Who Killed Scott Guy? (15 page)

On the morning Scott was shot, Asplin arrived at work just after 5 am. When he realised Scott wasn’t there, he shrugged it off—Scott had a history of sleeping in, especially when on the early shift. After putting on his milking gear, Asplin rode a quad bike from the workshop to the milking shed and met up with Macdonald and Ireland. When milking finished, he went down to the back of the farm to shift fences. At 7.25 am, Macdonald phoned Asplin saying Scott had been in an accident and he’d tell him more later, and in the meantime he should go home for breakfast before returning to Byreburn to meet artificial insemination technician Trevor Wing, who was due at 8.30 am.

On the stand, Asplin immediately looked uncomfortable, over-warm in his North Face jacket, with round face, red cheeks and receding hairline. And after Vanderkolk had taken him through the morning’s events, Asplin’s discomfort soared as King attacked. His very first question was, ‘Mr Asplin, are you very familiar with shotguns?’

King then had Asplin explain his experience with firearms, ammunition and the farm’s weapon. He outlined how Asplin didn’t like Scott, had described him as arrogant, as someone who thought he was better than other people and had led a privileged life due to his father’s successful farm. In one interview with police, Asplin said Scott had nothing but a big holiday on the farm and labelled him a ‘daddy’s boy’.

When Scott had returned to Byreburn, Asplin was bitter at being displaced from his tractor work and role as Macdonald’s assistant. After Asplin came back to the farm in 2008, King alleged he asked for the title of assistant manager but was declined. Bryan Guy did, however, promise him more time on the tractor rather than being stuck in the milking shed, but this didn’t eventuate.

During the trial, other witnesses described Asplin as the farm gossip, who always wanted to know what was going on, often bitching about Scott or Ewen and playing one off against the other. Disillusioned and not seeing a future for himself on the farm, Asplin began looking for other jobs. Unknown to anyone else on the farm, the day before Scott was murdered, he had taken several hours off to go to an interview in Palmerston North for a sales representative role with an agricultural machinery firm.

The morning of Scott’s death, Asplin had acted bizarrely, King suggested. When Asplin returned to the farm after breakfast, Trevor Wing asked him what was going on with the flashing lights and cordon up the road. Despite knowing something serious had happened to Scott, Asplin merely said there’d been an accident—even though Wing knew the Guy family and Scott well and would obviously have been concerned about him. King pressed him on why he wouldn’t have told Wing that Scott had been in an accident, leaving Asplin flummoxed and flustered: ‘I don’t know, I don’t remember, I don’t recall.’

There were other examples of curious behaviour, King claimed. Around 8.45 am, Matthew Ireland had arrived back at the cowshed and asked Asplin if he knew Scott had been killed and then asked who would have done something like that to Scott. Asplin snapped at him and angrily told him to go and do some work—a reaction Ireland felt was surprising and unwarranted but Asplin explained by saying he was upset and wanted to grieve alone. There was also a phone call between Asplin and a friend, Derek McNabb, where the pair discussed what had happened. But when asked for details of what McNabb told him about Scott’s death, Asplin was vague.

‘It’s not just someone’s died in an accident—you’re talking about the big M—murder,’ King railed. ‘And you’re telling me there’s some doubt in your mind about when you first heard that Scott had been murdered?’

‘Yes,’ Asplin responded meekly.

More importantly, though, King pressed Asplin on when he learnt that Scott had been shot. David Berry, who found Scott’s body, believed his throat had been cut and this was what he reported to the police 111 controller. It wasn’t until later in the day, when police inspected the body more closely, that they concluded he had been shot.

At around 10 am, however, Asplin phoned his girlfriend, Emma Johansen, and told her Scott had been shot. He insists Matthew Ireland told him this when he returned to the cowshed that morning, but in his statements to police and in court, Ireland was adamant he didn’t. Ireland strongly repeated that he couldn’t have told Asplin that Scott had been shot because at that stage he’d heard his throat had been cut and it wasn’t until the following day he learnt it was a shooting.

