On his first night as a free man, Arthur Thomas had supper at the rural Auckland home of Auckland Star journalist Pat Booth. Booth’s wife, journalist Valerie Davies, bore witness to Booth’s investigations, from the day he decided to interview Thomas – “assuming that he would be found innocent at his second trial” – to what became an eight-year campaign to have Thomas freed. Davies, retired and living in the Coromandel, is used to seeing Booth’s work referenced in books about the murders – his theory of who did kill the Crewes was a starting point for The Crewe Murders. Here, she writes for the Listener on what Booth believed happened in the Crewes’ Pukekawa farmhouse.
Who did kill the Crewes? Pat answered this question many times. It was a theory first advanced by Paul Temm
