3.4 KiB
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Christchurch lawyer who set up Chemical Technology Limited and brought the American fugitive R.C. Horsch, posing as the chemist Stanley Stokowski, to New Zealand to build a whey-ethanol plant. | Christchurch, New Zealand |
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2026-09-23 | 2026-09-23 |
John Gordon Rutherford was a Christchurch lawyer who set up Chemical Technology Limited, a company at Clandeboye, New Zealand near Timaru working on byproducts of milk, with a man he knew as Dr. Stanley Stokowski, an American chemist. "Stokowski" was R.C. Horsch, a fugitive from a Philadelphia methamphetamine charge who had taken the identity of a real California chemist and who arrived in Canterbury, New Zealand in about 1980.12
Stokowski
The company was incorporated on May 26, 1981, with Rutherford and Dorothy Verna Rutherford, who shared his Christchurch address, as its directors, and its registered office at Ibis House, 183 Hereford Street, Christchurch.3
Rutherford told The Press in 1984 that he had contacted Stokowski "after reading American advertisements about new technology." A later New Zealand government investigation found that the New Zealand Department of Immigration had been "under some pressure" from the man's "proposed employer" to "make an early decision" on his application.1
After Horsch left New Zealand on March 17, 1984, on a passport that police believed had been stolen in a burglary at Temuka, Rutherford described him to The Press as "brilliant and hard working," "a brilliant chap" who "knew what he was about," and "a particularly smart fellow, a real toiler and an excellent family man." He conceded that his partner might have been living under a false identity and, according to the paper, believed that he "had had some sort of trouble in the United States; perhaps of the scale of being a draft dodger during the Vietnam War," while dismissing any suggestion that he was a spy. He said he had not heard from Horsch since his departure and that his business had not suffered: "As far as I am concerned, it is business as usual."1
Footnotes
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Leask, Anna. "Man linked to multiple missing women in US had fled NZ 40 years ago after posing as scientist," The New Zealand Herald, September 23, 2026 (quoting The Press of 1984 and the New Zealand immigration investigation report). https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/raymond-horsch-man-linked-to-philadelphia-house-of-horrors-lived-near-timaru-under-stolen-name/BVQSWBL3LZDL3GIXFEHHBFY6RY/ ↩︎
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"How a pornographer's violent fantasies blurred fact and fiction as cops searched Olney house for missing women," The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 2, 2026. https://www.inquirer.com/news/a/raymond-eugene-horsch-olney-philadelphia-missing-women-history-20260802.html ↩︎
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New Zealand Companies Office, Companies Register, "Chemical Technology Ltd," company number 141090, accessed September 23, 2026. https://app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/141090 ↩︎