Titoki murder remains mystery

Press, 25 February 1983, Page 1

Titoki murder remains mystery

PA Whangarei Police were yesterday carrying out a “fine comb” search of a Titoki farmhouse garden where a mother-of-three, Carol Ann Pye, and her defacto husband, Trevor Martin Crossley, were both found shot in the head this week. But by late yesterday no new cliie had been found that might lead to the killer or killers who visited the couple in their isolated valley home, 30km west of Whangarei, about midday on Tuesday. The motive for the crime remained a mystery, said Detective Inspector P. L. Ward, of the Auckland C. 1.8., who is in charge of the inquiry.

No property appeared to have been stolen from the house. A quantity of cannabis was found outside the house in a jar and smoked cannabis cigarette butts were found inside the house, he said. Mr Ward said this suggested that the couple were at least cannabis users. The woman’s body was found by her son, aged eight, when he and Mrs Pye’s two other young children returned home from school in the mid-afternoon on Tuesday. A total of 83 C. 1.8. and uniformed police were engaged in the inquiry yester- . day and this number is expected to be maintained today, with some Whangarei

police staff relieved for local policing duties, and the numbers made up from outside the area. The police said search parties were buckling down to “a hard slog” of a ground search with areas of the back garden pegged out in a grid pattern in an effort to turn up clues. An overnight guard was being maintained on the property and visiting police staff were being housed throughout the city. Accommodation is tight in the .city because of swimming championships, a big water right hearing, and several conferences, and some police have been billeted in the Whangarei nurses’ home. Mrs Pye’s former husband,

Mr John Pye, said she and Mr Crossley were “just terrific people.” Mr Pye said of the murdered couple: “We were really good friends — we got on terrifically well. Why it happened is a mystery.” He said the children would now live with him at Te Awamutu. They were bearing up “amazingly well.” Robert, who found his mother dead, Michelle, aged 10, and Stephen, aged seven, were now talking about the death of their mother and her defacto husband.

were living in Tauranga before moving to Titoki, he said.

He said the drugs angle given publicity in the hunt for the killer had been "blown out of al! proportion.”

The change to living with their father would not be too dramatic because he had looked after the children only a year ago while his former wife and Mr Crossley

The wife of Titoki’s minister, Mrs Karen Ross, said she had got to know Mrs Pye and Mr Crossley because the families had children the same age. She had met Mrs Pye w'hen delivering or picking up her children after school and from when they had talked on the telephone. Mrs Pye had been a good and capable mother and the home situation was no different from any other, she said.