Titford’s partner: trial a ‘joke’

My thanks to elocal editor Mykeljon Winckel, who has allowed me to release this story to you a day before it appears in his publication.

The fearless yet likeable ‘MJ’ — son of a Dutch war hero — is one of New Zealand’s few honest media owners. We’re lucky to have him.

Marcian Thomas was also interviewed for TVNZ’s Sunday programme, which screens tomorrow at 7.30pm.

Also appearing will be Susan Cochrane/Kakarana/Titford, so it will be interesting to see if TVNZ’s balance is any better than that of the Sunday Star-Times.

Mike Butler to Star-Times: 6 questions for Te Roroa

The Sunday Star-Times’s predictably unbalanced vilification of Titford:
no mention of his evidence against the state and Te Roroa

Former Hawkes Bay Herald-Tribune sub-editor Mike Butler, a meticulous seeker of facts, has sent the following email to Sunday Star-Times reporter Simon Day, author of the central panel of the above story from last Sunday.

The story (see link below) is predictably one-sided, and attempts to lull gullible readers into believing that because Titford has been put away for crimes against people and property, his evidence against the state and Te Roroa can be safely ignored.

Note Mike Butler’s account of recent harassment and death threats against those who speak out against the tribe.

_________________________________

Hi Simon,

I met you in Waitangi on February 5 this year. I was with John Ansell and sat in on the interview when we were kicked out of the Te Tii marae.

I researched the Allan Titford saga for the report at

http://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.co.nz/2013/06/mike-butler-treaty-try-on-forces-farmer.html

I have some comments on your “Bittersweet vindication for iwi” story at

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/9435787/Bittersweet-vindication-for-iwi

You wrote: “Last week the truth about Titford was exposed in the Whangarei District Court when he was sentenced to 24 years in prison for 39 charges including assault, sexual violation, arson and fraud.”

He certainly was sentenced to that time on those charges, but how accurate are the charges and what is the supporting evidence?

Attached is the list of charges that Titford faced. It is under a letter from Simon Power to Susan “Kakarana” (yes, you guessed it, Cochrane) on the subject of perjury and how to avoid being charged for committing it.

Look at the rape charges.

The charges allege three of sexual violation by rape — one on a day uncertain in the months of September and December 1987 at Dargaville, another on a day uncertain in 2008 at Kaitaia, and another on or about July 7, 2009, at Kaitaia.

With such vagueness on the dates, was Titford convicted of three charges of rape, or one, and if so, what evidence supported these allegations?

You will see that that one charge alleges that the Titfords in January 19, 1989, attempted a wool bales insurance claim.

A report by Detective Constable G.C. Smith, dated November 11, 1988, records a complaint by Titford of an attempted arson of his house on October 19, 1988, and notes that Titford had no insurance cover.

I would be very interested to see if Titford was convicted of attempted insurance fraud at a time when he had no insurance.

You wrote that it was found he had burnt down his own home in 1992, but had blamed it on local Maori to increase his claim to compensation from the government”.

You go on to say that “Te Roroa Maori hope this is a chance for their story to be told and the claims of harassment, terrorism, and sabotage exposed as lies”.

Are claims of harassment, terrorism, and sabotage actually lies?

You should ask Moengaroa Murray whether:

1. On August 7, 1987, squatters moved on to the beach part of the section in force and erected signs to frighten away any prospective buyers.
2. On August 16, 1987,  Hughie Te Rore and Huia White told Titford that if he gave them the land they would drop their tribunal claim.
3. On December 5, 1987, at 1.15pm, Hughie Te Rore and Huia White arrived at the house and said that if Titford removed the buildings used by squatters they would take revenge within 24 hours and it would be nationwide news. (A vacant house on Titford’s property was burned down in the early hours of the next morning. Sue Cochrane said Titford did it.)
4. On January 12, 1988, a group of claimants in a green Toyota Corona shot stock in Titford’s paddock. On that date, claimants also arranged for the Historic Places Trust to come in and make the site a sacred area.
5. On January 20, 1988, claimants erected a large carved pole on Titford’s land. Local councillors, local non-Maori, Maori Marsden, and TVNZ reporters attended and dined on sheep slaughtered from Titford’s flock without Titford knowing.
6. On March 22, 1988, claimant Hugh Te Rore had Conservation Department archaeologist Leigh Johnson (Mr) visit Titford’s farm. Johnson told Titford he had permission to be there from landowner Hugh Te Rore. Johnson also told Titford that the area was from then on wahi tapu and a reserve.

I would like to know whether Moengaroa Murray thinks these are all lies.

Just ask her the questions and see what she says and compare her reaction with those of other people you have interviewed.

If these are not lies, then the statement “claims of harassment, terrorism, and sabotage exposed as lies” is an untrue statement.

Thank you for talking to Don Harrison.

His story shows that Titford was not alone in facing harassment and pressure to sell. Other farmers north of Titford and Harrison were also forced to sell.

The Titford saga did not start out as an anti-treaty white sticking it to obstreperous Maoris.

It started out with Titford’s plan to become debt-free by developing a subdivision on his own land that was derailed by claimants who believed they had rights to that land.

Titford had a two-year mortgage at commercial rates in the late 1980s dependent upon subdividing and selling coastal sections within two years.

Claimant protest and interference prevented him from completing that project.

Titford could not afford to sell at the level Harrison sold for because he would be left with a substantial debt with no means of repaying it.

