Reverberations from Bruce Hutton's planting of a cartridge case to convict Arthur Allan Thomas spread to another of New Zealand's highest-profile crimes, writes Otago Daily Times senior Wanaka reporter Mark Price.
Detective Inspector Bruce Hutton, who died in Auckland on Sunday, can be seen as responsible for more than just the injustice to Arthur Allan Thomas.
His actions, in planting a .22 cartridge case in 1970 impacted on the police case against their main suspect in the murder of hitchhiker Jennifer Beard.
Police suspected Timaru truck driver Gordon Bray murdered Ms Beard, at Haast on New Year's Eve, 1969.
Their best piece of evidence was a receipt made out to G. J. Bray in the pocket of a pair of wet trousers found 100m from where Ms Beard's body lay beneath the Haast Bridge.
But a government scientist's mistake in the handling of the receipt was compounded by the allegations of police planting evidence in the Thomas case.
Police searching the scene near Ms Beard's body found the trousers three weeks after she died.
They did not search the pockets, but sent the trousers off to Christchurch to be examined by Department of Scientific and Industrial Research scientist, the late Patrick Alcorn.
He received the trousers but forgot about them for three months, admitting as much in a notebook: ''... after a cursory glance, the exhibits were put aside in the refrigerator and subsequently overlooked''.
While the link between Mr Bray and the murder scene lay in the fridge, the Beard inquiry grew to become the biggest manhunt in New Zealand history.
Eventually, on May 11, 1971, police met to decide whether they had enough evidence to charge Mr Bray.
By then, allegations police had planted evidence in the Thomas case had been circulating publicly for six months.
Minutes from the Dunedin meeting show the Thomas case was discussed and the head of the Beard inquiry, Detective Inspector Emmett Mitten, told his colleagues police could face the suggestion ''the receipt was planted''.
Years later, Det Insp Mitten said the receipt was the ''critical piece'' of evidence in the case and he was ''really upset'' at the delay in finding out about it.
''It was a disaster. Complete and utter.''
Gordon Bray never admitted picking up Ms Beard or stopping at the Haast bridge. He died in Timaru in 2003, aged 83.
• Mark Price is the author of Getting Away With Murder - the Jennifer Beard Inquiry, published in 2005.
