Murder mystery: The 40 year hunt for the 'Sydenham Slasher'

In Block 19, Plot 331, a nondescript plaque marks the burial site of a man who was brutally murdered.

Instead of flowers, weeds have grown through the shingle surrounding the spot Alfred Anderson shares with his wife at Ruru Lawn Cemetery in Christchurch. It doesn't appear anyone has visited in a while.

While Anderson's death captured plenty of newspaper headlines in the 1980s, nothing has been written about the cold case in more than a decade.

Although police have a possible DNA profile of the 64-year-old's killer - once dubbed the "Savage Sydenham Slasher" - a suspect has died, and his family has refused to cooperate.

It's been 41 years since the murder, but the memory of finding Anderson's bloodied body still haunts his son, Neil.

"What I saw… was enough to scare anybody."

That Saturday morning - 5 June 1982 - Neil says he, his wife Lorraine and their 4-year-old son had arranged to meet Anderson at his council-owned flat in Hastings Street, Sydenham, before heading to Orana Wildlife Park on the outskirts of the city.

The trio caught the bus across town and arrived about 11.45am.

"[My father] used to see the bus coming, and he'd stand outside and when we'd cross the road the wee one used to run to him. But that never happened," Neil says.

He thought it strange that the curtains and blinds at his father's home were drawn. When there was no answer to a knock at the door, he went to a nearby phone box and rang his sister. She didn't know where their father was.

Worried, Neil found a way inside the Hastings Street flat through an unlocked ranch slider around the back. He won't talk about what he saw next because "it was just so bloody awful".

"I remember saying to Lorraine to keep [our son] outside."

Lying on the lounge floor was Anderson's body, covered with a duvet. His face, head and throat had been slashed, and he had taken a sustained beating. There was blood spattered on the walls. Anderson was wearing a dressing gown and underwear, and appeared to have recently made himself a cup of Milo. His body was lying beside a sheepskin rug.

'A mild-mannered, hard-working man'

Anderson and his family immigrated to New Zealand from England when he was just seven years old.

Mild-mannered, hard-working and keen on movies, dancing and country and western music, he married a Kiwi woman and settled down in the suburbs, where they had three children.

Anderson worked as a painter for the Railways Corporation, a job which regularly took him out of town.

In 1974, Stella, his wife of more than 30 years, died of septicaemia as a result of complications from an operation.

In retirement, Anderson lived a simple life, and was saving for a trip to England to visit his family on 29 June.

On the face of it, there appeared little reason why anyone would want the pensioner dead.

Detectives investigate possible sex link

Police who investigated Anderson's killing were shocked at the brutality.

The cause of death was blood loss from a severed facial artery, a coroner later ruled, and it may have taken him about 20 minutes to die.

Robbery was initially considered the most likely motive for the murder. Anderson's home wasn't ransacked, but his empty wallet was found on his bedroom floor, and his gold wristwatch - bought during a trip to England in 1980 - was missing.

While it appeared there had been a violent struggle in the lounge, there was no sign of forced entry to the property - Flat 4, 131 Hastings Street - suggesting the father of three may have known his killer and let them in.

The previous evening, Anderson had visited the Odeon Theatre in Tuam Street, where he watched two adults-only sexploitation movies, Emanuelle in America, and The Playbirds. The latter was about an undercover detective investigating the murders of models featured in pornography magazines.

After the double feature screening, about 11.35pm, there was a possible sighting of Anderson walking alone through the Christchurch Railway Station, which would have been a shortcut to his home in a block of flats at the corner of Hastings Street and Waltham Road.

Detectives believed Anderson was killed between 11.45pm and 1am.

A massive search of the area near his home failed to find the murder weapon, which was likely a knife.

A strong lead police followed early in the investigation came from a woman who said she'd seen a young man running from Anderson's home towards a two-tone station wagon, thought to have been a Ford Falcon. Detectives were unable to identify the man or the vehicle.

They also appealed for sightings of a woman wearing a leopard skin jacket who was seen with Anderson at Northlands Mall the day before his death. Media reports suggest she never came forward. However, photographs in Stuff's archives show Anderson's daughter-in-law, Wyn, wearing a similar jacket at his funeral.

For months, the homicide investigation was one of the largest in New Zealand. Hundreds of people were interviewed, and police dedicated thousands of hours to trying to find the killer. But as tips dried up and leads went cold, the inquiry was scaled down.

In a promising development more than two years after the murder, painters found Anderson's gold watch, engraved with his initials, lodged in the guttering of a house about 200 metres from his flat. But the discovery took them no further.

In 1990, police revealed they'd held back a major piece of information from the public. In an episode of Crime Watch, they said Anderson was bisexual and was known to frequent places where members of the gay community met, including public toilets, and had paid for sex with female prostitutes.

