Tangled in a web of deceit

Lying to protect a friend ruined Stephen Tresidder's police career. JO-MARIE BROWN tells how.

Sergeant Stephen Tresidder's luck began to run out three years ago today when he was caught camping in the snow on a sprawling, privately owned central North Island farm.

He and longtime friend Michael Lourie had been poaching deer on Ngamatea Station for more than 10 years and had vowed to continue until they were caught.

That Sunday morning in April 1999, they were. Their footprints were spotted in the mud by a professional guide, one of a handful of people permitted to be in the area.

But instead of being honest with the landowners, the police sergeant, who had been in the force for more than 13 years, began to lie - first about his personal details, and later in front of a judge.

Lying to a stranger about your identity is one thing. Lying on oath in court is quite another.

Tresidder, 40, resigned yesterday after becoming what police headquarters says is the first New Zealand policeman to be convicted of perjury.

Normally friendly and relaxed, he insisted at his trial that he was innocent. But his rapid blinking and tense shoulders suggested that he knew he had dug himself a hole too deep to get out of.

Tresidder, who spent seven years as a constable in Gisborne before transferring to Whakatane in 1992, had known his hunting pal Lourie for 25 years.

On April 15, 1999, he drove from Whakatane to Ngamatea Station, collecting Lourie from his Rotorua home on the way.

They had taken annual leave and intended to spend up to two weeks hunting in the area where New Zealand's finest herd of wild sika deer can be found.

Their trip coincided with the sika "roar", or mating season, when stags become less cautious and move into the open where they are easier to shoot.

Having driven along the Napier-Taihape road, they left Tresidder's white Toyota Landcruiser at Springvale Bridge, near Ngamatea's southern boundary.

A couple of Rod & Rifle magazines were left open at trout articles on the back seat to create the impression that the owner had come to fish the Rangitikei River.

But the ruse did not fool professional hunting guide Adrian Moody. He phoned Bruce Bates - the man with exclusive hunting rights to Ngamatea - to alert him that poachers were about.

Bates, whose wife part-owned the station, ran a guiding business on Ngamatea and was sick of poachers cutting fences, leaving gates open and shooting his stock. He left his Napier orchard immediately and drove to Ngamatea.

On that bitterly cold Sunday morning, Bates and his brother-in-law Nathan Apatu, also a part-owner, climbed up a prominent hill.

Through binoculars, they spotted a man, also with binoculars, "glassing" or scanning the bush. They said a rifle was slung over his shoulder.

"He was just standing, glassing, looking into the gullies below. The stags were roaring that morning, you could hear them," Bates said. "You think of [Ngamatea] as your own and it gives you a real fright to see someone there."

Following the trespassers' footprints and voices, a nervous Bates and Apatu confronted them at their camp.

"I thought I'd just try and keep it calm and act like another hunter," Bates said. "I wanted to find out as much as I could while it was going well."

Tresidder and Lourie chatted happily to the new arrivals, discussing the weather, how their hunt was going and how long they had been coming to Ngamatea.

Bates even congratulated Lourie when he boasted about having shot one of New Zealand's top trophy sika heads on the station a few years before.

He then told them Apatu's family owned the property - "Do you gentlemen realise you're poaching?"

A tense situation developed. Bates asked to see their gun licences as he thought it would be a quick way to find out their names and addresses. The hunters searched their packs but could not produce them.

Bates then asked Tresidder and Lourie to hand over their guns.

"At that stage Mr Tresidder became very abrupt and short ... He took a step forward at that stage and said, 'You're not taking our rifles, you can't have them'."

Bates, knowing that legally the two men did not have to surrender the guns, dropped the issue. Instead he asked for their names and addresses to issue a trespass notice.

Tresidder said he was Stephen Johns, of 20 Arawa Rd, Whakatane. Lourie claimed to be John Banks, of 10 Kiwi St, Whakatane.

Both men were then told to leave.

On the Monday, Bates went to the Havelock North police station to make a complaint about unlawful hunting.

Not surprisingly, the name Bates had written on the trespass notices did not check out, but the registration of the Landcruiser parked at Springvale Bridge came back as belonging to Stephen Tresidder, care of Whakatane police station.

Rotorua crime manager Detective Inspector Graham Bell was brought in to interview Tresidder, who admitted having been on Ngamatea but refused to name his companion.

