Detectives carrying out the review sought out Professor Jenny of Brown University School of Medicine in the United States in September 2012 to review all the medical evidence relating to Rochelle and whether she had been cared for in the time since her parents were killed.
The professor, a paediatric specialist considered a world expert on child abuse, told detectives she believed Rochelle had been fed.
She said there were particular symptoms, including an increased breathing rate, which would have been noticed by those caring for her after she was found.
But she told detectives one fact stood out. "The investigators described her cot mattress and bedding as very wet. A diaper found in her cot was also described as wet. When children are deprived of fluid, their urine output quickly decreases to almost nothing.
"This fact combined with the fact that no one noted the child to be breathing deep or fast leads me to conclude that the child was given food and/or drink between the time her parents died and the time she was found by her grandfather."
She said Rochelle could have survived but her condition was "clinically incompatible with complete starvation and lack of fluid for five days".
The analysis said Professor Jenny's findings were "more credible than those of the medical experts in the 1970s" and reflected her "vast experience working with abused and neglected children".
Despite the evidence, the review team relied on the experts of the 1970s, saying "she did not have the benefit of examining Rochelle personally".
The analysis said the lack of reported symptoms did not mean they did not exist, but might have meant doctors in the 1970s did not recognise them as indicating dehydration. They also found cooler temperatures as winter closed in during June 1970 "would have assisted Rochelle in surviving a prolonged period of deprivation".
The police review found the three pieces of evidence relied on by police originally could still be relied on to link the killer to the Thomas farm. The evidence was the Thomas rifle - the likely murder weapon - and the axle used to keep one of the bodies submerged in the river, along with the fencing wire used to secure the axle to the body.
The Crewe case
June 1970: Harvey and Jeannette Crewe are shot and killed in their Pukekawa home. Their disappearance is discovered five days later, as is their daughter Rochelle abandoned in her cot.
November 1970: Arthur Thomas charged with murder.
March 1971: Thomas found guilty of murder.
June 1972: Second trial ordered after successful, second, Court of Appeal bid.
April 1973: Thomas found guilty of murder.
February 1975: Court of Appeal upholds conviction.
October 1978: A month out from the election, amid concerns over planted evidence, Sir Robert Muldoon orders investigation by Robert Adams-Smith QC.
December 1979: Thomas is pardoned.
November 1980: Royal Commission of Inquiry finds Thomas shouldn't have been prosecuted and inquiry head Inspector Bruce Hutton and another detective framed him.
October 2010: Rochelle Crewe says she wants answers.
August 2012: Thomas' brother Des files formal criminal complaints against police.
March/April 2013: Hutton dies, and then-deputy commissioner Mike Bush praises him in eulogy at funeral.
July 2014: Police review says the evidence points to the Thomas family farm - and it was likely Thomas was framed.