A detective who appeared on the show said it had been difficult to get information from the gay community in 1982, because homosexuality was illegal at that time and "people were concerned about incriminating themselves".

It was hoped changes in public perception and its legislation would elicit new information, the detective said.

In the initial phases of the investigation, police had visited massage parlours as they looked into the possibility the crime was sexually motivated.

But the new information didn't provide the breakthrough detectives had hope for, and the trail again went cold.

Since then, the investigation has been reviewed at least twice. The latter was conducted in 2008-2009 by Tom Fitzgerald, who rose through the ranks to become the country's most senior investigator before he retired in 2022, amid criticism of an interviewing technique he'd developed called the Complex Investigation Phased Engagement Model.

In 2012, Fitzgerald, then a detective inspector, revealed evidence showed the killer had washed themselves before leaving Anderson's home.

He said the covering of Anderson's body with a duvet could indicate the person responsible had a certain respect for the victim, slight remorse and a desire to avoid witnessing what they'd done.

Exhibits from the house had recently been re-examined, and they'd yielded a positive DNA profile, Fitzgerald said.

However, there were no matches with any held in the police database.

Fitzgerald said a person of interest in the case had died, but efforts to obtain familial DNA from parents, children or full siblings had been unsuccessful.

"There has been no co-operation for that," he said.

Fitzgerald held the file until he retired. Prior to that, he'd talked of releasing new information about the case to Stuff, including a possible link to a sex attack, but that never eventuated.

Could a controversial new DNA tool provide the breakthrough?

Solving decades-old cold cases is not unheard of in New Zealand.

In December, the family of pregnant mother Angela Blackmoore, 21, who was stabbed and beaten in her Christchurch home in 1995, got the justice they'd craved when David Hawken and Rebecca Wright-Meldrum were found guilty by a jury in the High Court at Christchurch.

The breakthrough in the case came in 2019, when a reward of up to $100,000 elicited a tip from a secret informant which led them to Wright-Meldrum and her former boyfriend, Jeremy Powell. When Powell was interviewed, he confessed, saying Hawken, a debt collector, had offered him and Wright-Meldrum $10,000 to kill Blackmoore.

Beyond informant information, advances in technology may be the best way to identify Anderson's killer.

Police are trialling a controversial new DNA tool in an effort to solve two cold cases - the 2008 murder of Christchurch prostitute Mellory Manning, and the 1980 murder of Auckland schoolgirl Alicia O'Rielly. Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (FIGG) allows detectives to compare DNA of unidentified suspects with genetic profiles uploaded to genealogy websites.

The technology, which has been used to catch killers overseas, including the infamous Golden State Killer, may allow police to side-step the un-cooperative family of the suspect in Anderson's death, to see if that person is indeed the murderer.

However, Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster believes the use of FIGG raises a number of ethical and privacy issues, and shouldn't be used beyond the trial until "appropriate legislative safeguards are put in place", according to a letter released to Stuff under the Official information Act.

In December, Canterbury police district's crime manager, Detective Inspector Greg Murton, said the homicide investigation into Anderson's death remained open, however "at this time there are no clear lines of [inquiry] and nothing new evidentially to share".

The investigation file would be considered for "detailed review" in 2024, Murton said. FIGG could be used to try and solve the murder, but "at this stage there are no immediate plans to do so".

"Police would welcome any new information regarding this case. While Mr Anderson was killed more than 40 years ago, police remain committed to providing answers for his family if we can possibly do so."

'Did you do it?'

The four decades since Anderson's death have taken a tremendous toll on his son Neil, who has lost contact with his siblings and lives alone in a social housing block near central Christchurch.

The passage of time has also claimed the lives of several people central to the homicide investigation, including two of the lead detectives, Bob McMeeking and Bob Meikle, and Lorraine, who split from Neil after the murder. All three died in 2023.

In 2020, in a previously unreported interview, Neil told Stuff he believed it was too late to solve his father's murder, and he was trying to put the case behind him.

"I just don't want to bring it all up again. It was a bloody awful experience."

Over the years, he'd felt like he was being treated as a suspect by the police, and had been asked on several occasions: "Did you do it?"

"I'm sick and tired of it."

Fitzgerald was the most recent detective to front him with the question, during an interview at a police station.

"They took a swab and stuff for DNA, and I've heard nothing back, so what's that telling you?"

Neil emphatically denied any involvement in the murder, which had scarred him for life.

"The day that it happened the bloody detective took us down to the morgue after they cleaned him up a bit and that was frightening enough. I just try to wipe it out of my mind."

Three years later, when Stuff approached Neil at his home again, he came to the door with the aid of a crutch. He said he was mourning the loss of Lorraine, his best friend, and was in no mood for talking.

"If it's about my father, the answer is 'No'. I've had enough of it."

This story was originally published by Stuff.