Who Killed Scott Guy? (16 page)
As soon as he rejoined the rest of the family at 147 Aorangi Road after leaving Kylee’s house that morning, he’d checked the shotgun and put it and the ammunition back in the safes where they were supposed to be. A month later, when police asked him where the shotgun had been on the morning of the murder, he said it had been in the safes.
It wasn’t until 15 April the following year, a week after Macdonald’s arrest, that he admitted to police he’d lied, embarrassed by his failure to keep his firearms safely stored. ‘I knew that I’d done the wrong thing and didn’t want to admit it, I suppose.’ It was a humbling admission from someone who had been central to the police investigation and at the heart of keeping everyone together after the loss of first Scott and then Macdonald from their family. ‘I didn’t tell the truth and I guess you could say, well, that’s a lie . . . and I regret it.’ Bryan noted that when he checked on the shotgun after Scott’s murder, he was relieved to find it was exactly where he had left it, and nothing suggested it had been used in the meantime.
During the trial, Bryan was frequently brought back to what occurred that morning, several times recounting that first phone call from Macdonald. The call lasted 22 seconds. One of the only things he remembered about it, apart from the fact that something had happened to Scott and he’d better get out to the farm quickly, was Macdonald saying something about ‘his face’.
The Crown seized on this as evidence of Macdonald’s guilt. It argued that only the killer would have known where Scott had been shot. Macdonald had been stopped by police from approaching the body, and in the dim morning light couldn’t have seen clearly where the wound was from a distance of between 6 and 10 metres.
Later, Greg King put it to Bryan Guy that what Macdonald had probably said, as he blurted out that Scott had been in an accident, was that it was at ‘his place’. Macdonald had told Bryan to get out to the farm but Bryan didn’t recall him saying where to go—which was why he first drove to the milking shed and silage pit. Given that his overriding memory of the call was that Macdonald was virtually incomprehensible, King suggested it was fair to assume Macdonald had actually told him where to come but he’d simply misunderstood what had been said.
Bryan Guy agreed this was a possibility. And indeed it seems plausible, given that the major wound on Scott’s body wasn’t to his face, but his throat—which was why David Berry told the 111 operator that Scott’s throat had been cut. With both men emotional and shocked, it’s not unreasonable to believe that not everything was clearly spoken, heard or understood.
In addition, King noted that Bryan Guy hadn’t mentioned the ‘his face’ comment until after Macdonald was arrested—nine months after the confused conversation that shattered the lives of Bryan and all his family.
Understanding what was said in the chaotic and confused first minutes of that morning became a crucial argument at trial. More important than Bryan Guy’s recollection of Macdonald’s precise words were accusations Macdonald had told people Scott had been shot well before that was clarified or actually known.
The only people who’d seen Scott close up in the first hour were David Berry, who’d knelt over him; Bruce Johnstone, who’d walked up to the body but not touched it; police officers Neil Martin and Leanna Smith; and St John paramedic Robert Hiscox.
Apart from Berry’s instinctive assumption that Scott’s throat had been cut, nobody had a clear view on the actual cause of death. The mere fact Scott was dead was sufficient for most to absorb at that stage. That it obviously wasn’t something like a heart attack clearly suggested he had been murdered. But the exact means wasn’t the most immediate thing people needed to know or cope with right then.
Scott’s sister, Nikki Guy, lived just up the road in a farm cottage near the milking shed. After completing a degree in agribusiness and applied science at Massey University she had worked in Auckland for a clothing company, then in 2001 taken a farm consultant’s job in Taranaki. But she returned home in July 2004 when her mother suggested opening a clothes store, Reve. In 2010 she was elected to Palmerston North City Council.
Nikki said she was told of Scott’s death in a phone call from her mother, Jo, at 8.06 am as she was getting ready for work. Her immediate thought was that Scott must have died in his sleep or from something natural, never imagining he’d been gunned down. She quickly finished dressing and was at the cordon within minutes. Several other people were there, she remembered, including her mother, David Berry and Ewen Macdonald, Kylee’s friend Jo Moss, her husband Evan, and their son Sam’s partner.
