“I had just come off the end of a major robbery case which I had been working on for six months when I got a call on the afternoon of September 1, 1992, that some remains had been found at a building site in Devonport, so I drove over with a constable, not realising at the time how significant this find was. I think my initial thought was that it was pre-European,” recalls former Detective Constable Dave Harris from Takapuna Police.
“When we arrived, a few of the workers were milling around and they directed me to the hole, if that’s what you call it, and I saw the skeleton. There were also a great deal of smaller bones, probably enough to fit inside a shoebox. The area was quickly cordoned off and DSIR were called.”
The discovery of bones at 2 Matai Road caused a great deal of excitement. Police carefully poked the earth around the area with soil probes and ground search engineers ran a magnetron scanner which detects disturbances in the natural magnetic field of the soil over the property. Several unusual disturbances were picked up, prompting police to dig certain spots, but nothing other than a brick and some ash-laden soil was found. DSIR released a statement saying the bones belonged to a short, elderly European woman and had been buried there some time between 1892 and 1932.
Several days later, police learned the address was the former nursing home of Nurse Elspeth Kerr, who was convicted of poisoning her foster child and suspected of murdering her husband and another resident in 1932.
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After the discovery was made public, detectives received a call from a woman claiming to be Elspeth Kerr’s foster daughter. The detectives in charge, Pat Handcock and Dave Harris, visited Betty Cameron. She was now 68 and going by her married name.
“We talked with Betty for about an hour and then again more formally shortly after. She was extremely upset as it brought up the pain of the past all over again. Of the recent developments, she could provide no information. Her memory of her years with the Kerrs was vague at best. She could recall being given poisoned lollies when she was in hospital and of being taken to court during the trial. She apologised she could not assist them with facts as it all happened such a long time ago.”
Police learned that Elspeth Kerr’s son, James, had died in 1974. James had steadfastly supported his mother by attending almost every day of the three trials and visiting her in prison each week. After finishing his apprenticeship, he married, had children, and settled in Papakura.
As the bones found at 2 Matai Road could not be identified, the case was closed. But the discovery and rumours there could be more skeletons buried attracted much interest, particularly among older residents, many of whom could still remember Nurse Kerr striding along Victoria Road to the chemist. Former mayor Paul Titchener told the media the find had generated a great deal of renewed interest and his telephone had continued to run hot with theories and stories handed down through generations, mainly about mass killings at the nursing home. Nurse Kerr allegedly coerced her patients into changing their wills to benefit her before administering a fatal poison.
For many residents who were small children in 1932, Elspeth Kerr became the village bogeywoman. But one person in Devonport was able to provide something more credible.
Leonie Mason was at home when she heard about the discovery, the connection, and the possibility of more victims. She contacted police and informed them Nurse Kerr murdered her aunt, Vera.
Bernard and Lillian Mason had emigrated from England in 1911. They lived in Devonport and started a family. Elder child Vera was born in July 1916 and son Frank (Leonie’s father) was born one year later. Bernard Mason was a tailor and opened a store named Mitchell & Mason Men’s Outfitters, specialising in men’s clothing. The store was a favourite of the Navy crew.
The Mason family lived for years at 22 Queens Parade, on the corner of Garden Terrace. In several years’ time, Elspeth would move her nursing home to the other corner at 20 Queens Parade. To supplement their income, Bernard erected large storage lockers outside their property which they rented to Navy personnel who would store their civilian clothes in the lockers while they were away at sea.
In 1929, Lillian was pregnant with another child and, at the beginning of June, moved into a maternity home and gave birth to a baby boy she named George. It was not an easy birth and Lilian spent three weeks convalescing in the maternity home. Meanwhile, Bernard Mason continued to work, leaving the children, 12-year-old Vera and 11-year-old Frank, who could care for themselves, to get off to school and look after the house.
Vera was one month away from her thirteenth birthday. She was a bright and studious girl who was excited about her mother coming home with the new baby. Most of the children in the community knew each other and were in and out of each other’s homes. Even though three years separated them, Vera often played with Betty Kerr and the pair were close.
