Ponsonby Postmaster's Murder - 1920

In 1920, with the murder trial of Dennis Gunn, an historic precedent was created. For the first time in the Empire, and possibly even the world, the prosecution sought a conviction for a capital crime basing its case almost entirely on fingerprint evidence. Details of the case are extracted from the official report published in 1921.

A profound impression was produced in Auckland and indeed, throughout New Zealand when it became known that on Saturday 13 March, in the heart of a populous district of the city, Mr Augustus Edward Braithwaite, the Postmaster at Ponsonby, had been murdered in his own house, the keys of the Post Office taken from his pocket, the Post Office broken into, and the strongroom opened by means of a key and rifled.

On Sunday the 14th a Detective Sergeant of police left Auckland for Wellington, an eighteen hour journey by the evening train, carrying with him three cash boxes from the Post Office, on which fingerprints had been detected, though not yet identified. With the cash boxes the sergeant delivered as possible suspects among whose names, however, that of Dennis Gunn did not appear.

On Monday the 15th a former prison warder named Hughes informed the police that one Dennis Gunn, a labourer, aged 25, whom he had known some years before as a military defaulter had been seen by him hanging about opposite the Post Office during the afternoon of Saturday the 13th. Dennis Gunn's name and another were then added by telegraph to the list in the Fingerprints Department. On Tuesday the 16th, at the hour of 1pm, Senior Sergeant Dinnie, the officer in charge of the department, reached the point of identifying certain fingerprints on the cash boxes with the corresponding prints on Dennis Gunn's fingerprint form, recorded when he was arrested as a military defaulter.

On the 17th March Dennis Gunn was taken to the police station at Newton and, on his failing to give a satisfactory account of his movements on the afternoon and evening of the 13th March, he was charged with the murder and the burglary and was arrested.

On the 20th March, in the process of an exhaustive search among brambles and undergrowth in a gully 150 yards from the house in which Dennis Gunn lived with his mother and other members of his family, situated a mile or more from the the Post Office, a quantity of money in the form of coin was found in a bag concealed among the brambles. In the same bag was found a banknote and a paid postal note, both of which were identified as part of the property stolen from the strong room of the Post Office, together with the Postmaster's bunch of keys which had been taken from his pocket.

With these was found a burglar's tool known as a jemmy, with a slight defect in the chisel point corresponding with a mark on the windowsill of the Post Office which had been forced open. With these objects was a bag containing three revolvers. One of these was found to have been recently fired and cleaned. The grooves of this weapon were proved to correspond with marks on the two bullets found in Mr Braithwaite's body. On this pistol was found a fingerprint. The same officer who had taken the cash boxes to Wellington, took these articles to the Fingerprint Office at Wellington where that fingerprint was found to correspond with one of the prints of Dennis Gunn's fingerprint form, and also with a fingerprint on one of the cash boxes.

This evidence was relied on by the Crown to prove that Dennis Gunn was the author of both crimes.

The trial which was held at the criminal sittings of the Supreme Court at Auckland in May 1920, occupied five days and it is remarkable as being a case in which identification by means of fingerprints was challenged as inconclusive, but in the opinion of the jury, unsuccessfully challenged. Dennis Gunn was convicted and sentenced to death, a sentence which was in due course carried out.

The result of this trial is finally to dispose of all attempts to question the conclusiveness of this class of evidence, and to prove the truth of the remark of Sir Samuel Griffith, latterly Chief Justice of the Australian Commonwealth, that a man who leaves a clear fingerprint upon an object leaves there an "unforgettable signature".