Who Killed Scott Guy? (23 page)

The Crown’s case was that only the Pro Line boot manufactured before 2006 could have made the imprints and that they were extremely difficult to purchase, so it was almost certain they would have been bought from a Hunting & Fishing store. Given that they claimed Macdonald had purchased a pair from his father’s store, Vanderkolk argued it was simply too much of a coincidence for anyone else to have owned a pair and worn them to murder Scott Guy, when only five pairs of size 9 boots had been sold in Manawatu.

However, in cross-examination Howell admitted that most of the databases he searched were only for shoes and didn’t include dive boots, thus it was unsurprising he didn’t find a match there. Moreover, while Howell had been giving evidence that morning, Liam Collins had found five internet sites where the same Pro Line dive boots could have been purchased by someone in New Zealand. Howell argued most of these sites linked back to a single supplier. When King pointed out they were available on sites like Amazon, Howell said most of the sites he had tried to source them from hadn’t shipped outside the United States so it wasn’t as easy to get them as it seemed—somehow ignoring the fact that Amazon is one of the world’s leading online sales companies and ships across the globe all the time.

Collins had also found the boots advertised on Facebook—but Howell admitted he’d never used Facebook so couldn’t comment on this. King then reeled off a list of dive boot manufacturers, asking Howell if he had investigated their boots—half of which Howell had to answer he hadn’t.

King also called into question just how unique the wavy-line pattern on the boots was. Police had contacted companies involved with the boots’ manufacture in early 2012 and were told that the sole wasn’t distinctive to Pro Line dive boots, but was a design available to anyone who wanted to use it.

Sandy Lee of Dynaway stated in an email to Howell, ‘This bottom is a common bottom that was widely used in diving/surfing as well as fishing manufacturing. This bottom was popular back in the 2000s and so most shoe factory [sic] opened this mold to sell to their customers.’ Tommy Joe of the Keep Well Company, which vulcanised the soles to the boot uppers, also told Howell, ‘We also use the same type of sole model to other relate [sic] boots so I am not quite sure that is unique or not.’

The Crown had intended to call representatives from Pro Line, Dynaway and Keep Well to give evidence. But on the Thursday before the trial began, they dropped all four individuals from the witness list, claiming it was too expensive to bring them to New Zealand. It seemed extraordinary such fiscal constraints were only realised or enforced days out from a major trial when witness lists had been prepared for months.

Greg King was angry, writing to the Crown to say how concerned he was at this development as he didn’t believe Howell could adequately give evidence on their behalf. The defence suspected the real reason the witnesses had been pulled at the last minute was that they would give evidence under cross-examination that the tread pattern found at the murder scene was actually common to a number of dive boots, not just the Pro Line W375.

Because the witnesses lived overseas, they could not be compelled to attend the trial, so in the end all the defence could do was ask Howell what the company representatives had said in emails.

Once police had found the type of dive boots they believed had the same tread pattern as the impressions left at the scene, they then turned to trying to find examples of the Pro Line boots. Ultimately, they managed to find either one boot or a pair of sizes 7, 9, 10 and 11, some used, some new. They were unable to source examples of sizes 8, 12 or 13.

All Macdonald’s footwear was size 9 so the Crown case was built around him wearing this size of Pro Line boot. But first they had to prove he owned them. The assumption was that Macdonald would have bought his dive boots from his father’s shop, Hunting & Fishing Manawatu. And by trawling back through his bank records, police found a purchase made on his Visa card at the store on 18 February 2004 for $35. While there was no record of what the goods actually were, police believed it was Pro Line dive boots. The boots were stocked at the time; it was just before Macdonald went on a hunting trip to Stewart Island in March 2004 where colleagues remembered him wearing dive boots around the hut; and $35 was the wholesale price of the boots—and Macdonald usually got goods at this cheap rate from his father.

But when Kerry Macdonald sat down in the witness box, proudly wearing his Macdonald clan tartan tie and lapel badge, he put the purchase in context. He told the court that when either of his sons bought something from the shop, they paid the wholesale price plus GST and then rounded the price up to the nearest dollar, in order to cover freight costs. At that time GST was 12.5 per cent, so the final figure would have been $40 rather than $35.

Again, without definitive proof, the Crown’s version of events became dogged by uncertainty. Detective Laurie Howell, who had done much of the work on the boots and was the man who finally arrested Macdonald, appeared to feel the strain of being questioned closely about his thoroughness.

One day during the trial, Liam Collins happened to stumble across a woman’s magazine at the court with a headline ‘Sole Searching—50 Hot Footwear Picks for Summer’. Seeing the irony, he ripped it out and put it in his pocket. Two days later, when passing Howell outside the courtroom, Collins pulled the article from his pocket and, with the impishness of a rookie lawyer, said, ‘Oh, hi, detective, you told us how you checked 30,000 pairs of footwear—did you check this one out or search this database?’

‘No,’ Howell sternly replied, unable to see the joke, and stalked off.

Late on day 15, Monday, 25 June, the Crown called its crucial expert witness to give evidence about the dive boots. David Neale, a forensic scientist at ESR in Porirua, arrived in the court armed with a brown cardboard box of lever-arch folders of analysis and notes that he arrayed around him.

