Who Killed Scott Guy?

by Mike White

  When this was revealed at trial The Dominion Post carried one of the trial’s more inspired headlines: ‘Hush Over Puppies.’ It was too much to expect the news to remain a secret though. In a community abuzz with speculation and rumour about the murder, it wasn’t long before virtually everyone seemed to know.

  So on 21 July police sent out a media statement asking for information about the missing puppies. It was the first clear lead in the investigation that had been disclosed and the public swarmed to help. Sightings of chocolate-coloured labrador puppies flooded in. There was even a report from someone on an Air New Zealand flight of a puppy barking in the hold, which police had to follow up. DNA samples were taken from the remaining puppies to try to trace the stolen ones.

  By the time Macdonald was arrested, police had accumulated 15 lever-arch folders of information and interviews on just this single aspect of the case. Extensive searches were conducted on the farm and roadsides in the area but no puppies or remains were found. After Macdonald’s arrest he took police to parts of the farm where he had buried poached deer—evidence of those animals was found but no puppies. Police specialist search squads also excavated other areas, and dive squads combed waterways on and around the farm, but again there was no sign of the dogs.

  Indeed, despite thousands of hours of police time being invested in this part of the case, no indication was ever found of what had happened to the missing puppies and whether they were killed or not.

  CHAPTER 13

  The mystery notes

  On the Tuesday morning of the trial’s second week, Greg King strode into court as everyone was setting up for the day and greeted the prosecutor. ‘Morning, Ben.’

  ‘Morning, Greg, how are you?’

  ‘Good, good. We’ve cracked it.’

  ‘Thought you would have,’ replied Vanderkolk.

  ‘Yep, we’ll be out of here by lunchtime,’ King quipped.

  Generally chirpy, King admitted the ‘second-week trial blues’ were threatening his energy levels, but he still managed a joke with pretty much everyone he came across.

  Custom had quickly crept into proceedings. Each morning the jury was led out by their foreman before members took their usual seats. In the public gallery, regular spectators grabbed their favourite positions. Likewise, on the press bench, those who’d covered the trial from the start staked their right to a certain seat and newcomers generally had to take what was left over if there was room.

  When TV journalist John Campbell made a brief and belated appearance towards the end of the trial, a special desk was set up for him and his producer, much to the scorn of Greg King, who somewhat unfairly dismissed it as celebrity carpet-bagging.

  As well as presiding over the trial, Justice Simon France had to keep a close watch over how it was being reported, and as time went on he became increasingly frustrated with the conduct of some media. Early in the trial he chided one journalist for tweeting information that was mentioned ‘in chambers’—a session where the jury is excluded and lawyers discuss contentious points with the judge. Such proceedings are automatically suppressed and even though the tweet was only to do with court finishing early, it was a reminder that the judge was monitoring what the media produced and was keen to keep it within clear boundaries.

  Throughout the trial, competing media rushed to be first to report details, no matter how trifling or tawdry. Inevitably, there were instances where this compulsion became almost ridiculous. On 1 July the Herald on Sunday ran a piece titled ‘Analysing the Women on the Witness Stand’. It gave comments from body-language analyst Suzanne Masefield, who had ‘watched a lot of testimony in the Scott Guy trial’.

  She purported to describe the impact giving evidence had on the trial’s ‘leading ladies’, Anna Macdonald and Kylee Guy, saying Anna’s ‘body language shows a lady used to containing and suppressing feelings, until they can no longer be restrained (like a shaken up cola bottle)’. Kylee, meanwhile, was more like a ‘wounded child’. Most of the other journalists in court disapproved of the story and it earnt a stern rebuke from Justice France, who, it is understood, banned the paper from court and referred the story to the acting solicitor-general.

