Kōrero: Violent crime

Controversy surrounded the case against – and the execution of – Walter James Bolton, the last person to be hanged in New Zealand. Bolton was convicted of poisoning his wife Beatrice and hanged in 1957. However, in the year before Beatrice's death, he had paid for her expensive medical care, which seemed inconsistent with a systematic attempt to poison her. There was some evidence that Bolton was having an affair with his wife's younger sister, Florence Doherty, who often cared for Beatrice and was also initially suspected of her murder. Doherty took her own life a year after Bolton was executed. Rumours that he had died by slow strangulation rather than a sudden broken neck highlighted the inhumane nature of the death penalty and hastened its end.