King raised the question that the only way someone would know this early on the morning of the murder that Scott had been shot was if they had in fact been the killer. Asplin was adamant, however, that Ireland had told him the cause of death, saying stories of his throat being cut only filtered back to him several days later.

Other aspects of Asplin’s behaviour following Scott’s murder also came under scrutiny. The day before Scott’s funeral, Asplin was at the Ravensdown Fertiliser store in Feilding when he met Tony Jessop, who had done work on the Guy farm. When Jessop asked what Scott could have done to deserve being murdered, Asplin replied, ‘He’s really pissed a few people off.’ Asplin went on to say, ‘The one good thing that’s come out of this is that I’m back on the tractor where I belong,’ a comment that struck Jessop as so inappropriate he immediately told police about it.

It also emerged that the day after Scott was killed, Asplin was offered the farm machinery salesman’s job, but turned it down, saying he couldn’t leave the Guys in the lurch at such a time. He returned to the assistant manager’s role at Byreburn, supporting Macdonald and, after Macdonald was arrested, became temporary manager. He wanted to retain this position but Bryan Guy eventually employed someone else in the role.

King put it to Asplin that he was deeply unhappy at work, at a major career crossroads, had never liked Scott Guy and often spoken ill of him. And he reminded Asplin of the statement he’d made to police about his own role: ‘I was the boy and had to do as I was told.’ As Asplin became increasingly unsettled in the witness box, King suggested he was making up evidence on the spot to excuse his actions after Scott was killed.

‘I don’t believe so, no,’ replied Asplin.

King then returned to the issue of firearms. He made Asplin, a keen duck-shooter, confirm he owned a semi-automatic 12-gauge Benelli M1 Super 90 shotgun. Asplin’s weapon could fire several shots one after the other without reloading, whereas the farm shotgun could only fire two rounds at a time.

This detail related to a crucial piece of information from a witness who lived close to Scott Guy: that she had distinctly heard three shots in quick succession around the time Scott was killed. For that to be correct, the farm shotgun could not have been the weapon used because it had to be reloaded after two rounds. Only a semi-automatic weapon with a magazine, such as Asplin’s, could have fired three rounds in rapid sequence.

King also established that Asplin was aware of and had access to the brand of ammunition most likely used in the killing. In fact, he had twice collected several boxes of the Winchester Bushman number 5 ammunition for the farm.

During two appearances at the trial, Asplin was presented with a range of factors and acts that cast suspicion on him. Among these was the fact that on the morning Scott was killed both his girlfriend, Emma Johansen, and his sister and flatmate, Joanne Asplin, were away. Johansen was driving to a funeral in Hawke’s Bay and Joanne was in Auckland for work, and thus neither was able to vouch for his actions when he returned home. Moreover, Asplin could not explain why he had arrived at work early that morning—normally he arrived around 5.15 am but that morning he pulled into the drive just after 5 am. When he reached the workshop he parked in the space where Scott always did—even though it was clear Scott hadn’t yet arrived.

By the end of his cross-examination King had posited possible motive, opportunity and means of killing Scott Guy. For Asplin, who had come to the trial expecting simply to give evidence about Scott and anything he’d seen or heard around the time of the murder, it was a deeply unsettling experience. When he finally left the stand, he glanced at the police, but as he walked past his accuser, King, he refused to make eye contact.

King, however, didn’t resile from his approach and attack on Asplin. Rather than actually accusing Asplin of being Scott’s killer, he was demonstrating how people other than Macdonald had strained relations with Scott and had the opportunity to kill him. Moreover, he illustrated that, just as police had done with Macdonald, actions and comments made after Scott’s death could so easily be reinterpreted in a negative light if desired. Simple and innocent events or interactions could take on a sinister hue if the starting point was the assumption that this person was actually the killer.