At teatime on Saturday, June 22, Vera told her father she had been given a peppermint lolly from Nurse Kerr prior to coming home. The next morning, Vera woke up moaning, clutching her stomach and complaining of severe abdominal pain. It was a Sunday, but Bernard had to run errands and planned to call in on his wife. He rang Nurse Kerr and asked if she could call on Vera as she was very unwell. She agreed to pop in at regular intervals.
After each visit, Vera’s health worsened, causing Nurse Kerr to become extremely concerned. Rather than have her admitted to Auckland Hospital, she arranged for Vera to be conveyed to her nursing home on Matai Road, and left Bernard a note to that effect. When he returned, Bernard raced around to Cheltenham Beach. He could not believe what he saw. Vera was sweating profusely, delirious and writhing around the bed in agony. Nurse Kerr could not say what had caused her rapid deterioration, but felt the girl would be better off treated there. Vera died that evening.
Dr George de Clive-Lowe was summoned and recorded the cause of death to be uraemia. The death certificate noted Vera had suffered from this condition for around three weeks, combined with congenital cystic kidney and anaemia.
Quite how the good doctor arrived at these detailed conclusions is not noted. Uraemia is a dangerous condition whereby abnormally high levels of waste in the blood affects the kidneys so they no longer filter properly, and often occurs when a person is in the final stages of chronic kidney disease. The signs of this is progressive weakness and fatigue, loss of appetite due to nausea and vomiting, tremors, shallow respiration and mental confusion. Untreated, it will cause kidneys to shut down and lead to stupor, coma and death. In many people there is a gradual deterioration.
What shocked her family the most was the fact that Vera had been a healthy and active young girl up until the day before her death. She was active and playing with other children all day, she did not seem weak, nauseous, short of breath or have any of the other signs of severe kidney disease. If she had been displaying such signs earlier, the family would have sought medical treatment much sooner. They were horrified to read that the death certificate recorded she had been suffering uraemia for three weeks. If she had, they should have noticed. Because they were a conservative God-fearing family, they chose not to make a fuss. Bernard Mason had chosen not to allow an autopsy, much to his later regret.
The tragedy of Vera’s death hit the family and this was revisited three years later when Nurse Kerr was arrested and charged with administering Veronal to Betty. Like everyone in the Devonport community, the Masons were shocked and could not believe it to be true. When it was learned that Nurse Kerr had given Betty a peppermint lolly when visiting her in hospital and that she deteriorated rapidly immediately afterwards, the family remembered Vera saying she had been given a peppermint the day before her death. They were outraged. More so that the year before she was arrested, Nurse Kerr had moved her nursing home virtually next door and she was a kind, sympathetic and loyal neighbour. They debated about contacting the police, but did not want to go through the pain talking about Vera, especially in public; they did not want their names splashed all over the Truth; and they did not want Vera to be remembered as a victim of murder.
For many years, the family lived with the secret and only vague stories of the poisoned peppermint were passed down generations. The next generation wanted to find out, none more so than George, Vera’s brother, who was born a week before Vera died. He never met his sister and people rarely, if ever, talked of her. He wanted to find out once and for all, but never got around to it. He died in 2021.
When news of the discovery of the bones broke in 1992, Leonie hoped the police would initiate an investigation to identify who this person was, and whether they would reopen her aunt’s case.
“I knew it was too late by then to charge Nurse Kerr as she had died many years earlier, but the family wanted Vera to be exhumed and to find out whether there were traces of Veronal in her system. Even after all this time, they could probably find something. It just never happened.”
The police were not interested in exhuming Vera Mason’s body for that very reason; that Nurse Kerr had died years ago and they could not charge her with the crime. Even if Nurse Kerr was alive, it was unlikely to be considered as there was no evidence, just hearsay. For the Masons, the exhumation and testing was important as it would have given them a sense of closure. It was unlikely that one peppermint lolly would have made Vera as sick as she was, but Vera had spent hours under the care of Nurse Kerr in her nursing home. Could she have administered a high and fatal dose of Veronal in that time?
A mildly abbreviated chapter taken from The Trials of Nurse Kerr: The anatomy of a secret poisoner by Scott Bainbridge (Bateman, $38), available in bookstores nationwide. The author will discuss the case at the Devonport Library this Sunday (May 5) at 2:30pm.
