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Nearly 30 years after Arthur Allen Thomas was freed after being wrongly jailed for a double murder, he was visited by David Bain - a man who also knows what years of wrongful imprisonment means.
Bain, accompanied by supporter Joe Karam, visited Thomas at his Taupiri home in the Waikato on Wednesday, to mark the impending anniversary of Thomas's Queen's Pardon on December 17, 1979, the Sunday Star Times reported.
Thomas had been in contact with Bain since his convictions for murdering his family were quashed by the Privy Council, and was earlier this year acquitted in a retrial in the High Court in Christchurch.
"He's doing very well now that he's a free man," Thomas said.
The 71-year-old's conversation with Bain centred on "trials, courts, juries".
"That freedom... It's like a big monkey on your head to have a conviction, and all of a sudden it's gone."
On Saturday, Thomas's friends and supporters gathered in a Waikato woolshed to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of his pardon of convictions for the murders of Pukekawa farming couple Jeanette and Harvey Crewe, and release from Auckland Prison.
Thomas was found guilty in 1971, then reconvicted when a re-trial was ordered on appeal. A Royal Commission of Inquiry into the case in 1980 found that two detectives had planted a cartridge found in the Crewes' garden, which appeared to have come from one of Thomas's rifles. He received $1m compensation for his lost nine years.
"The judiciary failed me, totally failed. I lost a lot as a result," Thomas said.
"I really trusted the police, told them everything. I had nothing to hide. And they used it against me."
However, Thomas said he "tried not to be bitter".
He said he had much to be thankful for, and he owed his freedom to the "retrial committee" made up of supporters and members of the public who campaigned on his behalf to draw attention to his case, and changed public opinion.
"Justice must be seen to be done. And people saw justice was not done in my case."
Thomas said his experience had "hardened" him.
"But I'm a better man, because I realised that any time you're down in your life, you've only got to look back to see it could be worse. I've got a saying: Every day is Christmas Day."
