KEY POINTS:
Keith Anthony McEwen knows the whereabouts of $300,000 worth of stolen treasure.
So why did he rob a Dutch couple of $900 cash and a few belongings in order to pay a drug debt?
That is what treasure-hunter Kelly Tarlton's widow, Rosemary, and McEwen's foster brother are asking after the 30-year-old admitted in court to subjecting the newly married couple to a brutal ordeal.
McEwen, who faces a lengthy jail sentence, has never revealed what he did with the irreplaceable jewellery, coins and relics he stole from the Tui Ship Museum at Waitangi in 2000.
"Maybe now it will come back," Mrs Tarlton said yesterday.
"There is no longer any point in him keeping it salted away."
McEwen was employed as the museum's kitchen-hand when he took the haul of miniature gold bicycles, rings, charms, brooches, studs, fob watches, sovereigns, lockets and ruby and diamond bracelets.
Mr Tarlton, who died in 1985, dived for the gold coins from the Elingamite, a passenger steamer wrecked at the Three Kings Islands, 64km north of Cape Reinga in 1902.
McEwen became the prime suspect after he left his job, abandoning a girlfriend and clothing. Caught, he refused to reveal the treasure's location, even though it could have cut his 7 and a half years' jail time.
Police and private investigators made fruitless attempts to find the treasure, at one stage searching McEwen's childhood eeling spot in a stream near Moerewa in Northland.
Then McEwen disappeared after his release in 2005, fuelling rumours that he had recouped the treasure and fled. He breached his parole conditions and police issued an arrest warrant.
McEwen spent time holed up on Kawau Island, but it was not until the high-profile hunt for the kidnappers of the Dutch tourists in November that police caught up with him again.
He assembled a kit containing a shotgun, gloves, a scanner, torch and reflectorised vest to impersonate an official. He also bought plastic ties for makeshift handcuffs. He targeted the Dutch couple's van in the Haruru Falls carpark near Paihia and burst in as they slept, impersonating the police.
McEwen later told police it was a robbery to pay back a drug debt. If so, it turned very ugly.
His alleged co-offender is still before the courts.
McEwen showed no emotion as he pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated robbery, kidnapping, sexual violation, rape and attempted stupefaction.
Mrs Tarlton said she was surprised by the offending, which "is not like Keith at all". She had found McEwen to be charming and intelligent.
He has several dishonesty convictions but was not known to be violent.
Mrs Tarlton had no doubt McEwen knew where the treasure was: "He took it, he has kept tabs on it."
McEwen's foster-brother and best friend, who would be known only as "Moose", was more guarded.
Moose said McEwen had talked of doing the theft to order for some gang members and never getting a cut.
He said McEwen had been high on methamphetamine and "some other kind of chemical" during the robbery.
And as for the treasure, Moose said, "maybe he will tell someone something - but it will take some twisting".
