Two complaints to police about Bell in week before murders

By TONY WALL and PATRICK GOWER

Police had two chances to arrest William Duane Bell before he killed three people - but did not follow tip-offs from the public about his other crimes until it was too late.

However, police chiefs say Bell's offences before the triple murder at the Mt Wellington-Panmure RSA - stealing $4800 cash from a South Auckland pub and the burglary of offices in Newmarket involving $20,000 worth of goods - were not high-priority crimes.

They do not accept that if they followed strong leads supplied by the victims in each case they may have averted the horrific events at the RSA on December 8 last year.

A week earlier, staff at the St George Tavern in Papatoetoe gave police Bell's name, address and telephone number after he had talked his way past a cleaner by posing as a manager and stolen the previous night's takings.

The pub manager laid repeated complaints with police - making written statements at police stations in Papatoetoe and Wiri - but no officer arrived to investigate until the day after the triple murder.

The day before the killings police were told there was evidence linking Bell to the burglary of Newmarket engineering firm Harrison Grierson. Bell had slipped into the building posing as an IT manager and was later seen loading computer equipment into his car.

A witness took down the number-plate, but police did not arrive to investigate until days after the RSA murders.

Opposition police spokesman Tony Ryall said the lack of follow-up reflected an Auckland police force that was poorly resourced and under strain.

"The police had two opportunities to do something which may have affected the course of events and it simply hasn't happened.

"Here are people virtually doing the police's work for them - providing details of the criminal, providing the car number, the modus operandi - and nothing happens. That's the sort of stuff that saps public confidence in the fight against burglary."

Police Association president Greg O'Connor said the lack of response to Bell's earlier crimes showed how understaffing was affecting Auckland police.

"The level of tolerance of crime now allows us to leave a named offender for that length of time before we get to him."

Mr O'Connor said officers were leaving Auckland police "because they don't believe they are giving the level of service to the people of Auckland they should be".

But the officer in charge of the RSA case, Detective Inspector Gavin Jones, said he would "not wear for one minute" that police tardiness was responsible for what Bell did.

"It was never going to happen that the police were going to drop everything to follow up those two cases," he said.

"As it was, those two complainants got a good deal. Within a week [of the murders] we had the offenders locked up.

"It would be nice if we had a crystal ball and knew if someone committed a theft or burglary they were going to go out and murder people. It doesn't work that way."

Superintendent Ted Cox, Counties Manukau district commander, said he had spoken to the management of the St George Tavern and had reviewed the actions of police staff who took the theft complaint. He considered they acted appropriately.

"Higher priority must be given to offences against the person compared with property offences," he said.

But that view appears to be at odds with Police Minister George Hawkins, who has promised a response time of 24 hours to 97 per cent of burglaries.

The Counties-Manukau district has one of the country's worst response times to burglaries. This year the Manurewa station - in Mr Hawkins' home patch - had 270 solvable crime files gathering dust because of lack of staff.

A spokeswoman for Mr Hawkins said last night that after the Weekend Herald revealed in January that police had two earlier chances to arrest Bell, the minister discussed with police how to lift performance in responding to calls from the public.

"The indication was that further investment in non-sworn support staff with a focus on burglary would help front-line response. Mr Hawkins subsequently presented a case to his colleagues, resulting in a $2.5 million package involving employing 60 additional non-sworn staff."

Combating burglary remained a high priority for the Government, she said.

Mr Cox said it was "drawing a long bow" to suggest that if police had arrested Bell earlier, the outcome would have been different. "If William Bell had been arrested and charged with theft or burglary, I surmise that he would have been bailed in any case, therefore still capable of doing what he did."

But the Herald has learned that Bell had six pages of criminal convictions and had been released just five months earlier from a five-year prison sentence for an aggravated robbery that the judge said could have ended in murder.

In the St George Tavern case, manager Steve D'Arcy called police and spoke to an operator in the communications centre on the Saturday morning. He told the operator that he had the offender's name, address and telephone number.

By Monday, when no officer had arrived to investigate, he called back and was told the complaint was not in the system.

He lodged a new complaint at the Papatoetoe community station, then a written statement at Manukau police headquarters in Wiri, yet he did not see police until more than a week later, after the RSA murders.

Mr D'Arcy said yesterday that he was angry with police at the time, but did not want to comment publicly now.

Harrison Grierson general manager Alastair Kent-Johnston said the RSA killings could have been averted if police had investigated his burglary, "but I wouldn't ever make the accusation of incompetence because I know that they are stretched and it's a management and Government issue".

"You can't blame the staff on the ground. They're only doing their best."