6. There Was a Plot Alright, Just Not the Plot This Hapless Spy Catcher Thought
There was a plot alright, but it was not a Nazi plot to sabotage New Zealand. Instead, it was an ad hoc plot by a conman to take advantage of gullible spy catcher. As his scam began to unravel, Sydney Ross grew desperate to hang on to his employment as an “undercover agent” and the pay that went with it. To keep the hoax alive, he resorted to yet another elaborate hoax to bolster his story. He dug a deep hole in a forest, lacerated his back with barbed wire, then staggered to the roadside, where he gave a passing driver £10 to summon help. He then claimed to have been tortured by Nazis and forced to dig his own grave at gunpoint, before he pulled off a miraculous escape. However, doctors who inspected his wounds determined that they were self-inflicted.
The story of the “Impudent Jailbird” who had tricked Major Kenneth Folkes and the SIB, whose men had been “blatantly hoodwinked“, hit the newspapers in late July 1942. This latest screwup was the final straw. The SIB was taken over by the police commissioner, and the now-thoroughly-discredited Major Folkes was sent back to Britain in disgrace. Ross returned to prison, where he remained until his release in 1946, shortly before his death at age 37 of tuberculosis. It was an anticlimactic end for a man who had almost ended the rule of law in, New Zealand. After the war, Folkes returned to his job with a Midlands carpet manufacturer and died in obscurity in 1975. A self-promoter and fabulist to the end, his headstone described him as a recipient of the Distinguished Service Order. He had never received such an award.