John Rutherford (New Zealand lawyer)

John Gordon Rutherford was a Christchurch lawyer who set up Chemical Technology Limited, a company at Clandeboye 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 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 The New Zealand Gazette notice of 1984 announcing that the company's debt to Westpac had been repaid and that its receiver would cease to act is signed "J. C. RUTHERFORD, Solicitor to the Company."⁴ In July 1981 the government approved a licence for its whey distillery, the first commercial one in the South Island, and two regional development suspensory loans totalling 120,235 dollars were approved for it the same year.⁵⁶ In December 1981, as a director, Rutherford asked the Canterbury United Council to support ethanol as a replacement for tetraethyl lead in petrol and to seek removal of the tax on ethanol used as an octane booster.⁷ The plant was opened by the Minister of Science and Technology, Ian Shearer, in April 1982.⁸

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 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." He called the spy story "a romantic tale," said the Security Intelligence Service had never approached him, and said he had last seen Horsch in early March, when the man had talked of leaving "for some months" and told him "his shares were worth nothing." Horsch, he said, "had a lot of trouble getting a beverage alcohol licence ... like a lot of Americans he did not appreciate the time things take here."¹⁹ He told The Press that he had transferred an amphibian aircraft to the company to increase its assets and had flown once with Horsch to Tekapo, but that Horsch lacked the rating for solo landings on water: "He didn't have enough hours." Westpac put the company into receivership on May 22, 1984, and Rutherford arranged to pay the bank about 170,000 dollars.¹⁰ The aircraft was a Lake LA-4-200 Buccaneer amphibian, construction number 469, registration ZK-EDK, formerly the American N5012L, which had been assembled at Christchurch and registered in New Zealand in December 1974; it was registered to Chemical Technology Ltd on October 30, 1981, passed to Rutherford personally on June 19, 1989, and was cancelled from the register as exported in September 2009. A local aviation historian recalled it standing for years in "a very tired state" at the Simon Spencer-Bower airfield, where he photographed it in September 1988.¹¹¹² In October 1984 he said business was booming and that Horsch "did everything he said he was going to accomplish."¹³ By 1986 he was growing Jerusalem artichokes under quarantine on his farm at Moncks Spur on the Port Hills as a feedstock for the company.¹⁴