A new report has revealed that there was an assassination attempt on the Queen during her trip to New Zealand in 1981 (Picture: Getty)

The Queen was almost assassinated by a teenager during a state visit to New Zealand in 1981, a new report has revealed.

Christopher John Lewis, who was just 17 at the time, joined throngs of people who had turned out to see the Queen and Prince Phillip during a parade through the town of Dunedin and took aim at her with a .22 rifle.

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The would-be assassin hid himself in a toilet on the 5th floor of a nearby building and kept a watch for the approaching royal couple.

He was half a kilometre away from the Queen when he pulled the trigger as she stepped out of the Rolls Royce and a deafening crack echoed amongst the crowd.




But the shot missed and whistled past her head.

Christopher John Lewis admitted he had fired a .22 pistol at the Queen as she was getting out her Rolls Royce (Picture: Reuters)

Aside from a brief moment of confusion, the crowd and the Queen continued as normal and the New Zealand police began a cover up that would bury any and all of the evidence.

Former Dunedin police officer Tom Lewis, who worked on the case, told Stuff: ‘You will never get a true file on that. It was reactivated, regurgitated, bits pulled off it, other false bits put on.’

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When the press began asking questions a few hours after the shot, they were told that the noise had been a lamp-post falling over.

The police later changed the story to a fire cracker being let off.

Police stumbled across Lewis when he and three friends were arrested over an unrelated armed robbery and Lewis began telling them everything about his attempted assassination.

The Queen and Prince Phillip are seen arrived in New Zealand (Picture: Getty)

They described him as looking like something out of a boy scout manual and they later questioned him eight times about the assassination attempt.

He even led them to the toilet which he had taken the shot from and stashed the .22 calibre pistol.

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Despite his admission that he wanted to kill the Queen, and make himself the most famous murderer on the planet in the process, his initial charge of treason was dropped and he was charged with possessing a firearm in a public place, discharging a firearm and a further 15 charges including aggravated robbery and arson.

The teenager was jailed for just three years for these charges and police began orchestrating a cover up.

Bizarrely, he claimed that he had been told to kill the monarch by an Englishman called the Snowman who told him he thought the Queen should be ‘knocked off’.

Despite admitting to the attempt, Lewis was charged with possessing a gun in a public place

Queen Elizabeth is seen during a walk about in New Zealand (Picture: Getty)

The youngster told police that he was not scared of anything, except the Snowman, who he met at a coffee house in Dunedin.

Snowman allegedly told Lewis about the far-right movement that was beginning to get momentum in New Zealand, leading Lewis to begin to fantasise about leading his own local terrorist cell.

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According to the police officer who was originally assigned to the case, Tom Lewis, the orders came from the prime minister at the time, Robert Muldoon, as he was terrified that the Royals would refuse to visit if they found out about the plot to murder Her Majesty.



The police even went as far to send Christopher Lewis and his partner on a tax-payer funded holiday to Great Barrier Island for 10 days when the Queen returned to New Zealand in 1995 over fears that he would try to kill her again.

In his memoirs he said that during this holiday, where he was given spending money and free accommodation, he felt like royalty.

Lewis was sent on a tax-payer funded holiday during another visit by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip in 1995

It was not just the Queen who Lewis fantasised about killing.

During his incarceration in a psychiatric facility in 1983, plans were discovered in his cell detailing a plot to kill Prince Charles, Princess Diana and a young Prince William during a visit.

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He had a far from conventional childhood and was involved in petty crime from his formative years, eventually leaving school at the age of 15 after a number of expulsions, his first being in Kindergarten for pushing another child off a slide.

Other expulsions were for reasons such as showing porn to his classmates, tipping over desks and playing with matchsticks.

He was later accused of the murder of Auckland housewife Tania Furlan, who had been beat over the head with a hammer, and the abduction of her six-week-old daughter Tiffany, who was later found in a church yard 18 kilometres away from her home.

Lewis was imprisoned in Mt Eden Prison to await trial, but he committed suicide in his cell in 1997 at the age of 33.

His girlfriend said that nothing seemed out of the ordinary except he declined her offer to put money in his bank account.

He maintained that he was innocent of the murder of Tania Furlan until his death.