Eighteen months ago someone driving a specialised crane truck swooped before dawn and stole a historic cannon from Ōkahu Bay in Auckland. The cannon has not been seen since and police filed the case amid a lack of leads. Now, a person-of-interest in the case has told the Herald the
Ōkahu Bay cannon theft: Inside the police files as person-of-interest in audacious heist speaks out
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The two-century old Russian cannon was stolen early one morning last June. It has not been seen since. This photo was attached to the police file obtained by the Herald under the Official Information Act.
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The truck’s crane hoisted the Russian-built cannon, one of two captured by the British during the Crimean War and given to Auckland, onto its wooden flatbed.
The Hiab, a brand-name that has become a byword for truck-mounted loader cranes, then moves back out onto Tamaki Dr and towards the city.
Footage shows the cannon on the back of the truck leaving its Auckland home of 71 years down Tamaki Dr past the Ports of Auckland entrance. Motorway cameras tracked it onto State Highway 16 heading west, exiting at Brigham Creek Rd near Whenuapai.
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Further attempts at tracking the truck using automatic number plate recognition were unsuccessful as its plates were damaged or obscured.
The following day, police and Auckland Council launched a public appeal with images of the truck. Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson called the theft “despicable behaviour” while another local politician called it “disgraceful”.
The Herald obtained the police case summary report via the Official Information Act.
It contains witness statements, photographs and previously unreleased details about the inquiries police made.
They show police were told of a photo of someone posing with the cannon in a storage locker facility in an area where the truck was last seen that morning.
The truck appears to have made its way to the Far North, where it still operates, according to recent photos obtained by the Herald, of the Scania Hiab in Kaitaia.
Certain details including the name of suspects and informants are redacted from the police files.
The day after the Ōkahu Bay cannon theft, the truck was sighted at the Mobil petrol station in Wellsford, 75km northwest of Auckland, about 4am.
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On June 17, it was seen in the carpark of the Pak’nSave Kaitāia.
According to a report by a police sergeant, a CHIS (Covert Human Intelligence Source, i.e. a confidential informant) reported a truck of the same description was seen in a yard on Simon Ulrich Rd in Whatuwhiwhi, on the Karikari Peninsula about 40km from Kaitāia, on June 6.
The informant was able to confirm the registration.
Police had deduced the probable registration of the truck as there was only one blue registered Scania Hiab matching footage from the theft.
A tipster also later provided the same registration.
After the public appeal, an informant named the company which had owned the truck.
Police contacted the company - a spokesperson said they sold it on May 26, 2023, four days before the theft.
That company was a South Auckland truck rental firm. Records show they only officially turned over ownership on June 2, the day after the theft.
It is understood they sold it to a house-moving company with links at the time to Auckland, Whangārei and the Far North.
The director of that company said he knew nothing about the the theft but provided the phone number of a man who told the Herald he purchased the truck in 2022 from the rental company.
“I’ve spoken to the police, I’ve helped them as best as I could with their inquiry.
“And the truck I believe, is my truck, I know it’s my truck, but I don’t know whose name it might be under,” he said when contacted for comment early in December.
When asked if he thought someone had borrowed his truck to steal the cannon, the man said: “I cannot assume things or think things, I’ll be just guessing”.
“So I could say ‘yes, this reporter from Auckland stole it’. What evidence have I got of that?
“So I don’t want to be speculating and all that.
“Definitely my truck, and I’m definitely not denying it. I told the police that.”
The man said he had no idea who might have stolen the cannon.
“It would be a nice ornament. I wouldn’t mind having it.
“I wouldn’t have a clue to be honest, I told the police that.”
When the Herald asked if he was still associated with the house-moving business, the man gave his work address in Auckland and said he would need to be arrested before he would provide any more detail.
On July 2, 2023, another informant went to the front counter at Auckland City police station saying they had seen the truck in Kaitāia the previous day, providing a photo and the registration. The files record several other sightings of the truck in and around Kaitāia.
Four days later, according to the police files, another anonymous informant came forward to tell police he had seen a person whose name is redacted standing with the stolen cannon, and that it appeared to be in a storage unit.
Later in July, an Auckland police sergeant wrote to the young constable overseeing the stolen cannon file, nominating a person - whose name is redacted in the files - as a possible suspect.
The reason he was nominated as a suspect is itself redacted.
The files show police obtained production orders for cellphone data from One NZ, formerly Vodafone, and obtained cellphone data from the then owner of the truck.