Both Tresidder and police investigating Bates' complaint mistakenly believed that any charge of unlawful hunting had to be laid within six months.

Six months went by, and Tresidder finally named Lourie as his companion. While Tresidder was convicted in November 1999 of giving a false name and address (police dropped a charge of unlawful hunting), Lourie seemed to have escaped punishment.

An angry Bates decided to take a private case against Lourie, having discovered that the window for prosecution was in fact 12 months, not six.

Lourie, who now lives at Pukehina Beach and runs his own security business, defended himself at the hearing in the Taihape District Court in July 2000 and called Tresidder as a witness.

Taking the Bible in his right hand, Tresidder swore to "tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth".

He told Judge Grant Fraser that he and Lourie had spent only one night, not three, on Ngamatea and were intending merely to pass through on their way to hunt what he believed was Department of Conservation land on the west side of the Rangitikei River.

The only reason they had stopped, he said, was because it had started snowing and it was dangerous to walk in the dark.

He strongly denied that they had any firearms with them on Ngamatea, saying they were hidden in waterproof bags on the land (which was owned by the Army, not DoC) where they were heading to collect them.

"Because I have some knowledge of the law," Tresidder explained, "I knew that if we ever got caught walking across Ngamatea Station with firearms you are deemed to be illegally hunting by simple possession.

"So therefore we leave our firearms there so if we ever do get caught walking across Ngamatea Station, which we did on this particular occasion, we would merely be told to leave. We were merely trespassers," he told the Taihape court.

Tresidder explained that he gave a false address because Bates was insinuating that he and Lourie were cutting fences and shooting stock and he did not want to be blamed for something he had not done.

He went on to tell Judge Fraser, and later the jury at his perjury trial in Tauranga, that he had given his correct name, Stephen Tresidder.

"I actually recall giving him my full name ... He may not have heard me because my full name is Stephen John Tresidder."

It was at this point in the Taihape hearing that things started to go wrong. Bates' lawyer and Judge Fraser began to pick holes in the policeman's story.

Why had they set off into Ngamatea in the first place if it was snowing? Why had Tresidder admitted giving a false name if he now denied it? Why weren't they carrying rifles if they were on a hunting trip?

Tresidder admitted being "stupid", but Judge Fraser thought it was more than that and declared him not a credible witness. He convicted Lourie of unlawful hunting and giving false particulars.

When senior members of the police heard of Tresidder's testimony, a perjury investigation began.

At Tresidder's perjury trial in the Tauranga District Court, defence lawyer John Haigh, QC, tried to argue that while the policeman had got things wrong when testifying in the earlier trial, he had not deliberately misled the court.

But Crown prosecutor John McDonald called Lourie to testify that he and Tresidder had in fact camped on Ngamatea for three nights before they were caught.

The weather was initially fine and clear, meaning they could have walked straight through Ngamatea. Instead they allegedly slept all day Friday and Saturday, with snow beginning to fall on Saturday night.

Lourie also admitted that they had firearms with them on the station, saying they were hidden 120m from their camp in a crevice.

"The plan was to pick up our rifles, carry on through and hunt the Rangitikei River," Lourie said, having pointed out the area on a map which included Ngamatea Station.

The Army land Tresidder referred to was about 7km from where they were caught.

Bates testified that the area known as White's Valley, where Tresidder and Lourie were found, was home to one of the world's finest herds of wild sika deer.

The hill on which they had happened to pitch their tents was "the best spot on the farm with the highest density of animals".

"If you're a hunter, you've died and gone to heaven," he said.

Although Tresidder and Lourie had not shot any deer on the property for a number of years, their illegal presence on Ngamatea had now led to the policeman's conviction for perjury.

His attempt to provide an innocent explanation to help out a friend has backfired badly.

Colleagues and friends, who had testified to Tresidder's exemplary character, were shocked by the verdict.

"I found him honest, hard-working. I always thought he was a really dedicated policeman," said retired Detective Sergeant Ian Robson.

But as prosecutor John McDonald pointed out to the jury, Tresidder was "not of such good character that even on his own evidence, he's not above bending the law. He trespassed [and] he stored guns where he wasn't supposed to."

But Tresidder's partner, Karmann Winn, maintains he told the truth in Taihape.

"I feel sorry for every New Zealand police officer because if that's the case then every police officer in New Zealand should be guilty of perjury because everybody makes mistakes," she said.

"Everybody."