Manhunt The Story of Stanley Graham By H.A. Willis.

Manhunt The Story of Stanley Graham By H.A. Willis.

Publisher: Whitcoulls, 1979, First Edition. Very good hardback with jacket, previous owners name inside. Title faded on jacket spine. 224 pages with photos.

For twelve days in 1941 the countryside round the small West Coast settlement of Koiterangi, near Hokitika, was terrorised by the murderer of seven men-Stanley Graham. In the first week of October this 40-year-old farmer threatened two neighbours with a firearm. On the afternoon of 8 October he shot the four policemen who visited his home investigating complaints laid by these neighbours. A civilian who attempted to come to the aid of the police was similarly mowed down. Before police reinforcements arrived Graham had packed up food, clothing, four guns and about 1000 rounds of ammunition, and escaped into the bush behind his farm. This was the Stanley Graham affair - a grim sideshow during World War II which for a short time distracted New Zealand from the horrors of bigger battles on more distant shores. It is an episode which until now has never been documented thoroughly, having passed quickly into the realms of West Coast myth.