Bassett Road machine gun murders

The Bassett Road machine gun murders were the murders of two men with a .45 calibre Reising submachine gun on 7 December 1963 at 115 Bassett Road in the Auckland suburb of Remuera in New Zealand. The crime received considerable media attention and captured the public imagination for many years. Although the weapon was set to single and not rapid-fire for the killings, word spread quickly of a "Chicago-style" gang murder previously unheard of in New Zealand.

The victims were a commercial traveller and a seaman, found dead in a residential property which was used as a "beerhouse". While legal pubs were forced to close for the night at six o'clock, people continued drinking in quasi-criminal beerhouses which were operated by criminal figures and their associates. Although illegal, the beerhouses were regarded as a form of petty criminality and tolerated until referendums in New Zealand made it possible for licensed pubs to open past six o'clock and made beerhouses obsolete in 1968. During this illicit period, beerhouses served as a meeting place for beatnik modernist poets and musicians, sportspeople involved in boxing and the rugby league, wealthy people who "slummed" with the criminal underworld, drug addicts, alcoholics, gamblers, and hardened criminals.

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