Three months ago, the colourful life of Hawkes Bay rural identity Jack Nicholas ended with gunshots. His murder remains unsolved.
August 27 ... was an ordinary late-winter morning. For Jack and Agnes Nicholas, who had lived on their tranquil Puketitiri farm at the end of the Makahu Road in Hawkes Bay for more than 30 years, the silence and the frost on the ground was the traditional August morning greeting they had long come to accept.
Mr Nicholas, a fit and no-nonsense 71-year-old, got up first, filled the kettle for a cup of tea, and flicked the switch on.
It was early, about 6am, and Mrs Nicholas stayed in bed. She heard the sliding door open. Mr Nicholas had gone outside. He may have heard something ... he may have seen something.
The next sound Mrs Nicholas heard was a loud gunshot, followed quickly by another. There was a bit of a pause then a third shot.
A short time later her daughter-in-law, who lives on a property also off Makahu Road, called and asked Mrs Nicholas if she had heard the shots.
They talked for a short time, then Mrs Nicholas got up, went to the kitchen and found the kettle boiling. Her husband had not returned.
She had her tea, had a quick shower and realised Mr Nicholas had still not come back inside. So she went to look for him. It was cold and quiet. There were only bird sounds.
When she saw four sheep wandering towards the house she thought Mr Nicholas must have left the gate open. Then she saw him, lying still on the ground. She called to him twice then stood still, bewildered and stunned. There was blood.
She thought for a fleeting moment he may have accidentally shot himself ... but there was no gun nearby.
She ran back to the house, gathered up a quilt and took it to cover him. She ran back into the house and called her son Oliver. She told him he should come quickly because there was something wrong with his father.
"Is he all right?" Oliver asked. She told him "no".
Senior Sergeant Mike Wright, who had known Mr Nicholas since the late 1970s through search and rescue work in the Kaweka region, was on duty on the morning the call came in. He was given the news and was stunned.
"It was just bloody unbelievable.
"I got to know Jack, more so in recent years," Mr Wright said.
"Especially his hospitality. There was one time I was coming out of the bush with my son. We'd been chasing deer, and Jack said it looked like we needed a good feed ... so he fixed one."
Police mobilised rapidly in response, but the one big factor which worked against them was the remoteness of the Makahu farm, which is at the foothills of the Kawekas. On a good day it takes an hour and 15 minutes to get there by road from Napier.
So, two members of the armed offenders squad were put on board the Lowe Corporation helicopter, along with medics. Even then, again because of the remoteness and assembly time required, vital minutes had slipped by.
Knowing they were up against time, police threw everything they had into the region. Patrols swept into the area, covering every road entrance and exit, setting up roadblocks as they went, along with SAPs (safe arrival points).
However, the killer, who fired three shots, and left only two shell casings on the ground where he stood, about 80m from where Mr Nicholas fell, was not caught in the net.
Police immediately launched a massive homicide operation, headed by Detective Inspector Godfrey Watson. He said from the start that police were in for a long and challenging haul. He was not wrong.
With no firm suspect, and the only "witness" reports being of sounds rather than sight, it became a massive exercise in collating forensic and oral material, in terms of vehicle sightings and possible suspects.
The inquiry team soon expanded to 52 officers, and much of the work hinged around people Jack Nicholas (no stranger to verbal confrontation and who had been threatened in the past by people he encountered trespassing on his land) had come into contact with.
Police scoured through notes and letters, and extended inquiries to identifying people who had written to newspapers on contentious subjects Mr Nicholas had commented on.
There was a firearm round-up in the district, with police focusing on .308 type rifles. The file expanded, as did the number of officers involved, as the interview numbers ran into the hundreds. A list of six vehicles "of interest" was drawn up, and information on them is being sought.
The interview list of suspects passed the 100 mark and rose by the day. Police made three appeals to a mystery caller at the Bay View community police station on the day of the killing. The third appeal was a month after the killing, but the man, who declined to identify himself to the Bay View constable's wife, has not called.
The logistics of policing means the inquiry team will be pulled back to about 25 over the next week ... something which is unavoidable but which will slow the inquiry. "In some respects it does get more difficult as time goes by," Mr Watson said. "It becomes more difficult for people to remember what they were doing that day. But in other respects, it means we are gathering more information."
Conscious that some homicide inquiries had gone on for years rather than months, Mr Watson said the police team had not lost hope in bringing the killer to justice.
He said it was highly likely someone had a strong suspicion of who murdered Jack Nicholas. "They will have some inkling, and they have to call us ... in confidence if need be." He added it was also highly likely the killer had good knowledge of the Puketitiri area.
Mrs Nicholas remains at a loss as to why her husband was murdered, and time has provided no solace for the family or the rural community painfully aware a killer, who had been in their midst that day, was still at large.
Mr Watson said police determination and focus was as sharp as it was on that frosty morning of August 27. Among the most determined of them all is Mike Wright, who like many, lost a good old friend that day.
UNSOLVED MURDER
Farmer Jack Nicholas was shot in cold blood at dawn on August 27.
His killer, who used a .308 rifle, fled the scene before police were able to seal off roads surrounding the Nicholas' remote Hawkes Bay farm.
A 52-strong police inquiry team is being cut back to about 25 officers.
- NZPA
Time damns search for farmer's killer
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.