Sophie’s Legacy

by Lesley Elliot

  The right side of Sophie’s face and neck had been viciously stabbed and she looked strange. Although the room was already covered in blood, Sophie was a stark white colour. You don’t go white that quickly when you die but the savagery of his attack was such that Sophie had lost a massive amount of blood very rapidly. Her major arteries and veins had been severed and the forensic pathologist described the blood loss as ‘torrential bleeding that was inevitably lethal’.

  On the 111 call I can be heard scratching to get the skewer into the door handle, opening the door and being confronted by an unimaginably horrible sight. You then hear me screaming, ‘He’s killed her,’ before hearing the door being shut. The police call taker told me to leave the house. Sophie was by then beyond help so I rushed downstairs and fled along the driveway towards the street. I vainly thought of who could help, where could I run to? The house next door was unoccupied and the couple living directly opposite were medical professionals, seldom if ever home. Another neighbour is an ex-policeman and in my panic I tried to make for sanctuary there. But I only made it to the end of the drive. My legs could carry me no further and I collapsed onto the grass verge. I know I was being irrational on the phone. I’ve had to sit in court and endure it being played back. It was simply horrendous and I don’t want to hear it ever again.

  If anyone is under any illusion about the evilness of what that man was doing to my daughter, they would be shattered hearing my conversation with the police control room communicator. It was so compelling that after it was played at the depositions hearing there wasn’t a dry eye in the courtroom. When it came to the High Court trial, Weatherston’s counsel, Judith Ablett-Kerr, would successfully argue for the 111 call evidence to be suppressed from the jury — not because it was too emotional to listen to, but because it would be overly prejudicial to her client. I find this difficult to comprehend. What happened and what was said is reality. That is what took place. But it was too prejudicial? Unbelievable!

  Normally I’m level-headed, rational and calm in a crisis. But this was so different. Sitting on the grass verge by the roadside, it seemed ages before the first constable arrived. I know I had yelled at the call taker to hurry up. I know how long it takes to get to our place from town and as the minutes ticked by, the time dragged terribly slowly. Because we live in a no-exit street, few cars or people pass by. In those excruciating minutes no one came into sight. I was all alone, terrified, agonising that I couldn’t help Sophie and, on reflection, vulnerable. There I was, collapsed on the grass, shaking and crying uncontrollably, right behind Weatherston’s car. Curiously he’d not only parked his car on the roadside but had left it facing uphill towards the no-exit part of the street. Obviously he had given no thought to escaping quickly. It doesn’t bear thinking about what a dangerous position I would have been in had he returned to his car before the police arrived. When Constable John Cunningham arrived on the scene I even yelled at him. He was alone and quickly asked me what had happened and where. The last I saw of him he was running down the drive. At that time it didn’t register with me that this unarmed officer was going to confront a clearly deranged person with a large knife. On reflection, John shouldn’t have even gone into the house alone but he thought it was ‘just another domestic’. I heard him give his evidence and the way he handled the situation is a credit to himself and the police. In that evidence he said that after I’d told him Sophie was dead he went straight to her bedroom and tried to get in. The door was locked so John called for it to be opened or he would kick it in. The following is what he told the jury.

  I then heard the door being unlocked so I opened it and stepped into a small bedroom. In front of me, to my left, was the body of a young Caucasian female on the floor. She was covered in blood around her neck and upper torso. A male was standing with his hands by his sides at the end of the bed next to the body. I said to this person, ‘What have you done?’ To which he replied, ‘I killed her.’ He was calm and reserved. He did not appear to be shaking or anything similar, he was in a normal state and in control of himself. When I told him to lie face down on the floor he immediately complied. I then asked him, ‘Why did you kill her?’ He said, ‘The emotional pain she has caused me over the past year.’ When I asked him what he killed her with he said a knife. I asked him where the knife was and he said, ‘Probably under her.’ I asked him about a pair of scissors between the victim’s legs to which he replied, ‘I used them at the end.’ When I got him outside I asked him whose blood it was smeared over his arms, legs and face and he replied, ‘A little bit mine — mostly hers.’ When I asked him who he had killed he replied, ‘It is Sophie Kate Elliott, eleventh of June nineteen eighty-five.’

  To me Weatherston’s demeanour then, and what he later was reported to have said at the police station, is quite extraordinary given what he had just done to Sophie. I’ve been told that he was lucid, coherent, calm and not agitated. The same couldn’t be said of me.

  The next thing I remember is frenetic activity. Within moments a St John station wagon arrived with resuscitation gear. I remember pleading with the paramedic to save Sophie but I absolutely knew she was dead. I knew that from the moment I opened her bedroom door. Then an ambulance and about five more police cars arrived. If I yelled at any of them, and I’m sure I did, I apologise. An ambulance officer came to me and I said my mouth was dry. She brought me a bottle of water. I asked her to tell me Sophie was dead; I felt I just needed confirmation. Much of that time is a blur to me but some things are quite vivid. It was the strangest sensation: I could see people yet I couldn’t see; they were shapes rather than distinct people. I saw the ambulance officer talking to others and I now know they were discussing whether or not to tell me. The paramedic first on the scene had come outside so it was pretty obvious that Sophie was beyond help. I knew then that I’d lost my daughter — my friend.

