They married in Christchurch on 22 December 1930, living there for six months before moving to run a small dairy farm at Kowhitirangi on the West Coast.

By 1940, though, the Graham family was under severe financial pressure, having had cream condemned by the Westland Co-operative Dairy Company and incurred debt from a venture into cattle breeding.

On 11 September, at Ashby Bergh's department store at High Street in central Christchurch,[4] Mrs. Graham purchased, on her husband's behalf, a 7mm Mauser rifle and ammunition.

Best retreated to Hokitika for back-up and returned to the farm with Sergeant William Cooper, 43, and Constables Frederick Jordan, 26, and Percy Tulloch, 35.

When the badly wounded Cooper attempted to leave to obtain help, Graham shot him dead on the path in front of the house.

In the middle of the night, after being spotted by two police constables and a local civilian carrying his rifle and ammunition belts,[6][7] an injured Graham was shot by Auckland Constable James D'Arcy Quirke with a .303 rifle from a distance of 25 metres[6] as he crawled through a patch of scrub.

In 1968, the Australian drama series Homicide based episode 180, "Dead or Alive", on the case, with the Graham character being played by Brian Wenzel.

Unlike real life, the Graham character is captured alive, with the detectives wondering at the end of the episode whether he would be found insane or sentenced to death.

It was also the first time the large cache of photographs taken during the manhunt by Home Guardsman Dave Stevenson were made public.

A 1981 British-New Zealand film, Bad Blood, was made about Stanley Graham and his chain of killings, as well as the dimensions of historical context and social injustice involved.