Viewers tip off police after show

Press, 16 September 1987, Page 9

Viewers tip off police after show

By

NEIL CLARKSON

The Christchurch police began sifting through information yesterday following a string of telephone calls after television’s “Crimewatch” programme on Monday evening.

.“The switchboard here was lit up like a Christmas tree,” said Detective Inspector Roger Carson. “In fact there were so many calls coming in close together that the staff we had designated to receive them were only able to take names and numbers and backtrack.” Mr Carson estimates that the police received 25 calls in as many minutes. Items featured on the television programme included the attempted abduction of a girl at Hornby, and an armed hold-up at the Alamein Sauna and Spa Lounge in Tuam Street on July 21. A shot was fired at a police

car as the robbers fled in a car.

Mr Carson said the police had received four calls about the Hornby incident and a similar number about the robbery.

An item about “homebake” morphine manufacture also prompted a response.

The Christchurch police received three calls about the Teresa Cormack murder inquiry in Napier.

Another dozen calls about items covered in the programme were received yesterday morning.

About 300 callers rang the “Crimewatch” television studio on Monday evening.

A psychological profile of the Cormack killer by a police psychologist, Dr lan Miller, generated 94 calls to the studio and a further dozen to the Napier police. Many suggested possible names or gave pos-

sible sightings of a truck sought in the inquiry. Detective Inspector Ron Cooper, who heads the inquiry, fielded many of the calls himself and all information will be followed up by the Napier team in the next few days. It was highly likely that the programme led to the owner of a stolen shotgun used in a recent murder. Someone else rang to claim a Pentax camera featured.

The police are also following up promising information on the identities of a man featured in a Goldcorp, Auckland, security photograph and a woman in a Petone Westpac bank security picture.

“The information this time was more specific and of better quality,” said the police news media services co-ordina-tor, Mr Joe Franklin, in Wellington. The programme was the second “Crimewatch.” More are planned.