But the phone’s location data did not match the time and location of the theft.
Location data from the phone of one suspect show they were at Kumeū and Westgate at 6.30am on June 1, the morning the cannon was stolen, and near where the truck was captured on motorway cameras leaving State Highway 16 in West Auckland.
Redactions in the files mean it’s unclear if this suspect is the truck’s then-owner.
An unnamed suspect’s phone’s location data also placed them at a storage locker two days after the theft.
A police officer recorded in the files that they searched the records of the storage unit’s owners and failed to find any links to the suspect or their associates.
The files don’t say if police physically searched any units at the Storage King facility.
On March 19 last year, a police officer “inactivated” the file, saying there were no more leads and no new information.
It appears the truck itself remains in the Far North. On November 6, a source captured photos of the same blue Scania Hiab with a wooden ramp picking up a container in a yard just outside Kaitāia.
Police confirmed there have been no arrests or developments since March 19 when the case was filed.
On the day before it was stolen, the cannon had been placed in an open container and covered with a tarpaulin ready for moving. It was not secured.
An Auckland Council parks and facilities operations manager told police in a formal statement that the council had decided to move the cannon into storage.
That was due to changes to the boat maintenance area at The Landing where the cannon had been displayed for many years.
In 2019, the Ōrākei Local Board authorised the refurbishment of the gun and its relocation to outside the T.S. Achilles Sea Cadet base down the road, on the other side of Ōkahu Bay.
The Auckland War Memorial Museum had also expressed an interest in restoring and displaying the cannon and as a result it was to be moved into a council storage facility in Grafton, the manager’s statement said.
The only people who knew about the move, the manager said, were the marine company then managing the area where it was displayed at Ōkahu Bay, their haulage company, and a few council staff at the storage site.
Former Ōrākei Local Board chairman Colin Davis said the timing of the theft on the day the cannon was due to be moved was “mysterious”. The cannon had spent more than 70 years at Ōkahu Bay and was previously displayed in Albert Park.
“It was always in open spaces whether it’s in Albert Park or at the Landing at Ōkahu Bay and then the day it moved from temporary storage it suddenly got stolen,” Davis said.
“It’s very unusual, shall we say.”
The cannon had been in what was effectively temporary storage for several years while awaiting relocation amid construction at The Landing, Davis said.
The long-serving local government stalwart was in the dark on possible motivations for the theft and said he was not aware of any disputes over the landing or the cannon itself which could have sparked the theft.
“Maybe there’s a collector or alternatively some political views someone might have on the imperial nature of the cannon.”
The cannon, made of cast iron, would have fetched about $750 at best as scrap metal at current prices, based on an estimated weight of 1500kg and a price of $400 to $500 per tonne, according to an Auckland scrap metal dealer who wanted to remain anonymous.
It would be hard to fence as 95 percent of dealers are legitimate and there is a legal requirement to take the details of anyone selling scrap metal, not taking into account how hot the cannon would be following the media attention, the dealer said.
He believed the effort of stealing the cannon and cost of operating the Hiab would make the theft not worth its while, but also cautioned against underestimating the stupidity of some criminals.
The Crimean War cannon was not the only publicly displayed piece of antique weaponry to go walkabout in 2023.
About four months before it was stolen, a carronade - a shorter, naval variant of a cannon - was stolen from a plinth in the graveyard of St John the Baptist Anglican Church in Waimate North, a settlement about 100km south of Kaitāia.
Reverend Elgin Edwards told the Herald the cannon remained missing.
It weighed 300kg and whoever stole it would have had to undo the four bolts attaching it to its concrete plinth, he said.
From Lugansk to Ōkahu Bay
The Ōkahu Bay cannon was one of a pair of Russian guns delivered to Auckland in May 1859, according to research by Auckland military historian Philip Heath. The other remains at the Army Museum in Waiouru.
They were taken as trophies from Sevastopol after the victory of an alliance including the Ottoman Empire, France and the United Kingdom over Imperial Russia.
The Auckland Provincial Council had requested the pair, which were among 10 sent out to New Zealand and Australia. Of the 10, the iron 18-pounder stolen from Ōkahu Bay was the oldest, manufactured in Eastern Ukraine at the Lugansk Foundry in 1817.
After arriving in New Zealand, they were displayed at Fort Britomart and moved several times.
George Block is an Auckland-based reporter with a focus on police, the courts, prisons and defence. He joined the Herald in 2022 and has previously worked at Stuff in Auckland and the Otago Daily Times in Dunedin.