At some stage, Nikki recalled David Berry saying Scott had been stabbed, and she remembered Macdonald contradicting him, saying, ‘No, he was shot.’ So adamant was Macdonald, Nikki said, that when Berry repeated what he’d seen, Macdonald again sought to correct him.
She immediately thought it was strange, and wondered how Macdonald would have known, given it was Berry who’d discovered her brother. As Nikki described it, it seemed a telling indictment on Macdonald—having knowledge of how Scott was killed before it had been ascertained. This was a key plank in the prosecution’s case, and they repeated the fact that only the murderer could have known how Scott died, insisting it was a damning slip by Macdonald.
But crucially, the man who Macdonald allegedly argued with over the manner of death, David Berry, said Macdonald never made such a comment. As he remembered events, it was one of Kylee’s friends, or maybe her sister, he thought, who had insisted Scott was shot. The whole conversation had taken place behind him and he hadn’t even turned round to see who it was, let alone enter into an argument with them as Nikki suggested. He stated he didn’t know who the person was and added that he didn’t think Macdonald was even there when the comment was made.
Greg King cast further doubt on Nikki’s memory when he pointed out that the first time she’d mentioned overhearing this conversation with Berry was after Macdonald’s arrest—more than nine months later. In fact, her earliest statement noted nothing about Macdonald’s conduct that gave her cause for concern.
Nobody else, other than Nikki, testified that Macdonald had mentioned in the initial hours that Scott had been shot, despite him talking to many people. Nobody else waiting at the cordon recalled the conversation Nikki insisted took place. Bryan Guy didn’t remember Macdonald telling him Scott had been shot, despite talking to him twice before he arrived at the cordon. He felt it was only when he reached the scene—which Macdonald had left by then—that he got the impression Scott had been shot, and thought it might have been Bruce Johnstone who mentioned it.
In a police statement from June 2011, Bryan says that when he rang his wife, Jo, to break the news, he told her he thought Scott had been shot. Bryan said that later that morning he definitely knew there was a possibility Scott had been shot, because he immediately locked away the farm shotgun and the ammunition when he arrived back at the farm office.
Matthew Ireland, who Macdonald also spoke to, said he didn’t know Scott was shot until the following day. Simon Asplin, who did know very early that morning that Scott was shot, claimed he’d heard it from Matthew Ireland—not Macdonald, who had phoned him from the cordon.
Jo Guy, in a statement to police after Macdonald was arrested, did recall discussing whether Scott had been shot. But she said she raised it with Macdonald when she arrived at the police cordon—suggesting she’d already heard it from someone else. When she asked Macdonald if Scott had been shot, he twice replied that he didn’t know but Jo believed he then said, ‘I think so.’ It seems most likely she heard her son had been shot from Bryan, who’d mentioned it in his initial phone call to her—before she arrived at the scene and talked with Macdonald.
Callum Guy had been phoned by Macdonald at 8.06 am and told Scott had been in an accident. They spoke for a minute but Macdonald never mentioned Scott being shot, according to Callum. It wasn’t until he arrived at 147 Aorangi Road that his mother or Nikki told him how Scott died.
When Scott’s friend Luke Moss arrived at the police cordon around 8 am, the Higgins contractor who was blocking Aorangi Road told him there had been ‘a shooting’—clearly suggesting it was widely rumoured even that early that Scott had been shot.
And when Ewen Macdonald rang his parents at 8.59 am—after being at the cordon with Nikki and the others—they asked him if it was suicide and Macdonald said he didn’t know how Scott had died. In a statement to police less than a fortnight after Scott’s death, well before anyone suspected Macdonald or police had zeroed in on him supposedly saying Scott had been shot before anyone else knew, Kerry Macdonald told police, ‘I remember him saying that there was a lot of blood and it looked like Scott’s throat had been cut.’
