4 ms·

I must be missing something here; if I understand this right, the woman set her dad's house on fire in 2013, the police ignore her for 10 years, and then sudden

I must be missing something here; if I understand this right, the woman set her dad's house on fire in 2013, the police ignore her for 10 years, and then suddenly they decide to investigate her? Are New Zealand police that backed up that it takes a decade for them to complete an arson investigation?

EdwardDiego 3y ago
Yeah, you've got the wrong end of the stick there. They didn't spend 10 years sitting around waiting to complete an arson investigation. They completed an arson investigation and couldn't prove it was a deliberate fire. As the murderer bragged to the undercover officer, her choice of arson method was rather clever as it was very hard to distinguish from an accidental fire - our fire brigades run periodic campaigns reminding men who live alone to not "drink and fry" because of accidental oil fires, that do occasionally kill older men who live alone. So, yeah, you made an assumption that they spent 10 years doing nothing, when they most likely spent 10 years identifying the suspect, gathering enough evidence to convince a judge to give them a warrant for cellular phone tracking data, then a warrant for surveillance, then getting an undercover officer into position to gather more evidence, so that they had enough evidence to bring a prosecution with a reasonable chance of success. That's the thing about murder in New Zealand, the CIB[0] aren't backed up in homicides, so they'll always come back to open cases. Very hard to get away with murder here for that reason. For example... ...this man was found guilty 25 years [1] after the crime, other people involved are on trial now [2]. And in a grim footnote, the convicted murderer discussed in the article appears to have committed suicide the day after her conviction. [3] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Investigation_Branch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Investigation_Branch [1]: https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/119880348/jeremy-powell-admits-killing-angela-blackmoore-25-years-ago https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/119880348/jeremy-powell-a... [2]: https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/301012985/detective-accused-of-setting-up-murder-suspect https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/301012985/detective-accus... [3]: https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/133338228/arson-killer-lynne-martin-found-dead-the-day-after-being-found-guilty https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/133338228/arson-killer-ly...

EdwardDiego 3y ago

Yeah, you've got the wrong end of the stick there. They didn't spend 10 years sitting around waiting to complete an arson investigation. They completed an arson investigation and couldn't prove it was a deliberate fire. As the murderer bragged to the undercover officer, her choice of arson method was rather clever as it was very hard to distinguish from an accidental fire - our fire brigades run periodic campaigns reminding men who live alone to not "drink and fry" because of accidental oil fires, that do occasionally kill older men who live alone. So, yeah, you made an assumption that they spent 10 years doing nothing, when they most likely spent 10 years identifying the suspect, gathering enough evidence to convince a judge to give them a warrant for cellular phone tracking data, then a warrant for surveillance, then getting an undercover officer into position to gather more evidence, so that they had enough evidence to bring a prosecution with a reasonable chance of success. That's the thing about murder in New Zealand, the CIB[0] aren't backed up in homicides, so they'll always come back to open cases. Very hard to get away with murder here for that reason. For example... ...this man was found guilty 25 years [1] after the crime, other people involved are on trial now [2]. And in a grim footnote, the convicted murderer discussed in the article appears to have committed suicide the day after her conviction. [3] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Investigation_Branch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Investigation_Branch [1]: https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/119880348/jeremy-powell-admits-killing-angela-blackmoore-25-years-ago https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/119880348/jeremy-powell-a... [2]: https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/301012985/detective-accused-of-setting-up-murder-suspect https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/301012985/detective-accus... [3]: https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/133338228/arson-killer-lynne-martin-found-dead-the-day-after-being-found-guilty https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/133338228/arson-killer-ly...