Last armed robber hanged for couple's 1951 death

By PATRICK GOWER

The last man convicted of a multiple-killing during an armed robbery in New Zealand was hanged for it 50 years ago.

The RSA killings were the first time in half a century that more than one person was murdered in a New Zealand armed robbery.

William Giovanni Silveo Fiori was hanged for shooting and killing a timber mill manager and his wife while stealing £1010 of the mill's payroll from their home at Minginui, 95km southeast of Rotorua, in 1951. John Arthur Gabolinscy and Marie Eveleen Gabolinscy had collected the money from the bank the day before.

Like RSA murderer William Bell, Fiori, 29, admitted the robbery but denied the murders.

After his sentence was passed, his mother petitioned the Government for a reprieve, saying Fiori's personality had completely changed after a car accident when he was aged 6.

Fiori was often in trouble and was placed in a home for backward children.

He enlisted in the Army but was twice dismissed for disobeying orders. A psychiatrist said he was a man of subnormal intelligence.

Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Pearson, second-in-charge of the RSA inquiry, said Bell's "rampage" was incomparable.

"There has never been another aggravated robbery like it. You just don't get an armed robbery where someone goes in and kills everyone."

New Zealanders have grown familiar with multiple killings among family members.

Charlotte Harris, a social worker who watched over Bell when he was a state ward between ages 8 and 16, was nearly a victim of one such crime - she was injured when her father killed her mother and three siblings at their Kaikohe home in 1958.

He had gone on the rampage after getting her sister pregnant.

"They are different crimes, done in different times," Ms Harris said.

"My father's was a crime of passion - it had come from him. I believe William's was one of greed; a product of the society around him. He might have doing it for revenge as well, but that was just an attitude."

Far more unusual are massacres by someone unknown. Although Bell knew his victims, because it was a robbery it is one of the country's worst multiple killings - outside of domestic killings - since the Aramoana murders when recluse David Gray killed 13 people in a shooting rampage.

Bell's rampage also eclipses this year's killings of pizza worker Marcus Doig and ASB Bank worker John Vaughan, shot in armed robberies a week apart by Ese Falealii.

Multiple murders - a history of horror

May 1992 Brian Schlaepfer, a rural grandfather who lived near Pukekohe, murdered his wife, three sons, grandson and daughter-in-law and committed suicide.

June 1992 Raymond Ratima killed seven members of his family in Masterton. He hammered, bludgeoned and stabbed his three children, the brother of his estranged wife, his wife's pregnant sister, her partner and their son.

February 1994 Alan Robert Bristol, a 31-year-old Wanganui man, killed himself and his three young daughters by filling his car with exhaust fumes.

June 1994 Five members of the Bain family were killed in their Dunedin home. David Bain, the sole surviving family member, was convicted.

February 1997 Stephen Anderson killed six people in the central North Island village of Raurimu. A paranoid schizophrenic, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

August 1999 Robert Han, a former BNZ manager, used a knife and a hammer to murder his wife Angela and their two children, Christina, 2, and Nicholas 4, at their Manukau home.

December 1999 Brian Desmond Aporo, also known as Smith, killed his two children, Israel Aporo, 3, and Keziah Te Huia Smith, 11 months. He also killed neighbour Trevor Francis Mokaraka, 47. Aporo was found not guilty of murder on the grounds of insanity.

September-October 2000 Rosemary Perkin, a 35-year-old Nelson woman, killed her three children, Alice, 8, Maria, 6, and Cherie, 23 months, in their home in Stoke, before killing herself.

August 2001 Frank Hingston strangled his daughters Dominique, 6, and Nikkita, 5, before killing himself in the South Island township of Riwaka.

December 2001 Bruce Howse murdered his stepdaughters Saliel Aplin, 12, and Olympia Jetson in a Masterton sleepout.