He had visited 293 Aorangi Road on the day of the murder and then again two days later. While he had examined the driveway, Scott’s ute and other items, it was the impressions left at the scene by the dive boots that the Crown concentrated on when questioning him. He said there were no complete footprints, but many were clear enough to show whether they were left or right feet and in which direction they were pointing.

The Crown produced a succession of casts taken from imprints at the scene and proffered them in front of the jury, like failed cakes at a children’s baking competition being brought up for judging. Neale gave evidence of how Scott’s blood had seeped into one of the footprints, supposedly after the killer walked up to check his victim was dead. As the casts were paraded and pored over, an image of savagery gradually accumulated, the murderer’s path being outlined to the jury, step by bloody footstep.

Neale’s appearance spilled over into the following day as he described the distinctive characteristics of the boots’ soles. They had a wavy-line pattern, with 8 millimetres between the peaks of the waves and 5.5 millimetres between the individual rows. In the midfoot area there was a label with no wavy lines. Around the side of the boot was a strip of foxing with a small diamond-shaped pattern.

After examining databases and testing other dive boots provided by the police, Neale became convinced the shoe they were looking for was a dive boot. When police brought him Pro Line boots, he told them that all the characteristics of the scene imprints were present in the required configuration in those boots.

He tested the sample boots by making impressions in mud and then casting them as had been done with the footprints found at Aorangi Road. This suggested the boots that made the scene imprints had worn soles, as the ridges of the wavy lines were less distinct than those from tests with new boots.

In association with podiatrist Greg Coyle, Neale had ascertained that the overall length of impressions left at the scene ranged from 283 to 303 millimetres. The length of the sample boots police had obtained were: 273.5 millimetres for size 7, 285 millimetres for size 9, 292 millimetres for size 10 and 306.7 millimetres for size 11. Thus, Neale said, he believed a size 7 or 11 boot could be ruled out as having made the imprints. Consequently, he suggested the person who left the crucial prints at the scene was wearing a size 9 or 10 boot. In addition, he said that, based on imprints of Macdonald’s feet taken after his arrest, his foot would fit within the limits of the impressions taken from the size 9, 10 and 11 boots he had been supplied with—but the size 7 would be too small.

That morning, Greg King had bounced into court with even more enthusiasm than normal, full of coffee and quips. Partly it was caffeine, from the small espresso machine he’d brought to court from his home, but partly it was the knowledge that today was the day when he could deliver one of his most telling blows to the Crown case, not just further discrediting the Crown’s dive boot theory but potentially blowing their entire case out of the water.

When he rose to cross-examine Neale he carefully took him through all the measurements of the reference boots. Then he turned to the length of the impressions preserved at the scene, and Neale admitted one imprint was calculated to be 305 millimetres—and could be even longer—but was ruled out because of uncertainty about exactly where the heel ended. He stressed that all the measurements made from the scene footprints were approximate but pretty accurate.

Then King referred Neale to three casts and asked how many rows of waves there were in the forefoot—from the label in the middle of the boot to the tip of the toe. Neale, who had noted this in his extensive working notes, replied that there were 32 to 33 rows but there could have been more, given the imprints couldn’t be guaranteed to be precise.

Pointing to the size 7 boot exhibited in court, King asked Neale, ‘Can you count for us the number of rows of waves in the forefoot?’

‘I make that 25,’ Neale replied.

‘Can I now ask you to look at the size 9 Pro Line boot, the actual exhibit? Again, can you count the number of waves from the forefoot?’

‘Certainly—29, approximately.’

King asked Neale to perform the same task with the size 10 and 11 reference boots, which were handed to him in turn by court crier John Conley. Everyone waited in expectant silence as Neale completed his calculations. The size 10 was very worn so he could only count 29 to 30 rows, but there could have been more rows, he said. And the size 11 had 30 full rows and a partial row, according to Neale.

King pointed out that with each size increment, it seemed two rows of waves were added in the forefoot to accommodate the extra length. It was logical and seemed to be supported by the exhibits the Crown had brought to court. Reminding Neale that three casts from the scene had revealed 32 to 33 rows, King emphatically challenged the scientist: ‘So, if your calculation was accurate, there is no way in the world that [the boot that made the scene imprints] can be a pair of size 9 Pro Line dive boots.’

The scientific certitude and measured analysis that Neale had until then exhibited began to slip into hesitation and equivocation as he raised issues of the rubber’s type and design. King became more and more exasperated as Neale flinched from accepting King’s rationale and the fact that the boot that had made some impressions at the murder scene was much more likely to have been a size 11 or even 12 than the size 9 police believed Ewen Macdonald wore.

‘Why would you discount the rows of waves? Why would you discount it?’

Neale refused to be pinned down. ‘The rows of waves on the cast from the scene are from a boot which I have not seen,’ he answered. ‘I cannot say the exact design of that boot. It may not be a Pro Line boot. It may be a Pro Line boot,’ he stated, radically widening the evidential possibilities and substantially undermining the Crown theory in a sentence.

King continued to pursue Neale, who was struggling to retain his methodical demeanour: ‘What possible basis have you got for speculating that Pro Line had a size 9 boot with 32 rows of waves in it?’

‘Because I have not seen every Pro Line boot that’s ever been manufactured at size 9,’ Neale responded with what appeared to be a large scientific sidestep.