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Kōrero: Violent crime

Unveiling Minnie Dean's headstone, 2009

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Group of people gathered in a cemetery beside covered headstone on overcast day

Minnie Dean was buried in the Winton cemetery in an unmarked grave on which, it was claimed, nothing would grow. In 1985 Television New Zealand screened a series about the Dunedin lawyer Alf Hanlon, who had defended Dean during her trial. The episode on Dean concluded that she was guilty only of manslaughter. Producer Wayne Tourell felt the grave should have a headstone. A local man polled 112 Winton people, almost all of whom supported a headstone. But a piece in the Southland Times opined, ‘Perish the thought!’ Nothing happened until January 2009, when an unauthorised headstone reading, ‘Minnie Dean is part of Winton’s history where she now lies is no mystery’, appeared. This was removed, but in February 2009 around 60 people attended the unveiling of an authorised headstone erected on behalf of Dean’s great-great-nephew, Martin McCrae, of Stirling, Scotland.

Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi

NZPA Images

Reference: 59650

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Me pēnei te tohu i te whārang

Greg Newbold, Violent crime – Controversial murder trials, 1840–1939, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/mi/photograph/29335/unveiling-minnie-deans-headstone-2009 (accessed 4 June 2026).

He kōrero nā Greg Newbold, i tāngia i te 22 March 2011, reviewed and revised 3 May 2024 me te āwhina o Greg Newbold.