The case of murder against Cantonese miner Ah Lee would have been thrown out of court if it happened today.
Almost nothing about the evidence against him was solid, there was no motive for the murder, and there was even better suspects.
What is beyond argument is that Mary Young was killed on August 4, 1880. She was found in her Naseby home dying.
Mary was a young widow, who after her husband had died was planning to return to her homeland, Scotland.
Instead she was found by her neighbour Lee Guy about 7.30am.
That started a series of events that compromised any investigation. First a number of people came and went. Mary was still alive, but barely so Guy sent another neighbour to get help and then a doctor - who was 16km away.
Margaret Fogie who had come to help had spoken to Mary, trying to find out what happened and who did it.
She asked who did it? Was it an Englishman - and Mary managed to say it was not. When Margaret asked if it was a Chinese, Mary said yes.
By the time the doctor arrived, Mary was unconscious. Large stones were found beside her and likely caused her injuries. She died around 1.30pm
At the inquest the case for it being a Chinese man became the centre of the investigation. That turned public attention to all Chinese immigrants living in the area. Two were arrested shortly after but let go.
Attention then turned to 24-year-old Ah Lee. Lee usually lived at the Coal Pit Gully, did odd jobs and sometimes smoked a little opium.
He was arrested on August 10. Not long after, a Naseby businessman had a breakdown and began ranting that he had killed Mary. He was quickly and quietly committed to Seacliff psychiatric hospital.
Meanwhile shoe tracks found near Mary’s home had a distinctive nail pattern and a bootmaker matched it to Ah Lee’s boots.
A silk handkerchief said to have been Ah Lee’s was found under Mary and a local draper said Ah Lee had bought it from him.
Spots of blood on Ah Lee’s trousers were examined and determined not to be animal blood.
Ah Lee gave a sort of confession - although the translator who helped did not speak the same dialect as him. Shortly after Lee Guy was also arrested.
No defence was called for Ah Lee who was found guilty and hanged at Dunedin Gaol on November 5. Lee Guy was found not guilty.
But there were serious issues with the evidence. The boots Ah Lee had were not the only ones with that print pattern in the district and many people had come through Mary’s property in the hours after her death.
The blood found on Ah Lee’s trousers could not be found to be human. And the timeline around the handkerchief failed - the draper gave a date that did not fit with when Ah Lee had been seen with it.
Shortly after the Naseby businessman was released from Seacliff and promptly repeated his claim that he had killed Mary and was again hushed up.
Ah Lee was initially buried in the gaol yard but his body was reinterred in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery.
Photo by Bernard Hermant.​

Two ships are responsible for the settling of Norsewood in central Hawke’s Bay, the Ballarat and the Hovding.
But the man behind the settlers was Bror Eric Friberg.
Friberg was born in Kristianstad in Sweden on July 6, 1839, to Else Lundgren and Nils Erik Friberg.
He studied forestry and worked as a forestry officer in Scandinavia. He married Cäcilie Elisabeth (Cecilia Elizabeth) Böhme on January 31,1866 before they decided to come to New Zealand which was opening up forested areas for settlement.
They sailed from Hamburg in 1866 and arrived in Auckland where they had their first child. Friberg transferred to Napier where he managed the Hawke’s Bay Steam Boiling Down Company.
The Government wanted to make sections available and thought immigrants should be brought in to work the land.
Friberg offered his services to the Immigration and Public Works department as a recruiting officer.
Given that he spoke Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, German and English, he was appointed and was sent to Europe. The recruitment of Norwegian settlers had already been arranged and he was prevented from recruiting settlers in Sweden
He eventually sailed for New Zealand from Christiana - now called Oslo - Norway on the three masted sailing ship Hovding with 292 adult immigrants- mostly from Norway. It arrived in Napier on September 15, 1872.
A few hours earlier Ballarat, with Danish immigrants, had arrived.
It was not as simple however as travelling to their new homes. It was a long hard slog to where Dannevirke and Norsewood would be - taking days.
And when the men arrived they found there was little in the way of sections cleared and they would have to do it themselves. They were given an area and some tools.
So they set to work. The women and children arrived 12 days later but there were no shelters and many slept and cooked outside.
While their homes were being built - the men also had to work for the government - clearing land for roads - for three or four days a week.
They also found they had to pay £5 for their passage to their new country, £40 for 40 acres of land and £1 for their trip to the newly forming town.
They were disillusioned and bitter about it, but worked hard. Of those that arrived 63 families settled in the Norsewood area. Friberg took several to what was to be Dannevirke.
A year after they arrived the Hovding returned with another bunch of immigrants.
He supported a petition for an extension of time for repaying their passage money.
Friberg himself had applied for three sections in the Makotuku settlement and later bought four more.
He was a hard worker, travelling on horseback across the area in all weather and it affected his health.
Friberg was naturalised on February 1, 1876, and made a justice of the peace.
But in 1877 his salary was reduced as part of a reduction in the immigration service. The next year he requested a leave of absence due to ill health but the reply to that came too late, he had died on February 3, 1878, in Norsewood aged only 38.
He is buried in the Norsewood Cemetery.
Norsewood, of course, has a Hovding St and gallery, named for the ship that started it all.​

