Fugitive murderer-molester’s passport cancelled – five days after he fled NZ
Smith makes contact with lawyer | Corrections suspends temporary release programme.
Firmly shutting the stable door behind the long-since bolted horse, this afternoon the Government confirmed the passport of fugitive murderer-child molester Phillip Smith has been cancelled and will be recalled.
Last year Mr Smith somehow managed to manually renew his passport under his birth name, Phillip John Traynor, while in prison for the 1995 killing of the father of a boy he had molested.
He then used the passport to escape New Zealand on Thursday while on temporary release from Waikato’s Spring Hill Prison.
Authorities only noticed he was missing when he failed to report back at prison on Sunday as scheduled.
According to Internal Affairs minister Peter Dunne, the cancellation and recall of Mr Smith’s passport “means that for all practical purposes, his recently renewed passport is no longer a valid travel document and this recall allows the New Zealand authorities to formally advise international policing agencies that Phillip Traynor has a warrant for arrest in New Zealand and that the passport he is using is invalid”.
Mr Smith was initially thought to be hiding out in Chile but authorities there have confirmed he was only in transit in Santiago for a few hours before boarding a flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil, then catching a connection to Rio de Janeiro.
In between making questionable quips about Mr Smith, Prime Minister John Key has promised a full inquiry into the apparent cascade of ineptitude the enabled his escape.
In the interim, Corrections has suspended temporary releases, a programme Mr Smith’s birth father John Traynor has said it was “absolute stupidity” to include his son in, given he committed his 1995 murder while on bail for other offences.
Radio New Zealand is also reporting that Mr Smith has contacted his NZ lawyer Tony Ellis, who has promised to make a media statement on his client’s behalf tomorrow morning.
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Fugitive murderer-molester’s passport cancelled – five days after he fled NZ
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