I sat on the door side of the public gallery with Shannon on one side and Andrea on the other, and next to Andrea was Karen. I was set with my folder of notes, pad and pens for any of us to write any ideas/thoughts/questions. We were a team and together we would slay this dragon.
Helen entered the courtroom with a short, peculiar-looking man who turned out to be Graham Coumbe, her lawyer. The four of us looked hard at Helen’s legs to see if we could see her home detention ankle bracelet.
I felt sick seeing Helen again, knowing this was my make-or-break chance to get the truth, and that it was going to require confronting her while she was on the stand.
I texted my son Lance to say we were at the court, and also texted another friend, saying I didn’t know how I was going to do this. He sent back a really inspirational text that stopped the butterflies in my stomach. Of course, Lance replied with some smart-arsed comment about tripping Helen over and telling me to take her down.
The officer of the court asked us to stand and Coroner Sue Johnson entered. She started the inquest by acknowledging Phil and welcoming us all there, then explained her role:
I just want to say this before we start, that Mr Nisbet’s death — Philip’s death — appeared self-inflicted and a coroner must open an enquiry into any death that appears to be self-inflicted. The reason that I’ve decided to hold an inquest as part of my enquiry as there have been allegations and rumours and gossip about Mr Nisbet’s death, as well as a lot of conflicting statements and inconsistent statements made about it. And so I consider that it is important that we sift through the rumours and gossip and inconsistencies and find out the facts through this inquisitorial process of an inquest.
And I am only concerned with the facts. The jurisdiction of the coroner is limited to making findings of fact. It is not the coroner’s role to attribute blame or to hint at blame. So my role is to establish the facts, and those facts need to be proved to my satisfaction by evidence. I am here to establish what Mr Nisbet died from, and how it was that he came to have died.
One of the police detectives read his brief of evidence and produced statements, reports and other evidence in the form of exhibits. He stated, ‘Prolonged police enquiries have found no conclusive evidence to back up the family’s concerns.’ I was totally and utterly disgusted with him for making this statement to the coroner as if he had never believed it, when he had said to me on several occasions that he believed Helen had murdered Phil but he didn’t have the level of evidence for the Crown to be willing to prosecute such a case.
Then Dr Martin Sage, who had performed the autopsy, gave evidence and I was given my first opportunity to ask questions. I did so, asking about the levels of Phenergan found in Phil’s blood, and how many tablets this would equate to. I also asked that, as no alcohol was showing in Phil’s system at the autopsy, did this mean he had had no alcohol at all in the previous 24 hours? Dr Sage explained the process of the deterioration of alcohol in blood and urine, meaning it was inconclusive as to whether Phil had had any alcohol on the afternoon or early evening before his death.
(I was interested in the effect of Phenergan taken with alcohol, and if that had made the situation worse for Phil. I knew they had not long got back from Australia so would have had a stash of duty free, plus they had racks full of wine. I had wondered if he had had a big day gardening, then had a drink before being given the Phenergan.)
Dr Sage explained there hadn’t been many previous cases of death from Phenergan overdose alone, and in those cases the levels were extremely high. However, while the levels in Phil’s blood were well in excess of the expected therapeutic level, they were not at the levels of previously recorded deaths.
He explained that there are two ways an overdose of Phenergan might affect a person. Firstly, of which it is well known, that Phenergan makes most people drowsy — it has been widely used over the years to settle children. He said Phenergan is a dose-related sedative, so the more you take, the more sedated you become. ‘So if you have levels in your body that are much higher than you would expect to see for ordinary therapeutic usage, then you would expect that Philip was going to be severely sedated by that.’ Dr Sage then said that the other trap is that Phenergan in high levels can cause abnormal heart rhythms which can be fatal, but this is not so closely related to dosage.
He said in a person who was over-sedated with Phenergan and in a coma, changes would occur in the brain which could be seen in a post-mortem examination. However, in Phil’s case these changes were not present, suggesting his death had been more sudden, and caused by cardiac arrhythmia or an abnormal heart rhythm related to his ingestion of promethazine (Phenergan), rather than prolonged sedation.
Dr Sage’s conclusions came as a relief. It made me feel slightly better to know that Phil died fairly quickly and not in some horrible prolonged coma.
Helen was the next on the stand. The coroner brought up how Helen had given Phil a Phenergan tablet when they were in Australia around six weeks before his death.
Helen agreed that he had taken Phenergan for a bite or something, stating, ‘I always carry low-dose Phenergan tablets because I’m allergic to bee stings … I am a diabetic, so I have my insulin pens and everything, and with having the adrenaline EpiPen as well it gets … you know, if someone needs to give me something in a hurry, it could get pretty confusing, so my having the Phenergan tablet, and it is always a low dose, it just gives me that little bit longer before I need to seek medical attention.’ She went on to explain, ‘so I gave him one of those. And it really knocked him. He was … he slept for probably a good six hours after he had taken that. But to my knowledge that was the first and only time he had ever taken one.’ The coroner said, ‘OK. So that was your Phenergan tablet?’ Helen confirmed, ‘That was mine, yes.’
