Murder at the Racecourse Hotel: Unused pillow provides clue in cold case

A police photograph of the bed where Donald was shot. There is blood on the bedclothes on his side of the bed. On the side where his wife Elizabeth was supposedly sleeping, the pillow was unused and still showed creases from where it had been ironed.
The curious clue of an unused pillow was an important part of an unsolved murder case in Christchurch 90 years ago.
The murder of Donald Fraser at the Racecourse Hotel in Riccarton is the subject of a new podcast in the New Zealand Herald’s Chasing Ghosts series.
Fraser, the hotel publican, was shot dead in his bed on the hotel’s first floor in the early hours of November 17, 1933. His wife, Elizabeth Fraser, said she was sleeping alongside her husband when he was killed.
She told police she heard the explosion in the room as a double-barrelled shotgun was discharged and then saw blood on the sheets on Donald’s side of the bed. She said she did not see the killer.
But the first police officers on the scene soon noticed something was not quite right with the murder scene and the story Elizabeth was telling them.
Although she said she had been sleeping alongside her husband, there was no sign anyone had occupied that side of the bed.
In fact, her pillow was unused and still had regular creases on it where it had been ironed and folded. This is clearly seen in a police photograph taken at the time.
Although police spoke to Elizabeth on the day of the murder, they lost the chance to interview her and question her about the unused pillow.
When detectives went to the hotel to interview her in January 1934, she became angry and hired Christchurch’s leading criminal barrister of the day, Charlie Thomas, who wrote to the police commissioner and got the investigators to back off.
Elizabeth was finally questioned at length about the pillow at an inquest, but maintained her story of being in bed with her husband.
The inconsistencies in her account of the night her husband died were a factor in police believing Elizabeth knew more than she was letting on about her husband’s death.
The second episode of the podcast, Chasing Ghosts: Murder at the Racecourse Hotel, looks into the police investigation and the suspicions of seasoned detectives as they weighed up Elizabeth’s story.
The podcast is produced by the New Zealand Herald and Open Justice, and is now available at iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ric Stevens joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.