The Day the Queen Was Almost Shot

This much is certain: On Oct. 14, 1981, a teenager armed with a .22-caliber rifle went to the fifth floor of a building in Dunedin, New Zealand, during a visit by Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip.

When the royals stepped out of their Rolls-Royce to greet thousands of well-wishers on the street, the gunman, Christopher John Lewis, 17, a self-described terrorist who was hiding in a deserted toilet cubicle, trained his rifle on the queen and fired.

He missed.

The Guardian said “it may be the closest anyone has ever come to assassinating Queen Elizabeth II.” Decades later, questions about whether the New Zealand police and government had covered up the seriousness of the crime still linger.

The New Zealand police announced this past week that they would re-examine the case because of public interest. In an email, a police spokesman said Commissioner Mike Bush had assigned a deputy commissioner, Mike Clement, to oversee the inquiry:

“Given the passage of time, it is anticipated this examination of the old file and its associated material will take some time. NZ Police will share the outcome of this examination once it has been completed,” the statement said.

Reached by phone Saturday, a spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said it had not previously commented on the reports and would decline to do so now.

When the shot rang out in 1981, news reports said, New Zealand police told the British news media that it was the sound of a sign falling over. Later, they claimed it had been a firecracker.

One former officer who was on the case told news outlets that New Zealand officials were afraid that if anyone knew how close the teenager had come to assassinating the queen of England, no British royal would ever set foot in New Zealand again.

Perhaps no one has done more to shed light on the mystery than reporter Hamish McNeilly, who published on the news website Stuff previously classified documents on the case that were released by the New Zealand’s spy agency, the Security Intelligence Service.

How police connected the teenager to the shooting is not clear, but they questioned him eight times, the documents said. Lewis had a history of armed robbery, arson and animal torture, and he idolized cult leader Charles Manson.

The teenager said he was part of a group, the National Imperial Guerrilla Army, that was carrying out terrorist operations. He named two other members as the Snowman and the Polar Bear, but later said he had made them up.

But police found a .22-caliber rifle with a discharged cartridge on the fifth floor of a building, just where Lewis told them they would.

Though some investigators believed he had wanted to kill the royal couple, he was charged only with possessing and firing a weapon in public, and sentenced to three years in jail.

“Lewis did indeed originally intend to assassinate the queen,” a released memo said. However, he “did not have a suitable vantage point from which to fire, nor a sufficiently high-powered rifle for the range from the target.”

He electrocuted himself at age 33 in a prison cell in 1997 while awaiting trial on murder charges in an unrelated case.

Tom Lewis, (no relation) a former Dunedin detective, went public about the assassination attempt in 1997. He has said he expected more serious charges against the teenager.

The former detective said that officials had been eager to cover up the true nature of the crime, and that he had doubted the full truth would ever come out, the Stuff site says.

“It will be like ripping the scab off,” he is quoted as saying.

The queen did return to New Zealand, in November 1995. Police thought Christopher Lewis was enough of a possible danger that they spirited him away to Great Barrier Island, in the north.

In a draft autobiography found beside his body and published posthumously, Lewis wrote of that 10-day exile — he was given free accommodation, spending money and the use of an SUV — “I started to feel like royalty.”

Why authorities never publicly revealed his true intent that day in 1981 is a major mystery — especially since it emerged that Lewis, held at a psychiatric hospital, tried to overpower a guard in 1983 to get out, Stuff said.

Prince Charles was in the country in April with the Princess of Wales and their son William.