John Rodulphus Kent was first in quite a few things, including sailing the first European ship through the Rangitoto channel and entering Waitemata Harbour.
His was the first survey plan made, allowing other ships to brave the harbour.
But he’s also considered the man who brought mice to New Zealand, even if it was by accident.
Mice were, of course, all over the world - but for isolated countries that had never encountered Europeans.
New Zealand had a strange assortment of animals, but only a couple of mammals before human settlement, a bat and marine mammals like Hector's dolphin.
Kent was born about 1790 in England, although there don’t appear to be any records confirming that.
The first real mention of him is as an officer in the Royal Navy serving the government of New South Wales as captain of the schooner Prince Regent.
They surveyed timber resources in New Zealand and Kent was able to explore the Hokianga and Northland harbours.
A year later, as captain of the cutter Mermaid he sailed to Hawaii before returning to Port Jackson in 1823.
In May of that year he took the Mermaid to Foveaux Strait to look at whether a flax trade was viable. He went on to visit many South Island harbours, sketching coastal profiles to aid navigation.
It was in 1823 that Kent took the Elizabeth Henrietta, a brig, back to Foveaux Strait for another load of flax.
But this time the brig broke her mooring and drifted ashore on Ruapuke Island, one of New Zealand’s southernmost islands. It would later become known for a particular species of spider that was everywhere on the island.
But the Elizabeth Henrietta was carrying something else - mice that escaped on to the island, and over time came to New Zealand.
The Elizabeth Henrietta was refloated and went on its way, but by then the damage was done.
Kent went on to captain sealing ships before setting up a trading post in Hokianga in 1826 under the patronage and protection of the Ngāti Korokoro tribal leader Moetara, and formed a liaison with his daughter Wharo.
In 1828 he moved to Kawhia to trade with the Waikato Maori. There he met Te Wherowhero, paramount chief of the Waikato tribes and later the first Maori King, and married Tiria, his daughter.
His trading went well for years and Kent often crossed the ocean in various ships.
He retired to Kaitotehe, near Taupiri, his flax trading activity became based at Ngaruawahia, centre of the trade routes for the Waikato River and the Manukau Harbour.
He became ill and died at Kahawai on the Manukau Harbour on 1 January 1837 and on 3 January he was buried by his Maori friends in a cemetery on the Te Toro promontory. A collection of Kent's northern profiles is preserved in the Hydrographic Department at Taunton, Somerset, England.​

It’s clear, even in its current abandoned state, that the former St Mary’s Church in Carterton was once a beauty.
Now the church that was once the heart of a community sits alone, forlorn and looking like it had been through a fire.
From the outside it’s discoloured, stained glass windows are broken and the statue of Mary at the top is looking down on an overgrown garden.
Despite being on the main road, it feels lonely but there was a time when it was the centre of the community.
After the Christchurch earthquake, St Mary’s was assessed as unsafe and in need of extensive restructuring.
In 1876, Fr Anthony Halbwachs raised funds to build St Mary's Church in Carterton, the center town of the Wairarapa.
Halbwachs was the first parish priest in the Wairarapa. He also raised funds to build churches in Masterton, Greytown, Featherston, and Tinui.
Wellington architect Thomas Turnbull was picked to design the church.
It was built on a block of land purchased in 1867, for £146. Sited at 461 High St South, it became the centre of a growing Polish village and the first headquarters of the Wairarapa Catholic Mission Station. It originally had a 23m spire.
In 1901 when the towns from Carterton south were recognised as a separate parish. Fr Thomas Cahill was the appointed resident priest in 1904. The church was relocated a number of times and in 1932 it became the parish hall for a new larger church of ferro-concrete built for a growing congregation.
Thomas Turnbull was born in Scotland - the home of gothic style churches - on August 23, 1824 to Jeanie and Joshua Turnbull.
Both however died early in his life and he was raised by relatives. He initially went into the building trade before going to the architectural office of David Bryce in Edinburgh.
By 1851 he had gone to Australia - filled with burgeoning gold fields and began gaining experience designing churches.
He married Louisa Urie in Melbourne before the couple went to San Francisco where he worked until 1871 until he came to Wellington.
At the time Wellington was still rebuilding after a series of severe earthquakes. Turnbull advocated for structurally sound methods of building, using ideas such of iron supports and tensile reinforcing.
But his true talent lay in the gothic churches, a great many of which are still standing, such as St Peter’s and St John’s, both on Willis Street.
He also designed many Wellington buildings that showed his style, the General Assembly Library and a group of commercial buildings on the corner of Lambton Quay and Customhouse Quay, including the former National Mutual Life Association building, and the former head office of the Bank of New Zealand (1889), both strong and ornate classical designs typical of much of Turnbull's commercial architecture.
The old Kirkcaldie and Stains building and the stunning Old Bank Arcade are also his work.
Thomas died in Wellington on February 23, 1907, and is buried in Karori Cemetery.
Many of his works still stand and it’s a shame one of his churches, many of which are heritage listed, has been left to the elements.​