King’s essential message to the jury was that a circumstantial case could be made against Asplin and others just as easily as it had been made against Macdonald. Take away Macdonald’s past crimes against Scott and Kylee, and there was nothing that connected him with Scott’s death any more than anyone else.

But behind this argument was also the defence’s belief that Simon Asplin had simply not been properly investigated by police. Though police had interviewed him several times, they had only once visited his house. That consisted of a two-hour visit that included time to type up Asplin’s statement and take photos of some of his footwear. He was never read his rights, his shotgun was never taken for inspection, his possible ownership of dive boots never fully investigated. Some of those closest to him who had talked about his unhappiness with Scott were never formally interviewed.

Compared to others who police looked at very closely as suspects, Asplin seemed to have slipped their notice.

The first day of the trial was Ewen Macdonald’s 32nd birthday—his second in custody and a far cry from the family fun that used to accompany such occasions. While most described Macdonald as a quiet, almost dour man, in surroundings where he was comfortable he could be the joker. Photos show him at one birthday party sticking spoons on his nose and ears to entertain his kids.

That first day, 5 June, was also the 36th wedding anniversary of Bryan and Jo Guy, who could have scarcely imagined or organised a less romantic way to mark it. The following day Bryan entered the court to give evidence, the first of seven appearances—the most of anyone called by the prosecution. Shortish with wiry hair and thin-rimmed glasses, he wore tan shoes and a blue suit, a silver fern on his lapel signifying his pride in New Zealand. He hadn’t seen Macdonald, his son-in-law, for 14 months, since his arrest, though Macdonald had written to him once from prison. In the letter he asked Bryan and Jo to forgive him for not being honest and wrote that, in time, he hoped they could rebuild their relationship.

The revelations of Macdonald’s crimes had hit him like a tsunami, Bryan said, as he struggled to understand everything that had happened. Macdonald had become such an integral part of their family that Bryan and Jo treated him like one of their own children. While Macdonald was quiet, Bryan saw himself as a younger man in many of Macdonald’s characteristics and actions. Even Jo Guy acknowledged that Macdonald reminded her of Bryan in many ways: the ‘strong, silent type’, with a good work ethic. Ewen and Anna had got on reasonably well, Bryan felt, given the pressures of raising four young children, and he noted that Macdonald was a great father.

All of which made it harder to fathom his secret life that had now been exposed. ‘I thought it was all quite sad, really,’ he’d told police, ‘and that he must have some sort of mental illness to do such things. It’s probably the only way I can reconcile it in my own mind, because it’s not the behaviour of the Ewen that we know.’

He’d never seen Macdonald get angry or frustrated. Despite Scott often complaining about Macdonald, Bryan said he’d never heard Ewen moaning about Scott. While there had been tensions following Scott’s outburst at the family meeting in 2008, ‘as far as I observed and was told there wasn’t any obvious friction between Ewen and Scott for what I think to be about 12 months before Scott’s death’.

In court, Bryan maintained his composure while recounting the events of 8 July 2010 after Macdonald called him to say something terrible had happened to Scott—how he raced to the farm, couldn’t find anyone and finally arrived at Scott’s driveway. But when describing walking towards where his son lay, he became teary, despite the considered questioning from Ben Vanderkolk. ‘All I wanted was to give him a hug,’ Bryan said.

Eventually questions turned to the farm shotgun, the weapon police believed had been used to murder Scott. Bryan acknowledged it had been broken down and kept in three pieces in the farm office, the fore end in a blue cabinet and the barrel and stock hidden behind it along with an ammunition belt. He also accepted he’d not told police this for nearly a year, instead telling them the pieces had been locked away in two safes in the garage and office behind Ewen and Anna’s house. Bryan had been using the shotgun to scare ducks and other birds from the silage because the automatic gas gun wasn’t working, and for ease of access hadn’t locked it away as was legally required.