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A man was seen staring at the Red Fox Tavern the night before the fatal shooting of innkeeper Chris Bush, a court has heard.
Bush, a 43-year-old father of two, was murdered in the Maramarua tavern, north of Waikato, on October 24, 1987.
Thirty years later, in August 2017, Mark Joseph Hoggart, 60, and another man, who has provisional name suppression, were arrested and charged with murder and aggravated robbery.
It is alleged that more than $ 36,349.99 was stolen from the pub.
The police reproduced a flight through the Red Fox Tavern as it was in 1987.
The Crown case is that two disguised men “broke into” the Red Fox Tavern in October 1987 and shot Bush before tying up three bar workers and fleeing with the money.
The Crown says that the man holding a shotgun was the name-suppressing man, while the other, holding a baseball bat, was Hoggart.
However, the couple deny the charges and say the police have made the wrong men.
Robyn Anna-May Pyle had her statement read in court on Monday, as she died in 2014.
Pyle lived with her husband near the dairy in Maramarua and worked there on Friday nights.
At about 8.45 p.m. Friday before Bush was shot and killed at the Red Fox Tavern across the street, he told police that a car pulled up and looked at the pub.
Pyle told police at the time that two people stopped near the gas pumps heading for the pub.
Things
Maramarua innkeeper Chris Bush was shot and killed in 1987.
“They never looked in our direction … it’s like we’re not even there,” Pyle’s statement said.
Then Vauxhall’s green car moved forward to “get a better look at the hotel” before heading toward State Highway 1.
Pyle told police that the driver appeared to be in his early twenties, with an average build and sandy-colored hair.
The passenger was a little bigger and had dark black hair.
“His behavior was really strange. The driver didn’t take his eyes off the pub,” he said.
David Hallett / Things
Police on October 25, 1987, the day after the Red Fox Tavern was robbed.
The next day he saw the car go by again.
The Crown’s case is that the duo in the car were Hoggart and his co-defendant, taking a look at the pub before they allegedly committed the aggravated robbery on Saturday night.
Earlier on Monday, the brother-in-law of the name-suppressed man told Auckland High Court that he picked him up from prison and returned to his Hawke’s Bay vineyard prior to the tavern incident.
The unidentified defendant had previously been jailed for a similar aggravated robbery in Auckland.
After the defendant was released from prison, his brother-in-law recalled that Hoggart visited him approximately every three weeks.
DAVID BLANCO / THINGS
Mark Joseph Hoggart was seen visiting his alleged co-offender at a vineyard in Napier.
He also told the court that the week before Labor weekend, he had been working on the farm when the defendant and a man named Charlie Ross approached him with a sawed-off shotgun.
“They asked if we could shoot, to see how it worked, I guess,” the man said.
Ross, who was the man’s co-defendant in the Auckland aggravated robbery.
The trio led him to the end of the vineyard and fired a few bursts at a stump and a steel crate.
The man said it was a good gun for shooting birds.
Later that week, over Labor weekend, the defendant’s family had a meeting, the court heard.
The witness said that he had not seen his brother-in-law on Saturday, but saw him come home around 8 am Sunday looking “tired.”
The brother-in-law told the court that he had heard on the radio about the shooting at Red Fox Tavern and a family member asked the defendant if he had anything to do with it.
“No, that’s fucking lovely,” the defendant allegedly replied.
Later, the man recalled his brother-in-law talking about the need to get rid of the sawed-off shotgun.
“I’d better get rid of Charlie’s gun,” he supposedly said.
A month after the shooting, the defendant allegedly purchased a Triumph motorcycle that his brother-in-law recalled seeing in the shed.
Crown’s case is that the man took special gloves from the Napier vineyard for Hoggart to wear at the crime scene.
The orange gloves are used to clear the trunks of the vines, the man said.
He told the court that the gloves would wear out pretty quickly and that he had “pairs and pairs” of them.
The trial continues.
