A journalist who has covered the Peter Ellis case for three decades has revealed more details about the investigation.
Newsroom journalist Melanie Reid said prosecutors tried to plea bargain with Ellis, while at one stage his mother was also in line to be prosecuted.
The Supreme Court posthumously pardoned Peter Ellis on Friday over the child abuse charges for which he served seven years.
"It was a strange reaction of being really glad and really sad though, and also his gorgeous mother had just recently died as well," Reid said.
Ellis' mother died in July, aged 86. She was her son's biggest supporter.
In fact, Reid said Lesley Ellis was in the frame for the Christchurch Civic Creche case.
"There was a stage that the police believed there were about 10 offenders and they were being taken to houses all over town and they wanted to arrest not just Peter, not just the four women creche workers that had been charged, but a whole lot more creche workers and even Peter Ellis' mother," Reid said.
Reid kept 40 to 50 hours of taped interviews she did with Ellis in secret when she was a journalist with Three National News, a predecessor to Newshub.
"Mrs Ellis, lovely Lesley Ellis, Peter's mother would often say, 'Well I used to believe in the police, you know, I grew up believing they were an institution to be believed in'."
Reid said police even offered to drop 20 charges against Ellis if he pleaded guilty to eight.
"And he was like, 'Don't be ridiculous, I'm not pleading guilty to anything because I'm innocent'."
The case still resonates.
"I probably think about it every day."
Reid has just interviewed the girl, now in her thirties, who gave evidence against Ellis in the trial.
"I remember them holding like these dolls and saying, you know, 'Show us with this doll', and this sort of thing," the woman said.
But she recanted two years later in 1994, aged 11.
"I thought if I told the truth then Peter would have come out of jail."
But at the appeal, she was considered in denial and her withdrawal only resulted in the dropping of three charges. Reid believes the witness wasn't traumatised by Ellis, but by the case itself.
"And people look at this and go this, this is historic, but you just take one look at her or have one conversation with her and you realise the pain and guilt and the shame that she's been carrying for nearly three decades," Reid said.
Reid's seven-part documentary is being published on both Newsroom's and Newshub's websites.