He tried solving the problem by negotiating with the government and by doing a deal with the bank to get another farm elsewhere, but he was strung along by the government and ripped off by the bank.

The final sale and purchase agreement had a clause in which he agreed not to sue the National Bank.

By 1995, when Titford finally had to sell or be sold up by the bank, he had accrued a debt to the bank of $2.2m.

Today I fielded two abusive phone calls.

Another colleague was similarly abused, and yet another had a death threat.

If this is bittersweet vindication for iwi, they have an unusual way of expressing it.

Mike Butler

Why I’m not deserting Allan Titford

Front page, Sunday Star-Times, 24 November 2013

Allan Titford’s partner of three years, Marcian Thomas, is just the latest of six friends of Titford to tell me that they suspect his wife and children have been bribed to lie about him.

In 2007, Titford’s father signed an affidavit saying that state fix-it man Ray Chappell offered him and his wife a $500,000 bribe to declare Allan insane, so the Crown could get control of his farm.

The state tried to bribe Titford’s parents.
Did they also bribe his wife and kids?

I have written evidence of his wife Sue lying, and of two of his children lying and stealing since coming under her sole care.

And so when the Sunday Star-Times rang me last Friday for my thoughts on Allan Titford’s 24 year incarceration, I was not about to reflexively disown him — as the 1law4all party shamefully did.

I told Adam Dudding three things about the sentence struck me as so fishy they smacked of a vendetta by the state.

Firstly, there was Judge Duncan Harvey’s triumphant proclamation, “It is time for the people of New Zealand to learn the truth”.

And what is “the truth” that the judge wants “the people of New Zealand” to “learn”?

He can only be referring to the matter for which Titford has long been a thorn in the side of the government.

He can only be implying that Titford’s guilt on a slew of personal charges somehow invalidates his slew of evidence that the Crown and Te Roroa heavied him off his Maunganui Bluff farm to satisfy a provably bogus tribal land claim.

As you will see in coming posts, despite the Star-Times attempts to put you off the scent, that evidence remains as damning as ever.

Second matter of concern was the extraordinary 24 year sentence that Judge Harvey handed down — almost as long as those imposed on double murderers Peter Howse (25 years) and Graeme Burton (26 years).

What motivated this Northland judge to give Titford one of the longest, if not the longest sentence in New Zealand history for offences in which no one died, largely on the evidence of a disgruntled ex-wife?

And thirdly, there was the cumulative nature of the sentence — when almost all multiple sentences are served concurrently. Allan’s partner Marcian tells me the judge actually started his calculations at 34 years!

(Both Garth McVicar and Mike Butler were so staggered when they read ’24 years’ they thought it was a misprint.)

The maximum penalty for rape is 20 years. More to the point, how do you get a conviction for a marital rape at all, never mind one that supposedly occurred “on a date uncertain” in 1987?

(Of the 58 charges against Titford, only one could be pinpointed to a specific date, 13 offences were said to have happened ‘on or about’ a particular date, and the remaining 44 “on a date uncertain” in a particular month, half-year, year or decade between June 1987 and July 2009.)

44 of 58 alleged offences could not be pinpointed to within a month

So when reporter Adam Dudding rang, my mind immediately turned to the two long meetings I’d had with a surprisingly mild-mannered Allan Titford, his loving and totally supportive partner of three years Marcian, and their happy little son Leo, who clearly loved his dad.

It turned again to the tonnage of evidence I’d seen of state evidence-tampering and other harassment — enough to fill the 598 page book Robbery by Deceit by Titford and Ross Baker.

I thought of all the fine and honest people like Ross, Martin Doutre and Mykeljon Winckel who’ve been demonised along with Allan for shining the light on the state’s and tribe’s dirty tricks.

I thought of the chilling comment allegedly made by Ray Chappell to Allan that “we own the media and can manipulate public perceptions of you” and that “It doesn’t matter how good your case is or how much evidence you find,
because we own the judges”.

I could hear my friends’ warnings that by giving Allan the benefit of the doubt I’d be putting my head in the media noose and adding my name to the list of media-annointed ‘conspiracy theorists’. (As if all conspiracies must, by definition, be false.)

Then I decided I was not going to let a man rot in prison, a woman live without her man, and a boy grow up without his father, while there remained the real possibility that he was being punished for proving the state corrupt.

The above front page story was the result.

Predictably, it leaves out my comment to the reporter that “if Allan actually did these things then he deserves everything that’s coming to him.” That, of course, would make me look too fair-minded.

Allan’s partner Marcian describes my assessment of Allan as a big pussycat as absolutely accurate. She says they have their barneys like any couple, but she’s never had any cause to fear that Allan might lift a finger against her, nor has he.

(A remarkable turnaround from the supposedly violent monster who so terrorised his previous family.)

Allan Titford: 24 years for proving the state corrupt?
Why did his legal aid lawyer not call a single witness?

So why was Allan Titford found guilty?

Marcian tells me that Allan’s legal aid lawyer was woefully underprepared, and did not call a single witness, despite having six pages of names.

The aforementioned vindictive judge even thanked him for going so lightly on Sue and the children.

According to Marcian, when the verdicts were read out, four of the five women on the jury were in tears, and one man was later overheard as saying he never wanted to serve on a jury again.

There is much more to be told in the Allan Titford story.

Stay tuned.