The Great New Zealand Robbery

It should be remembered as New Zealand's answer to Britain's Great Train Robbery: in the dead of the night, robbers broke into the Waterfront Industry Commission's offices and made off with an audacious loot equivalent to almost $1 million today. This 1956 heist, which eventually came to be known as the Waterfront Payroll Robbery, was executed with military precision and the robbers left nothing but a smoking office and an empty safe behind them.

The crime was eventually pinned on small-time crook Trevor Nash. When four years later, Nash made a brazen prison-escape attempt, he rose to notoriety as a kind of anti-establishment hero. But to this day, uncertainty remains about whether Nash alone was responsible for the waterfront heist. Could he really—cunning as he was—have pulled it off all by himself? And what happened to the money?

The Great New Zealand Robbery by Scott Bainbridge delves into this intriguing mystery, exploring the heist that captivated a nation.