The schoolboy with the strawberry blonde hair goes unnoticed as he walks up the stairs carrying a gun wrapped in a pair of old jeans.

The wannabe assassin leaves his 10-speed bike outside the seven-storey Adams Building; chosen at the last minute.

He enters a deserted toilet cubicle on the fifth floor, removes the stolen .22, puts on gloves, opens the window, and waits.



After a nerve-racking five minutes, the teenager spots a Rolls Royce driving down the closed road.



A few hundred metres away a large crowd of people erupts in cheers as the motorcade stops outside the Otago Museum Reserve.



This is the moment. After this, he'd be New Zealand's greatest criminal.



He puts the rifle against his shoulder, and aims at the Queen of England.

THE BOY CRIMINAL



This is the story of how a 17-year-old from Dunedin made the world's closest attempt to kill Queen Elizabeth II, our longest-living reigning monarch, and how police allegedly covered it up to save face.

As far as assassins go, Christopher John Lewis hardly looked the part. The short, bespectacled teen with a slight frame was described by police as "something out of the Boy Scout manual" and having a "Joe 90" appearance - after the 1960s spy character.







Police described Lewis, pictured here in 1987, as "something out of a boy scout manual". PHOTO: DAVID HALLETT



But a note on his file read: "Not to be trusted."



Born in Dunedin on September 7, 1964, Lewis' life of offending began with his expulsion from kindergarten. According to his memoirs, Last Words, published after his death, he was kicked out for pushing a child off a slide.



His father left after a few years and his mother remarried. According to Lewis, his stepfather was a harsh disciplinarian who frequently beat him with a strap.



"This taste of violence made me resentful and turn inwards," Lewis said.

RYAN ATTWOOD/STUFF The Snowman and the Queen: Christopher John Lewis' young life of crime.

A self-described loner, he struggled at school and was unable to read or write until he was 8.

Expulsions became a way of life. At Anderson Bay Primary it was for "stirring up teachers"; at Tahuna Intermediate for taking a porn magazine to school; at Otago Boys' High he was "always having fights and getting in the s...".

"I had the most detentions and the most canings of anyone in the high school," he would tell police.

As his criminal ambitions escalated, Lewis, who idolised cult outlaws such as Ned Kelly and Charles Manson, styled himself as the leader of his own guerilla army: the National Imperial Guerilla Army (N.I.G.A.). He enlisted former primary school buddy Geoffrey Rothwell and friend Paul Taane to join.

Taane, who now lives in Christchurch, said Lewis often appeared "angry at the world, people were afraid of him".

Lewis, simply, had no regard for human life, he said.

Taane remembers Lewis sticking pins into a kitten for fun. Once, Lewis pointed a loaded shotgun in his face.

Lewis lived at this Albany St flat in the heart of Dunedin's student quarter when he was 17, studying by correspondence. PHOTO: HAMISH McNEILLY

In late 1980, the three-man army launched a crimewave in Dunedin, beginning with the theft of five .22s from Lewis' former high school, a church burglary and the arson of a video store. The boys claimed responsibility for four-break ins and a safe cracking. A letter to police during the 1981 Springbok rugby tour claimed that N.I.G.A. would "continue to steal, rob or even kill ... unless if the Springbok team leaves New Zealand". [sic]

Rothwell, now a lawyer, declined to be interviewed for this story.

The burglary of a secondhand sporting store and then a gun store gave the fledgling army an arsenal of weapons, some of which were later found buried at Lewis' Albany St flat in the heart of Dunedin's student quarter.

As Taane recalls, the trio would bike on their 10-speeds to a park for target practice with a sawn-off shotgun.

With an eye on sourcing cash to expand their criminal activities, the burgeoning teen terrorists embarked on their most daring plan yet: the armed robbery of the Anderson's Bay Post Office.

Otago Boys High School where Lewis was expelled from and later burgled. PHOTO: HAMISH McNEILLY

THE UNLIKELY ROBBERS

On the day of the robbery, Taane and Rothwell left nearby Bayfield High School at morning tea break, so they wouldn't be missed.

They joined Lewis and pulled on camouflage coats to hide their school uniforms, before cycling to the target.

The trio donned balaclavas and Lewis - wielding a sawn-off shotgun and with an ammunition belt slung across his skinny frame - burst into the post office.

"This is a f..... hold-up," he yelled at the startled postmistress and female clerk.

Lewis leapt over the counter and ordered his large backpack filled with cash.

Two terrified teenage girls waiting outside were forced into the building and ordered to sit on the floor by the shotgun-wielding Taane, who was acting as a lookout.

When Lewis jumped back over the counter his shotgun went off, missing a post office worker by centimetres.

With $5244.31 in cash, the boy robbers then made their getaway on their bikes.

The former Andersons Bay Post Office, which was robbed by Lewis, wielding a sawn-off shotgun, and two of his school mates. PHOTO: HAMISH McNEILLY

Bizarrely, as he rode back to his flat with his stolen loot, Lewis stopped to help a police car that had crashed on the way to the scene. The cop suspected nothing.

Back at school Taane and Rothwell sat an exam, alongside their unwitting classmates.

Former constable Frank Van Der Eik was one of the officers called to set up a cordon around the post office.

He and other officers were amazed to discover it was schoolboys who carried out the brazen daylight armed robbery.

"You would never think to look for a high school kid in school clothes," Van Der Eik said.

Ten days after the robbery a letter posted at Otago University said "N.I.G.A. claimed responsibility for the Post Office robbery and the Centrefire Sports shop".

Taane recalled telling Rothwell in the days after the robbery, "normal life will be boring after this".

Lewis had never been one for boring. In later years, he boasted to his lawyer, Murray Hanan, that he would be "New Zealand's greatest criminal". What he planned next was his ticket to notoriety.

A letter from N.I.G.A. claiming responsibility for several crimes around Dunedin, and the promise of more to come. PHOTO: HAMISH McNEILLY

THE MOMENT

Christopher John Lewis is only 17 when he finds himself perched inside the Adams Building, with a rifle cocked and aimed at Queen Elizabeth II, on Wednesday October 14, 1981.

The eight-day royal visit, her sixth to New Zealand, is a short one, just a month after the divisive Springbok rugby tour.

Hundreds of police, fresh from clashing with anti-apartheid protesters, are tasked with protecting the Queen.

Security is tight, or so they believe.

Wearing a jade-coloured wool dress, coat and hat, the Queen steps out of a Rolls Royce and onto the sunny Otago Museum Reserve, while the Duke observes police shielding about 15 demonstrators.

Then a loud crack echoes around.

The seven-storey Adams Building where Lewis positioned himself on the fifth floor and took a shot at the Queen in 1981. PHOTO: HAMISH McNEILLY

How close did this sandy-haired boy burglar come in his attempt on Queen Elizabeth's life?

What made New Zealand police so afraid of Lewis that they sent him on a taxpayer-funded holiday 14 years after the assassination attempt during another of the Queen's visits?

And who was the mysterious 'Snowman' whom Lewis claimed gave him the order to shoot?

The Snowman and the Queen is a Stuff series looking at the life and crimes of Christopher John Lewis, a self-styled teen terrorist and trained "ninja" whose bizarre criminal antics kept police busy from his school days until his strange suicide in prison at age 33.

The series was meant to be five parts but newly declassified information meant we produced a sixth chapter. Next chapter here.