Helen went on to paint Phil as a very stressed, highly strung person. Then the coroner asked, ‘I know it is difficult for you, but that day — can you just walk me through what you did on the day, the two of you, what Philip did?’
Helen replied, ‘Well, we actually had one of the better days we had had in quite a while. He seemed more content, seemed a lot calmer. We went out, did some shopping, we went out for lunch, talked about things we were going to do around the house … We went home, we had dinner and we—’
The coroner interjected. ‘What did you do in the afternoon?’
‘By the time we had coffee, and we went home, and you know, put the groceries and everything away, and … we sort of sat around and decided what we would do around the house to make it a little bit more appealing to us to want to stay there. And he just … as I say, he just seemed very calm, very … in fact, looking back now, he was too calm. He was too … yes.’
Helen agreed when the coroner asked, ‘So you were together the whole day?’ And when she asked Helen, ‘So he was not like out doing gardening or anything like that?’ Helen replied with a firm ‘No’.
When Helen was asked as to whether she had dinner and what time they had dinner, she replied, ‘I honestly could not answer that one.’ When asked what they had eaten that night she couldn’t remember that either.
Helen stated that Phil went to bed at 9.30 p.m. and that she watched Bones (I now tell people if you want to get away with murder, this show is probably not the best one to get tips from, as it sure as hell didn’t work for Helen!) from 9.30 to 10.30 p.m., which gave Phil a chance to get to sleep. Helen said when she crawled into bed she leant over and gave Phil a kiss, and that she always did this.
When the coroner asked her about the note she found some time after Phil’s death, Helen replied, ‘Phil’s letter? Yes, that was in his briefcase. I was … I had an overdue account in the mail and I was looking for accounts that needed to be sorted so I went through his briefcase, which I had not thought to … to try and pick up bills and what-have-you prior to that, that was the least of my concerns at that stage. And it was at the top of his briefcase.’
Helen confirmed that the letter mentioned that
Ben was not his son. The coroner then asked her if Phil had ever mentioned this to her previously, and Helen replied, ‘No, never. That was the first time that I’d heard of it.’
The coroner questioned Helen on Phil’s two admissions to hospital on 15 April, just 18 days before his death. Helen explained, ‘He collapsed at work one morning, and to start with they thought he had had a stroke, and then they did all sorts of tests and then it got down to maybe it was a residual infection from the bite that he had got in Australia, and in the end it was basically they did not know …
‘And then as the day went on he seemed to improve and then in the evening again he seemed to start to go downhill again, so I took him back up to the hospital in the evening. Later in the day — it was after tea — he said he was starting to feel pretty bad again and struggling to breathe, so I took [him] back up to the hospital and they checked [him] out and just said, well, you know, “Don’t know what’s wrong, go and see your GP. There’s nothing more we can do here for you at the moment.”’
Phil’s Christchurch Hospital emergency department record and St John ambulance record state that he was picked up by ambulance before 8 a.m., complaining of feeling dizzy, nauseous, having hot and cold periods. His leg was painful where he thought he had been bitten two days previously by a spider in the garden, and he reported that his breathing felt tight. He was speaking rapidly but normally. He was given an injection of promethazine to calm the nausea and in case he was having an allergic reaction.
At the hospital they took blood tests, and did an ECG and cardiac monitoring. The doctor who saw him at 9 a.m. described Phil as anxious but this was dismissed due to Helen and Phil admitting he was of a nervous and anxious disposition. He was discharged and sent home with Helen around 10 a.m.
At 8.30 p.m. that evening Phil was brought back to the hospital by Helen. The hospital notes state: ‘Continues to feel lethargic, feels he has nil power in limbs. Unable to remember short-term events. Symptoms have been over last week. Has slept most of the day. States has slurred speech.’ Additional notes said ‘terrified he is incredibly unwell, I think he has a viral illness and a lot of super-added anxiety which means he is catastrophising the situation and I have told this to him and his partner.’ He was discharged and sent home with Helen at 11 p.m.
I personally have never thought a viral illness would cause slurred speech without either showing in blood tests or causing a change in temperature, but hey, I’m not a doctor.
In answer to the coroner’s question regarding any stress Phil was under, Helen stated, ‘He also had concerns, rightly or wrongly, about Ben’s welfare, because he had indicated that somebody had told him that Ben’s mum was working from home as a prostitute with Ben in the house and he was not happy about it. But that was just something he said. How much truth there is in that, I don’t know.’ I had to refrain from yelling out, ‘There is no truth in it because you’re the one who told Phil this lie!’
The police detective also questioned Helen on this when it was his turn for questioning.
‘You referred to Ben’s mother as a prostitute earlier in your evidence.’
Helen replied, ‘Mm’hm. Well, that is what we had been told.’
When the detective asked why she never mentioned this fact in the two statements taken from her by the police, she replied, ‘I don’t know, probably because it is one of those things that I have … a thought that may have been causing Phil some distress. At the time I do not know whether I thought about those things, but Phil had been told by somebody that had known Karen quite well that that was what she was doing, and Ben had also made mention on more than one occasion that there were different men sleeping on the couch in the mornings.’
When I questioned Helen, I also asked her where this information about Karen had come from. She said it was around the time Karen had fallen out with a friend, who had then told Phil what was going on.
