BAD: New Zealand Crooks, Cranks, Creeps and Killers

By GRAHAM HUTCHINS

RRP: $29.99, PB, Hodder Moa

Who was the notorious criminal who exploited Kiwi drug culture and built an international drug empire? Who was the con woman who disguised herself as a man and officially married another woman? Find out all the juicy facts about New Zealand's most notorious characters.
 
BAD is an entertaining account of some of New Zealand's most notorious, controversial and colourful citizens and the often-dastardly deeds that made them infamous. This is a selection of 'the best of the worst' that allows for a deeper, more thorough examination of each subject, rather than a mere collection of short, potted histories. Accent is placed on the formative years and childhoods of the subjects, aspects that often played a vital role in inciting often bizarre behaviours.
 
Social settings prevalent in New Zealand at the time of the offending or coming to public attention are discussed. For example, the social setting at the turn of the twentieth century when the high numbers of unwanted children enabled Minne Dean to run a ‘baby farm’ and dabble in infanticide. The murderous intent of Frederick Foster and Albert Black is set against the turbulent years of the mid-1950s when teenage rebellion and the era of the ‘bodgies and widgies’ emerged. Similarly the de-regulated financial environment of the mid-1980s led to a comparative glut of fraudsters and ‘bubble boy’ opportunists.
 
BAD covers the historical gamut, from the early days of European settlement to the contemporary scene. It also ranges along the social spectrum, from corrupt early politicians to murderous loners and 1980's opportunists.

Stories include:

• George Cooper: the light-fingered taxman who misappropriated treasury and other official funds to feather his own bent nest.
  
  
• Bully Hayes: the Buccaneer of the South Pacific’.
  
  
• The Burgess Gang: New Zealand’s first mass murderers.
  
  
• Lionel Terry: who callously murdered an innocent, defenceless Chinese immigrant in an attempt to prove his deluded point about the importance of maintaining ‘racial purity’ in New Zealand.
  
  
• Joe Pawelka: prison escapee who disappeared over the wall in 1911 and was never recaptured.
  
  
• Flora MacKenzie: a high-class brothel-keeper when prostitution was very much frowned on.
  
  
• Sydney Ross: New Zealand’s first conspiracy theorist who concocted a story about Nazis in Ngongotaha that sucked in even our political leaders.
  
  
• Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme: teenager murders - ‘Heavenly Creatures’ or ‘Hell’s Angels’?
  
  
• Milan Brych: medical quack and charlatan.
  
  
• Bert Potter: the founder of the Centrepoint commune and convicted sex-offender.
  
  
• Keith Hancox: iconic athlete who was later convicted of theft and fraud.
  
  
• David Gray: the Aramoana murderer.

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