Saturday night at Red Fox: A tragedy remembered 33 years on

The Red Fox Tavern near Maramarua where publican Chris Bush was murdered in 1987. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Bill wondered about getting out of bed to mow the lawns but thought no, bugger it, they could wait. He was comfortable. He'd woken up at 7 and read for a while, then went back to sleep. In the afternoon, he watched The Scarlet Pimpernel, a 1982 adventure movie set in the French Revolution. It was all right even though it went on for three hours with commercials. Bill, who rented his bach from a dairy company, lay in bed all day. He worked hard with timber during the week and it was a Saturday. Besides, he liked things quiet. It suited his personality. He was a softly spoken man, 41 years old, and kept out of people's way.

"I never get any visitors," he said. "I can go years without visitors."

But he knew everyone in Maramarua. It was a country settlement and it was his habit to go to the Red Fox Tavern after work, stand at the bar by himself and drink two jugs of beer, and exchange a friendly greeting with the locals. It was like that on Friday night.

"Gidday, Bill," said a stock agent who walked up to the bar.

"Gidday."

"Gidday, Bill," said a retired Dutchman.

"Gidday."

Bill drank his two jugs and studied his racing form. He bet on a trifecta at Forbury Park in Dunedin, and then he went behind the bar to start work at 6 on the dot. He poured drinks in the public bar on weekends. The tavern was packed that Friday night.

"You couldn't move," he said.

It was the beginning of Labour Weekend. A lot of traffic came through Maramarua. Its green fields were about halfway between Auckland and Thames on State Highway 2. The tavern made for an ideal spot to stop in for a drink or a meal. There was a white picket fence around the garden bar, and a signwriter had painted THE FELLAS AT THE CELLARS above the bottle store.

The Red Fox Tavern. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Bill eventually got out of bed about 5 that Saturday, showered, and drove to the tavern in his orange Datsun. The colour stood out. Locals saw it coming, and said, "There's Bill." He picked up his co-worker Stephanie on his way to the Red Fox. They were both due to start their shift at 6. He still had time to stand at the bar and drink a jug, and study his racing form. He put money on a trifecta at Alexandra Park in Auckland.

Unlike the Friday, Saturday was quiet. When Bill and Stephanie drove in, the carpark was full, so they parked around the back. But the crowd thinned out and there was no one left in the lounge bar by 9.30, and only a few diehards in the public bar when Bill called last drinks. The last to leave drank up and headed out by about 10.30. The front doors were closed and locked, but staff needed to leave the back door unlocked. Stephanie opened it to take out the rubbish bags that night, and Bill opened it to throw out a bucket of water. Staff would exit through the back door when it was time to go home.

After they cleaned up, Stephanie and Sherryn, who also worked at the tavern, said they should probably get going. "Stay for a drink," suggested the bar manager, Chris Bush. Bill went behind the bar and poured himself and Chris a beer, and Kahlua and milk for the women. Stephanie and Sherryn chatted with Chris in the lounge bar. Bill, as ever, kept to himself, and stayed behind the bar and studied his racing form.

Chris Bush was shot dead in the Red Fox Tavern in October 1987. Photo / File

Chris shouted a second round, and then a stranger called Nick pulled into the Red Fox carpark on his Honda motorbike. He was returning from Whakatāne to his home in Rānui, in West Auckland, where he worked at Swanson Dairy Fruit, and wanted to know where the closest petrol station was because the bike had got dangerously low on petrol. Nick was 19 and spoke with a strong English accent. He said, "They thought I was a lost tourist and found it quite funny."

They gave him directions but didn't open the doors. "There was no invitation to come in," said Nick.

He drove away. Bill poured a third round, and that night on October 24, 1987, at about 11.30, maybe 11.45, two men wearing balaclavas burst through the back door, and Chris Bush was shot and killed. Nick Slater is now 52 and gave evidence in the High Court at Auckland on Wednesday in the very, very long-awaited Red Fox Tavern murder trial.

A video link beamed Nick's big, cheerful face into the courtroom; he'd done well for himself in the intervening years, and now owned a real estate firm in New South Wales.

"Are you in Sydney?", asked prosecutor Ned Fletcher (the son of former Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias). "Well," laughed Nick, "somewhere nearer to Sydney than you are."

His accent was fully Australian and his jovial presence lightened the mood; he had nothing to do with the killing, was merely a passer-by that night in 1987, and appeared on Wednesday as one of the first witnesses called by the prosecution.

Stephanie Prisk and Sherryn Soppet came to court and gave evidence.

Bill Wilson's evidence was taken from two police statements that Labour Weekend 33 years ago: He gave a brief statement immediately after police arrived at the tavern, but the next day he sat down and wrote 17 detailed and vivid pages by hand.

Mark Joseph Hoggart and another man who has name suppression are jointly accused of murder and aggravated robbery. Police allege they stole $36,349.99 from the Red Fox on the night Chris Bush was killed. Both men deny the charges. Hoggart, 60, is a large, round man, who appeared in court wearing a white shirt open at the collar to reveal a tattoo on the front of his neck. His hair was long at the back, threadbare on top of his head. Hoggart and his co-accused were arrested and charged in 2017, very close to the 30th anniversary of the shooting; the trial is set down for 12 weeks, and will mark the longest, probably most intensively investigated murder trial of 2021.

Much of the opening of this story is based on Bill Wilson's 17-page manuscript. It recreates the sociable country manners at Maramarua where the rule of everyday life was that nothing ever happened, and everyone liked it that way. It was the 1980s and the High Court heard about Datsuns, Cortinas, Valiants. Lion Brown was on tap at the Red Fox. You could smoke. The jury were shown a kind of CSI Maramarua film on Wednesday - a really quite brilliant animated police video showing the interior of the tavern, including its pink and red floral carpet.

Stephanie Prisk has waited more than 30 years to tell a jury what happened that night and it all came out in a rush, as a speech, which turned back on itself but kept going, shakily:

"That door that was unlocked burst open and two people came in and said, 'This is a hold-up.' One had a gun and one had a baseball bat. The baseball man came towards me and the gunman stayed by the door and then something happened. I'm not sure what.

"Chris stood up and something happened, and then there was a big explosion. Chris walked past me and then there was an explosion and Chris fell on the floor. The gunman was screaming obscenities and yelling and it was crazy and he said, 'Get on the floor. Get down on the floor.'"

Mark Joseph Hoggart in the High Court at Auckland. Photo / Dean Purcell

She suddenly looked at prosecutor Natalie Walker (Ned Fletcher's wife; strange to imagine their family Christmases) as though she had come out of a trance, and said, "Do you want me to carry on?"

She carried on. The men commanded her to go through Chris' pockets for the keys to his office. "The baseball man was holding the bat over us," she said.

Walker asked, "Above his head?"

Stephanie said, "It was definitely high."

She found the keys. The men kicked down the office door and after a while, they managed to unlock the safe. They tied up the staff and gave instructions to wait for eight minutes or they'd come back and "finish you off". They left. No one heard a car.

The men had only tied Sherryn's right hand. She managed to free herself. "Being left-handed, it wasn't a problem," she said.

She untied Stephanie but Bill was tied too tight. "I had to cut him loose," she said.

Bill said, "She used the knife we use for cutting lemons and that."

Bill went to Chris' side. He hadn't seen him get shot. He was behind the bar reading his racing form when the men came in, and thought the noise was a firecracker.

Chris, 43, a father of two ("He was a good boss," said Sherryn, "but I didn't have him long for a boss"), was lying on his front. Bill thought he'd been hit over the head by the man with a bat. He turned him over by his shoulders and then he gently rolled him face-down again.

He said, "They've killed him."