The police detective also asked Helen for clarification on what Helen and Phil had done on that last day before he died.
‘You said that Philip had not been in the garden that day?’
‘Mm’hm.’
‘And you had spent all day with him as well?’
‘Mm’hm.’
The detective brought up Phil’s Vodafone records and a text to Ben:
Brother, as long as you had fun, I had a good day, sorry just got your text, been out in the garden.
‘So I am just wondering — you say you’re with him all day, and you were not in the garden.’
‘The only thing I can think of is we sat out on the deck and had a coffee and tea, but other than that, we did not do any gardening that day at all.’
The coroner asked, ‘So, was Phil lying then?’
‘Well, he must have been, because we certainly did not do any gardening that day. We had a garden that was completely covered in stones, that only needed to be weeded once in a blue moon, and a small vegetable garden around the back which was my domain,’ Helen replied.
I remembered how when I was at the house at the time of Lance’s 21st, Ray, the next-door neighbour, had called over. Helen was mocking Phil about how every Sunday at teatime he would be out with the blower tidying the leaves in the garden and Ray agreed it was like clockwork: every Sunday without fail.
Andrew was first to question Helen, and asked her about her cell phone. She replied, ‘I had two cell phones — I had a Telecom cell phone which was the one that I used all the time. I also had a Vodafone cell phone, which was the one that Phil and I texted each other on or rang each other on, because we had a good deal on that, and that was the one that I had Wilma’s cell-phone number stored on because she was also Vodafone.’
She was implying that she turned on her Vodafone phone in the morning, in front of the police, so she could call her friend Wilma, but police and phone records showed Wilma was not the first person she chose to contact after she found Phil’s body, but a man she had had a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with for a number of years, prior to her relationship with Phil. (For more on him and their very creepy relationship, see Chapter Nineteen).
I started my questioning with Helen regarding the so-called suicide note.
‘When you texted me and I rang you, the day you found the suicide note, you told me you found it in the safe.’
Helen snapped, ‘No, I did not.’
‘And you also told my parents you found it in the safe, and Andrea _____ you found it in the safe.’
Her reply was even snappier. ‘No, I did not.’
‘When you handed it to me on Tuesday, 8 June in front of your partner, Barry ____, you said, ‘Here’s the note I found in his bedside drawer.’ When I opened it there was a signature just off centre to the right — an attempt at writing Phil, which was not Phil’s signature. Are you saying that was not …’
‘The suicide note that I showed you is the one that I gave to the police, and I have never said it was in the safe — the card was in the bedside drawer.’
‘You told me the card was in your underwear drawer.’
‘Yes, which was my bedside drawer.’
I moved to my next subject.
‘What was the argument about on the Friday night preceding Phil’s death?’
Helen replied, ‘What argument?’
Karen called out, ‘Ben was there.’
‘The one when he arrived home — you were in your bathrobe and pretended you had not been to work that day?’
‘What?’
‘What was that argument?’
Deny, deny. ‘I do not know what you are talking about.’
So now we were up to Phil is a liar about doing the gardening; Mum and Dad, Andrea and I are liars about where the note was found and it having a handwritten ‘Phil’; and now Ben is a liar …
Then I had Helen up about her Phenergan tablets. She claimed her ones were 10 mg, while the ones the police found were 25 mg. I asked her about her allergies. ‘With these things, don’t people carry EpiPens if th
ey are severely allergic to bee stings, and [anti] histamines?’
‘Yes, as I explained, I do not carry an EpiPen because I am carrying two pens for my diabetes, for my insulin, and the EpiPen and the slow-release pen are both very, very similar to look at, and if I need somebody else to administer it in a hurry and they were to administer the wrong one for the wrong reason, it would kill me on the spot,’ Helen replied.
There was never any medical record evidence presented to confirm that Helen was allergic to bees. I believe Helen thrived on the attention she got from her diabetes and other health problems but even her mother, who was in close contact with Helen until five years before Phil’s death, had no knowledge of Helen having any problem with bees. Also, Helen claimed she kept her 10 mg Phenergan tablets in the kitchen cupboard. I would have thought that people who are ‘severely allergic’ would keep their medication on them, as it is required immediately, so keeping Phenergan in the kitchen cupboard would only have been of use if a bee flew in the window and got her. Surely the appropriate place for such medication would have been with her insulin medication that she carried on her at all times?
‘Ben’s hoodie that was at the house, that had been washed and was sitting on the clothes airer by the door — you were not aware of that? You did not see that, you did not do the washing?’
‘There was no clothes airer by the door.’ However, I had seen one there at the time of the funeral and again at the time of Lance’s 21st.
‘What time did Phil go to bed and what time did you go to bed?’
‘He went to bed about 9.30 and I went to bed about 10.30.’
‘OK, and was it general practice in the house to turn all phones off and put them on charge in the lounge area?’
Helen snapped, ‘No. No.’ However, I knew it was definitely the practice every time Ben had been in the house.
‘So was there a water glass next to the bed when you found him?’
Black Widow, The: How One Woman Got Justice for Her Murdered Brother Page 9