island on their arrival, and they remember him as clean-shaven, quiet and helpful.

When they heard that the kidnapper was a 54-year old from Taumarunui, Norm Burnand, also 54 and also from Taumarunui, thought he must surely know him. He didn't imagine how.

The more Traynor watched and studied Donna Hall, the more he realised what a difficult kidnap victim she would undoubtedly have been.

He decided instead to take the baby.

In late March, during one of his forays to Lower Hutt, he rented a garage near the Seaview marina - a place to store a car.

At Easter, he went to the Ellerslie Car Fair in Auckland and bought a Mitsubishi Magna which looked remarkably similar to the car from which he had stolen the number plate. On his last, fateful trip to Lower Hutt, he called in at the Countdown supermarket and took yet another number plate - AHL171 - from another car that resembled the Mitsubishi. He attached one plate to the front of his car, the other to the back.

On Saturday morning, he bought a Thermos and two baby bottles. He went back to the holiday camp to warm the milk and empty it into the Thermos. He picked up his gloves, a balaclava and a cut-off .22 Ruger semi-automatic with 10 rounds of ammunition, drove to Myrtle St and waited.

It was around 11.20am when Donna Hall, her husband's two nieces, the family collie and 8-month-old baby Kahu set out on what was a favourite Saturday morning walk.

Traynor followed them until they entered St Albans Grove. He drove past to the end of the cul-de-sac and parked outside the day care centre. As they neared the steps leading up the bank to Strand Park, he leaped from the car, ran across the road and pointed the gun at the two girls pushing the baby.

He raised the gun and yelled at the girls to leave the baby and for Hall to get rid of the dog. They obeyed. He grabbed hold of the pushchair, lifted the baby into the front seat of the car, put the gun between his legs and sped off. Hall ran in front of the car to try to stop him but, realising she would be run over, had to jump aside.

Traynor drove to his storage garage at the Seaview marina where he had another car, a Mazda, waiting with a mattress bent into a u-shape in the back seat - a cradle for the baby.

He swapped cars, hiding the soon-to-be-well-publicised Mitsubishi in the garage and driving back to the camping ground in his Mazda. There he waited until mid-afternoon, hoping to avoid any police road blocks that might have been set up. By 3.30pm, judging it safe to make the journey and under the police-imposed news blackout, he and baby Kahu left Lower Hutt for the long drive to Taumarunui.

News of a baby-snatching in Lower Hutt broke late that night, followed on Sunday by the revelation that she was the adopted daughter of high-profile lawyer Donna Hall and High Court judge and Waitangi Tribunal chairman Eddie Durie.

While a shocked nation speculated over whether this was a random crime, a family dispute or an act of racial hatred, Terry Traynor was sitting down to write a ransom letter. He wanted $3 million - one third of it in $100 bills, one third in $50 bills and the rest in gold Krugerrands. He warned that if the police interfered or the ransom wasn't paid in full, Donna Hall would never see her baby again.

He included five Polaroid snaps of Kahu propped up on a couch with a newspaper clipping about her kidnapping pinned on the wall behind her.

Police found the letter in the Duries' letterbox on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Traynor drove to Te Awamutu, to follow the ransom demand with a phone call. He called Donna Hall from a phone box, asking her if the money was ready and repeating his threats. He finished by telling her he would call back in a couple of days.

If Hall was shocked to hear the voice of her baby's kidnapper, she must have also been relieved. He was real, and her baby was alive.

By the time Traynor left the house again on Sunday afternoon, the police investigation had led them to his Taumarunui hillside house. They were watching. He didn't have the baby with him. They burst in and were relieved to find a baby who had been extremely well cared for, and revolted to find a house designed for kidnapping.

Three hours later when Traynor returned, he was arrested, taken to the Taumarunui police station and he confessed everything.

He told the police he would have kept the baby until the end of June and if the ransom had not been paid or something had gone wrong, would have returned her.

In the week between Traynor's first court appearance and his last, the police had retraced the steps of his life, finding his family also in Lower Hutt, where Traynor was born.

The family issued a statement declaring they had neither seen nor heard from their son for 20 years and that "it came as a dreadful shock to learn that the man held for this despicable crime is an estranged member of our family".

It was the police and public who crammed the gallery of the Lower Hutt District Court to glimpse the man whose cruel crime had united a nation around people who personify the issues that normally divide it.

In the way of criminals, he didn't look capable of a monstrous act. He was dressed in a blue shirt, tie and a cream tracksuit jacket, and his voice trailed off in the otherwise silent court as he pleaded guilty to the five charges.

Detective Inspector Stu Wildon left the courtroom a happy man but unwilling, yet, to answer the central questions: why exactly was Donna Hall targeted and how did the police zero in on Terry Traynor?

"I'd love to say more," he smiled, "but I'm not going to."

- Additional reporting by Paula Oliver, Monique Devereux, Warren Gamble, Gregg Wycherley

Full coverage: Baby Kahu kidnapping