A prison inmate says a man who was an early suspect in the police investigation into the 1987 Red Fox Tavern shooting confessed his involvement in the crime to him.
Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
Father of two Chris Bush, 43, was gunned down at the pub in Maramarua in October 1987, and the offenders took off with tens of thousands of dollars in cash, coins and cheques.
Mark Hoggart and another man, who has name suppression, are on trial in the High Court at Auckland, charged with murder and aggravated robbery - which they deny.
The defence for the unnamed man opened its case today, with lawyer Carla Dawson telling the jury the two accused men were not the offenders at the Red Fox Tavern.
"The wrong people are on trial," she said.
A prison inmate called as a witness by the defence gave evidence that Lester Hamilton - his co-offender in a 1980 post office robbery in Manurewa - had told him he was responsible for the crime.
The inmate said they were in jail together in 1992, and Hamilton - who died in 2003 - came into his cell for a joint.
The inmate said the Red Fox Tavern shooting and robbery came up, and Hamilton told him, "they won't get anybody for that, that's mine and Pete's".
Hamilton went on to say, "the f****** gun went off, the c*** threw something", the inmate said.
The conversation stopped when other prisoners came into the cell, he said.
The two accused men were arrested in 2017.
The inmate said he found out sometime in 2018 who the man with name suppression is.
"Nah, nah, you got the wrong men, that's what I was thinking," the inmate said.
Under cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Ned Fletcher, the inmate was questioned about omissions he made in a statement to a private investigator engaged by the defence.
That included comments the inmate made in court referring to the publican throwing something.
Fletcher asked him if that was something he'd heard in media coverage of the case.
"I heard it from Lester [Hamilton]," the inmate said. He admitted it was an error on his part that he had not mentioned it.
The inmate said he never carried on the conversation about the Red Fox Tavern with Hamilton.
Fletcher asked the inmate if Hamilton was a bragger.
"He liked to boast about what he'd done, that was him, that's him bragging, that's him talking," he said.
Fletcher went on to ask if the inmate could recall whether Hamilton had claimed a crime that was not his, and whether he made up his confession about the Red Fox.
"For me, being with him there at that time and knowing Lester, I believed it to be true," the inmate said.
Earlier this week, the jury heard evidence from Crown witness Detective Senior Sergeant Michael Hayward, who detailed the extensive enquiries made by the various police investigations into Hamilton.
Hayward said Hamilton was one of the key lines of enquiry for police in 1987 and his name had continued to crop up as a person of interest in years since.
However, Hayward said he was ultimately eliminated as a suspect, including in the most recent investigation - Operation Lion - which began in 2016 and resulted in the arrests of the two men on trial.
The trial before Justice Woolford and a jury of seven men and five women continues.