  Ambulance staff wanted to take me to hospital, but I refused. Despite being in shock I was steady in my resolve to stay at my home. I couldn’t leave. Not yet. Police wanted to get me some help from either friends or family and I gave someone my phone to call Noeline, my best friend. We have worked together for many years and she was the first one I thought of. Thankfully she answered. It was while police were talking to her I remembered my brother John was working at nearby Port Chalmers, operating a container straddle crane. He was asked to go quickly to his sister’s home as there had been an ‘incident’. Poor John. When he arrived he was stopped at a police cordon. With emergency tape across the road, half a dozen police cars and two St John vehicles, he must have been shocked at what was before him. I remember him running up the road to me and asking what had happened. All I could say was ‘He’s killed her.’ He didn’t know for a moment what on earth I meant.

  Some things are clear in my mind while others didn’t register. I was still outside when Weatherston was taken away. Apparently he’d been brought downstairs and forced to lie face down on our lawn with his hands cuffed behind his back. Of course I couldn’t see the house or lawn behind the trees. When he was driven out, however, he would have been close by, but any view I might have had was obscured by several policemen who thoughtfully shielded me from him. On the other hand I do vividly remember looking down to the cordon and seeing a television news crew setting up. I had never known beforehand that media newsrooms are equipped with scanners that monitor the radio frequencies of police and other emergency services. That’s how they respond so quickly. All I envisaged were news reports about a slaying with images of our house. What if my husband Gil saw such a thing before he’d been told? Perhaps the idea that could happen seems illogical now, but it certainly went through my mind at that moment. I screamed at police to get them away. The six o’clock news that night carried a report and showed the house down our drive, a police crime scene examination caravan and officers in protective clothing beginning their detailed work. Some close friends recognised the house so the shock for them must have been profound. Sophie was meant to be going out fo
r a final dinner with her friends at six that night. When she didn’t arrive there were the usual good-natured remarks about her habit of being late. Imagine their horror when someone who had watched the news phoned them to say what had happened. That was just another terrible consequence of this ghastly crime.

  After what seemed hours, but was no more than 30 minutes, it was time to leave the scene. Ambulance staff still tried to persuade me to go to hospital, but I preferred to go down to the Dunedin Central Police Station. I was bundled into the back of a police car and recall lying along the backseat crying uncontrollably and in disbelief that Sophie was dead. Why? It was all unfathomable. My brother John made his way into the police station and I’d been told Noeline would meet me there also. With those two close by I wouldn’t be feeling so alone and frightened. But I was in shock, I know I was. I needed to go to the toilet. Noeline went with me but though I was busting to go I simply couldn’t. I was still shaking so much. My mouth was dry and I’d been dry retching into a rubbish tin. I’d seen shock in people before through my nursing career but had never experienced such a phenomenon myself.

  Police seemed to come at me from every direction — asking questions, wanting details! I’m sure my answers were irrational. I didn’t know who they were or really care about what they wanted. I think my biggest and only concern was who would tell Sophie’s brothers in Melbourne and Sydney. John was busy phoning various people he thought should know urgently. I asked him to phone David Rice, Dean of the Anglican Cathedral. I’d known David well and felt a little spiritual comfort might help. Of course, being early January many people were on holiday but David appeared, albeit dressed in casual holiday attire. I guessed he may have come in from his holiday crib on a beach a little north of Dunedin. But arrive he did and I was so grateful for his presence then and later when it was time for Sophie’s funeral service. Bless you, David.

  Those first hours are still something of a blur. After the initial inquiries I was taken next door to the Quest Apartments. It was obvious I wouldn’t be going home as it was now a major crime scene. I was still terribly distressed and unable to stop crying. With Noeline and John there and police popping in to see me I felt reasonably safe, but then made the mistake of walking over to a window. The room allocated to me looked straight down into the police station cell block. I had visions of Weatherston being brought into the police yard to the cells. I was literally only metres away from where Sophie’s killer was going to be all night. I couldn’t face the prospect of remaining there, so close to the monster who had so violently taken my beautiful daughter’s life. Staying at the apartments was simply unacceptable and too difficult. I asked to be moved. The police graciously relocated me to a very nice motel in nearby York Place where I could wait with Noeline and John until Gil came over from Central Otago. Before I moved to the motel, I went out to John’s house in Brighton, a good half hour’s drive from Dunedin, yet I don’t remember doing this. All I have is a vague recollection of being offered a cup of tea and struggling to drink it as I was still crying. I don’t recall any of the journey there or back to Dunedin. It’s all a complete blank, as are most of those first few hours — I have only glimpses of what took place.

