Who Killed Scott Guy?
Who Killed
Scott Guy?
The case that gripped a nation
MIKE WHITE
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author or of other persons and are not those of the publisher: the publisher has no reasonable cause to believe that the opinions set out in the book are not the genuine opinions of the author or of those other persons.
First published in 2013
Copyright © Bauer Media Group (NZ) LP 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
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CONTENTS
9 Simon Asplin—witness or suspect?
14 Kylee and Anna—tragedy and tears
15 Dive boots—the riddle of the wavy lines
17 Greg King—a courtroom masterclass
Many of you already know how this story ends.
The story of Scott Guy, his murder and the trial of his brother-in-law has been endlessly discussed and dissected in New Zealand and has quickly become part of the country’s crime lore. That happens with some cases—the ones that grab the public, who then won’t let them go, like a dog latching on to a favourite stick.
In New Zealand there have been ten cases, perhaps a dozen, that still spark immediate recognition and reaction when mentioned: the likes of Arthur Allan Thomas, David Bain, Scott Watson, David Tamihere, Mark Lundy, Rex Haig, John Barlow, Chris Kahui, Peter Ellis. All bar Ellis were murders. All have fascinated and gripped the country in a strange mix of honest sympathy, discomforting prurience and whodunit mystery solving. All have remained extremely controversial.
To this sad and notorious list we’ve now added Scott Guy. Except, unlike the others mentioned, Scott Guy wasn’t the person accused of the crime—he was the victim. But more often than not we refer to this as the Scott Guy case, perhaps because his own story resonated so strongly with us. A young, well-liked, good-looking guy, a salt-of-the-earth farmer, a new dad with another son due in two months, a decent bloke—shot at his gate for no conceivable reason. His bright eyes and half-smile beneath the brim of a cowboy hat became part of our daily viewing on TV and in newspapers.
His death enthralled us, partly because it was so inexplicable, but also because for months nobody was caught and arrested—nobody even stood out as a suspect. When police did finally accuse someone, public attention only increased. Because the person who they claimed killed Scott Guy was his brother-in-law, Ewen Macdonald, the man who’d asked Scott to be his best man, the man who’d worked side by side with him on their farm in Feilding, near Palmerston North in the North Island, the man who’d carried Scott’s coffin from the church and sombrely visited his grave afterwards.
There’s no point dressing it up—this case had all the elements: rivalry, romance, revenge, shots in the night, bloody murder, mystery notes, cute puppies, beautiful wives, bereft children. So the media swarmed, the public devoured every development, the gossips had a field day. By the time the case got to court in June 2012, it seemed to overshadow all other news. And for more than four weeks New Zealanders heard the detail and drama, reported breathlessly and instantly, night after night, headline after headline.
At the end of it, when the 11-strong jury knocked on the courtroom door and said they’d reached a verdict, we all felt knowledgeable and satisfied that our opinions were founded on fact. After all, we’d heard so much about it, knew the list of protagonists by heart and had stared into the eyes of Ewen Macdonald through our TV screens. We knew the case, we knew him.
The reality is, though, most of us knew very little, despite what we thought. Consider this. Each day the jury heard more than five hours of evidence and argument. Each night the public saw about three minutes summarising the day’s events in court. Each day about 70 pages of transcript were produced from proceedings. Each morning you got to read 400–500 words of that. If that doesn’t convince you that only a fraction of the case was ever reported or revealed, then also think about this. Prior to the trial, the police and prosecution handed over close to 60,000 pages of evidence to Macdonald’s lawyers. Some of this was covered or alluded to in the trial but a great deal wasn’t. Some of it was routine, some of it irrelevant, but much of it provided crucial background and context in a complex case.
To the outsider, the case seemed so obvious, so logical. Ewen Macdonald was an aggrieved and angry man who secretly hated his brother-in-law and business partner, Scott Guy. While on the surface a hardworking husband and father of four, Macdonald had an alter ego and alternative life of violence and retribution. And violence of a kind that most people could never understand—wild and frightening violence: burning down houses, smashing property with an axe, killing calves with a single hammer blow. So when he began to have concerns about the farm’s future and Scott pushing him aside, he took the simplest step to solve the problem—he killed Scott, gunning him down in his driveway as he went to work.
This was the premise on which the police based their charge, this was the thread of the prosecution case in court, this was the secure assumption of those who followed the trial. It seemed so straightforward. But most people’s opinions missed the minutiae of the case, the vital details, the chinks and cracks and at times chasms in the case against Macdonald.
In court there was shock and revelation—and, afterwards, astonishment and recrimination. But to understand what happened and why it happened you need to set aside what you think you know of the case and start over again, from the beginning, from that first dark midwinter morning.
And while even this book can’t reproduce every detail of the case, every step and slip and statement, by the end you’ll know everything the jury did—and much more.
Whoever it was knew what they were doing. Whoever shot Scott Guy early on 8 July 2010 didn’t mean to scare him or wound him or threaten him—they meant to kill him. In a case that’s attracted extraordinary controversy and conjecture, this is one certainty.
The forensic scientist who examined Scott Guy’s body and the murder scene estimated the two blasts from the shotgun were fired from between 2 and 6 metres away, most likely between 3 and 4 metres. The first shot hit him in his throat, destroying his voice box, with some pellets coming to rest in his upper chest. It tore a 13-centimetre hole in his neck. His jaw shattered as pellets passed upwards through his mouth and eye socket and into his brain. The second shot struck Scott’s face and left arm, possibly as he was falling from the first blast. The scientist suggested it was as if Scott had his left hand raised near his face when he was hit the second time.
He collapsed on his driveway, spread-eagled on his back with his arms flung behind him. His cap, shredded by pellets, fell to his right. Blood seeped into the driveway soil, staining a large area around his head and shoulders. There was blood on his face and also down his leg.
The killer had shot 31-year-old Scott as he headed to work early that Thursday morning, on his way to milk cows on the family dairy farm near Feilding. Scott was on the early shift, due to start about 4.50 am. Exactly when he was shot isn’t clear, but what is known is that after getting up he’d switched on his computer and checked a few websites, accessing the last site at 4.41 am.
It’s assumed he probably finished the coffee he’d made, put his cup on the bench as he walked out to the garage where his coat and boots were, then went outside and got into his silver Hilux ute. It was about 100 metres down the driveway from his house to Aorangi Road, but when he got there his front gates were closed. Normally they stayed open all the time, except when cattle were being moved between paddocks.
So Scott pulled up, wondering who’d bothered to shut the gates since he arrived home the night before with his wife, Kylee, and 2-year-old son, Hunter. Walking out in front of the ute, silhouetted by its headlights, he swung the right-hand gate open. It was stiff and only just cleared the driveway. The left-hand gate had dropped slightly and scraped on the gravel so had to be lifted back out of the way. He’d just done that when someone stepped out from the darkness, pointed a shotgun at him and fired.
Only the killer knows if anything was said between them, if Scott asked what the hell was going on, if he tried to fend him off. No one knows what raced through Scott’s mind—the sheer surprise of it all, an instant of realisation of what was about to happen, a split second of panic? Maybe it all happened too fast and it was just a figure. But maybe there was recognition of a face or voice, the chance he glimpsed his killer in that moment before he was shot, lit up by the ute, someone stepping from the wings to centre stage and the spotlight. Then just a muzzle flash and nothing else.