Mr C. H. Davis

Press, 4 February 1987, Page 28

Mr C. H. Davis

PA New Plymouth A veteran of two of New Zealand’s biggest manhunts, Mr Charles Hamilton Davis, has died in New Plymouth. He was 84. Mr Davis was born in Auckland and joined the police at the age of 21. His service included periods in Auckland, Greymouth, Hawera, Westport and Foxton. The first of the manhunts in which he was involved concerned Stanley Graham, the West Coaster whose tragic life was recently the subject of the film, “Bad Blood.” When the Graham case captured national headlines in 1941, Mr Davis was a detective-sergeant at Greymouth. Graham had been paranoid that neighbours were

persecuting him and poisoning his stock. When the police arrived at his property at Koiterangi (now Kowhitirangi) and demanded that he hand over his small arsenal of firearms, he shot four policemen. Mr Davis was in the first car of police to arrive at Kowhitirangi the next day, when Graham shot two more men. Mr Davis worked almost non-stop for the first four days of the manhunt, then collapsed and was in hospital with measles. He returned to duty eight days later, and helped to bring the wounded Graham to Hokitika. The second manhunt in which Mr Davis was involved concerned Joe Driscoll, who was wanted by the Army on grounds

of desertion. Driscoll took to the bush on the West Coast, and for five years defeated the attempts of the military police to prise him from his remote refuge. It was towards the end of World War II that Mr Davis and a young temporary constable walked 43km into the wilderness, found Driscoll and walked out with him. In 1956, Mr Davis was posted as sergeant-in-charge at Foxton, where he waged a campaign to clean up the after-hours hotel trade, a campaign which he himself afterwards admitted to be unsuccessful. Mr Davis was pre deceased by his wife. He is survived by two daughters.