  When Gil finally arrived he was devastated. We held on to each other and cried openly. He had received a phone call from the hospital CEO asking him to come along to the office. When he entered, two policemen were there with some ‘bad news’. First, he thought one of the boys had had an accident in Australia, and then thought perhaps something dreadful had happened to me. Never in a million years, he said, would he have thought something this terrible could have happened to our daughter. For him to learn that Sophie had been brutally stabbed to death in the supposed safety of her own home, in her own bedroom, was simply heartbreaking. He had to leave work immediately but only after he’d hurriedly organised staff. He wouldn’t return to work for three months. After packing some clothes and medication he was driven by police the two-hour-plus journey to be with me in the motel. Gil said that the trip back was uncomfortable in the extreme. Life as he knew it stopped that day and when he finally arrived at about 6.30, he was in the same disbelief and turmoil as I was. By then John had managed to phone Nick to break the news and had contacted a close friend of Chris’s in Adelaide. She immediately caught a flight back to Melbourne to break the news to Chris personally. I really felt for the boys. Both loved Sophie very much. Knowing only some of what had happened to their sister made the flight to New Zealand especially tough for them.

  Because I’d been helping Sophie with packing her belongings I was dressed in ‘work around the house’ clothes. Having fled my home, I literally had what I stood up in — old clothes, my glasses and my phone. I had no purse, no money and no credit card — nothing. The next morning a dear friend turned up with a pair of new knickers, a toothbrush and toothpaste; little things, but I was so appreciative of this gesture of thoughtfulness. I didn’t have to ask. Aren’t we lucky to have sensible friends? However, I couldn’t remain dressed in the old clothes I had fled from home in. I gave a policewoman a list of things I might need over the coming days and she returned with a Kleensak of clothing. But with much of the house still sealed off to all except the immediate crime scene examiners, what she found was hardly adequate, especially the rather tatty jacket that had been hanging on the laundry door — I only ever wore that when working in the garden on a winter’s day and this was mid-summer. Still, I appreciate that she tried. At some stage I managed to go with my sister-in-law to nearby shops to buy a couple of blouses and, although I can’t remember it, did eventually go home for suitable clothes to wear at Sophie’s funeral.

  The first night in the motel was long. We tried to sleep but it was impossible, so Gil and I spent the night talking and crying. Mostly crying. We were in a nightmare. Amid the turmoil of grief there were practical things to arrange. This is where John and my lawyer brother David from Christchurch became towers of strength. Gil’s brother Roger was likewise a great help to him. I couldn’t have done much because I was a mess, to put it mildly. Someone had to tell Sophie’s new workplace at the Treasury in Wellington. She had arranged accommodation in Kilbirnie, one of Wellington’s eastern suburbs, and her flatmates needed to be told that she would no longer be joining them. The landlady refunded Sophie’s bond as did Farmers for the money Sophie had paid for a yet to be delivered bed. Then there was the furniture removal company in Dunedin contracted to remove all of Sophie’s belongings from our house the next day. So many small practicalities to be sorted.

  Gil was asked very early on by police to identify Sophie’s body. I had seen the injuries to Sophie in the instant her bedroom door was opened and there was no way I would subject Gil to seeing her in such a state. I objected strongly and the police relented. After all, there could be no question as to identity. I’d been there. I had seen what happened and there wasn’t any doubt that it was Sophie. Formal identification is a mere technicality. Now, in hindsight, I’m glad Gil was spared the trauma because what I had seen was nothing compared to what that evil murderer did after he slammed and locked the door on me.

  This next part of my story is something I have wrestled with for some time. How far should I go in describing the events of 9 January 2008 and the injuries to Sophie? Social norms and decency suggest I should somehow draw a veil across the more graphic descriptions, but I have decided not to. My rationale is simple. The injuries Sophie suffered were dreadful. This is hard for me to write, and it may be just as hard to read, but if we are going to be honest about what happened on that January day we have to face reality. Since the ordeal of Sophie’s murder we have always strived to find out exactly what happened. We wanted no secrets or things kept from us because of sensibilities. Unless you know, how can you understand and how can you even try to come to grips with a traumatic situation? What Sophie suffered was going to be said in front of us when the forensic pathologist gave evidence. We were given the opportunity by the prosecution to apply for an orde
r suppressing details of the injuries, but we are pragmatic enough to know this only fuels speculation. And anyway, why shouldn’t people know what Sophie’s killer was capable of and what he did in the privacy of Sophie’s bedroom? When giving evidence at the High Court trial, Weatherston was quite graphic in the way he described what he did, so why should I offer him any sense of compassion by glossing over his deeds?

  The pathologist’s list recorded 216 stab wounds or cuts made by the knife Weatherston brought with him to my home. Weatherston used that weapon along with scissors from Sophie’s room. There were also seven blunt force trauma injuries. I’ve tried to imagine what over 200 stabbing movements are like. Take a pillow and thrust your hand into it 216 times. It’s an extraordinary thing to contemplate. I was asked by the detective who interviewed me the day following Sophie’s death about the sounds I heard outside her bedroom door, sounds akin to a headboard banging against a wall. The interview records me as saying, ‘It was quite heavy, I mean he was going right through her … it sounded like the blade was hitting the floor beneath her.’ Weatherston said the same thing at trial, but where I’m struggling to write this down, he showed no compunction in telling it on the stand. He even had the arrogance to say (and this was shown on television news items), ‘The next thing I recall is standing or kneeling over her with a pair of scissors in my right hand. The scissors had gone through the front of her throat and I could feel a crunching sound, not of them going in but of meeting something hard — her spine.’