Convicted murderer innocent — witnesses

Press, 11 March 1985, Page 14

Convicted murderer innocent — witnesses

PA Auckland Crown solicitors are investigating a six-year-old murder after new witnesses have given information claiming the convicted killer is innocent. Two witnesses claim that a man boasted to them separately of “pulling the trigger” on Margaret Bell, aged 17, at Auckland's Mainstreet Cabaret on Julv 1, 1979. Sworn affidavits from both have been presented in a petition by the man convicted of the murder, Brian Ronald McDonald. McDonald was sentenced to life imprisonment in May, 1980, almost a year after Miss Bell, a student, was shot with a rifle while waiting for a taxi in the foyer of the cabaret. Justice Department lawyers, on behalf of the Governor-General, are believed to have interviewed the two witnesses, one a Paremoremo Prison inmate who claims he was stabbed twice last week for giving the new information. A Justice Department spokesman said that a report on the Crown investigation would go to the Minister, Mr Palmer, who would in turn recommend to the

Governor-General on the pardon plea. lan Ronald West, serving a three-year jail term, said in a letter smuggled to the “Auckland Star” by another inmate that he had received many threatening notes and feared for his life. The prison superintendent, Mr Syd Ward, confirmed that’ West suffered the stab wounds but said they were “of no great consequence.” West claims that he escaped from Mount Eden Prison, where he was originally serving his sentence, la'st year because of the pressure being put on him and the threats to his life. In a secret affidavit he made in 1980, West said that he overheard and joined in a conversation with two other inmates at Mount Eden Prison about the Margaret Bell case. He said that one of the inmates named a man. not Brian McDonald, as Miss Bell's killer. The other new witness, in an affidavit she made last in November, claims that she was present during a conversation with a woman and another man who said “he was the one who pulled the I rigger.”

The woman said that she had wanted to pass on the information over the last three years but did not know who McDonald's lawyer was until a court report last October. The man acting for McDonald. Mr Barry Hart has compiled the 31-page petition to the GovernorGeneral seeking a Royal pardon. He said that new evidence. including the twe witnesses' affidavits, hanever been considered by s court of law, and therefon McDonald had been deniec I natural justice. McDonald has maintainer his innocence in spite o: unsuccessful attempts before the Court of Appea and the Privy Council ir London to have the convic tion quashed.