The Crown explained this by saying Ewen Macdonald had by then had time to collect himself. But Greg King poured scorn on this and said it was fantasy that Macdonald would have deliberately implicated himself by letting slip information only the killer would have known. And not just letting it slip—but entering into an argument about it by twice insisting he knew how Scott had died.
King told the jury that Nikki’s claim, on which the Crown relied so heavily as evidence of Macdonald’s guilt, was a retrospective reconstruction and reinterpretation of events. He also stressed that the only mention of Macdonald saying in the first few hours that Scott had been shot came after his arrest and showed how previously innocent events suddenly become sinister on reflection when someone is accused of a crime.
The suspicion Scott had been shot actually arose almost immediately. Despite David Berry telling the emergency operator Scott’s throat had been cut, Constable Leanna Smith noted in a police interview that she armed herself with the Bushmaster rifle at the scene because of ‘the possibility that a firearm may have been used’. Most family members and farm workers knew this was how Scott had been killed before it was publicly announced the day after his death. And very quickly people came forward to tell police they’d heard shots early that morning.
Bonnie Fredriksson had finished work at 10 pm on Wednesday, 7 July, and returned to her home in Reid Line East near where it meets Aorangi Road. The house, which was owned by Bruce Johnstone, was about 500 metres from Scott and Kylee’s home. Fredriksson went to bed about 11.15 pm but didn’t sleep well, waking frequently. Her alarm was due to go off at 6 am so she could feed her horses at Ashhurst, but about an hour before that, as she lay awake, she heard three gunshots in quick succession.
She came from a farming background and was experienced with firearms—she’d stalked deer with a .308 rifle and was familiar with .22 rifles. She described the sounds she heard as coming from a ‘heavier type gun’. There had been regular intervals between them—‘bang, bang, bang’—over about one and a half seconds, she estimated. She kept listening and didn’t go back to sleep but heard no other noises.
Living in the same house was Derek Sharp, a farm worker and beekeeper. He’d first met Kylee and Scott when dropping off some spare honey and later got to know Scott as a neighbour. Sharp said he was woken around 4.45 am and heard two loud booms in quick succession close to his house. He considered ringing his landlord, Bruce Johnstone, because there had been concerns about poaching, but thought the gun sounded like a shotgun and it seemed more likely someone was shooting possums rather than deer. Annoyed at being woken so early, he lay awake listening for anything else for ten minutes then went back to sleep. When he got up, he looked across the paddocks towards Scott and Kylee’s and saw hazard lights flashing in the gloom and shortly afterwards, a police car.
When Fredriksson came back from tending her horses, they talked about hearing the shots and, because Fredriksson had been awake and clearly heard three gunshots, they surmised Sharp had been woken by the first shot then heard the following two. Sharp began to wonder if the killing was a case of mistaken identity and he was the intended target because of a serious crime in his past.
On the other side of the road from Scott and Kylee’s house, about 300 metres down Aorangi Road, Alison Rankin also heard something. She’d lived in the house at number 264 for nearly 50 years, since she was married, and the farm had been owned by her husband’s family ever since the road was opened. At 5 am she got up, noticed the time and went to the toilet. When she went back to bed she heard a bang that sounded like a gunshot—or a branch cracking off a tree, though it was a calm and quiet night, she said.
A little further down the road from her, Fraser Langbein, a solid, balding man with ZZ Top beard, was woken by something and sat bolt upright on the edge of his bed. He checked his clock, wanting to know how much time he had before having to be at work, and it was 5 am. Several weeks before, there had been an attempted break-in at his garage and he was conscious of burglars returning. To that end he had been up until 1.30 am in the rain trying to fix a security light at the property. His wife also woke and asked what was happening, but on hearing nothing more, they quickly went back to sleep.