  But perhaps the most bizarre story to emerge from the trial related to the attire of one of the journalists. At the lunch adjournment on Wednesday, 27 June, court registrar Sarah Perano approached NZ Newswire journalist Laura McQuillan with a slightly concerned expression and asked her to change the gold-sequined pants she was wearing for something darker, less hugging and more appropriate. Perano felt the pants weren’t discreet enough for Justice France’s court, a sartorial step too far from Justice Ministry guidelines on attire, which suggest women wear a dress, or a skirt and blouse, or trousers and blouse; men are required to wear ties. McQuillan felt it was an overreaction, given her legs were under a table during proceedings.

  The event hit Twitter within minutes, with McQuillan’s trousers quickly dubbed ‘disco pants’. It made The Huffington Post and was the most popular item on The New Zealand Herald’s website that day. But such was the public appetite for any snippet from the trial, relevant or not, media knew there was a ready audience.

  The case against Ewen Macdonald was almost entirely circumstantial. And the jury was told that this wasn’t unusual and nor was it a sign of inherent weakness in the Crown argument. Not every murder is committed with onlookers present. Not all murderers helpfully leave incriminating samples at the scene. Few go out of their way to subsequently help police.

  So without these ‘gold standard’ pieces of evidence—DNA, fingerprints, eyewitnesses, a confession—police were forced to collate incriminating information into an argument they hoped the jury would find compelling. An important strand of this argument was the issue of three mystery notes, supposedly left for Scott and Kylee, that police suggested had been written by Ewen Macdonald in another act of intimidation.

  On 9 July, the day after Scott was murdered, rural posties Brett MacDonald and Emma Beaney provided what appeared to be a vital lead. They said that, between them, they had found threatening notes in Scott and Kylee’s letterbox three times, which appeared to be directed at Kylee. Brett MacDonald said that a few weeks after the arson of the old house on Scott and Kylee’s property—in October 2008—he had been delivering mail on a Saturday along Aorangi Road. At that time, Scott and Kylee were living at 259 Aorangi Road, one of Bruce Johnstone’s properties, waiting for building to begin on their new house.

  MacDonald would drive up to the letterboxes and reach through the driver’s window to deliver the mail. He said that residents sometimes left them notes, for example saying they were going on holiday and asking him to hold their mail. On this Saturday, MacDonald said there was a note, roughly written in biro on a scrap piece of paper, something like an old pie bag. He told the court it said something to the effect of: ‘You cheating whore, what comes around goes around.’ Realising it wasn’t meant for him, MacDonald put the note back in the letterbox.

  Emma Beaney, Brett MacDonald’s girlfriend at the time, also said she found two notes in the same letterbox. The first was probably in December 2008, she said, definitely after the October arson of the old house. This time the note was in quite big writing, in something like a carpenter’s pencil or permanent marker. ‘Stay away from him Kylee you whore,’ it said. Beaney was adamant these were the exact words, though she couldn’t remember whether the writer had spelt the name ‘Kylee’ or ‘Kylie’.

  Beaney said she found a second note shortly after the vandalism of Scott and Kylee’s new home in January 2009. It was on the same sort of plain paper but she couldn’t be sure it was the same writing as the first note. ‘Now you know how it feels to lose something you love,’ the note said.

  Both times, Beaney placed the notes back in the letterbox and they were gone the next day. Neither Brett MacDonald nor Beaney mentioned the notes to Scott and Kylee, and neither told police at the time, figuring Scott or Kylee would do that if they were concerned. MacDon
ald also stressed that it was important not to spread such information around as it was unprofessional and he didn’t want people to think he was nosy.

  Beaney had fewer qualms about this, it seems. The day she found the first note, she immediately spoke to Alison Rankin who lived across the road, telling her what she’d just discovered. But just who told who, and what and when, became very confused in court. Rankin said Beaney had told her about finding the notes and also that Brett MacDonald had found one. However, Greg King asked Rankin to clarify why, in her first statement to police, she hadn’t mentioned Beaney finding notes—just the one MacDonald found—and Rankin was unable to explain it.

  For her part, Beaney said she only told Rankin about the first note, not the note MacDonald found—nor the second note she found. But Rankin said they discussed the notes on more than one occasion. Beaney said she also told Brett MacDonald about finding the notes on the days she discovered them. But Beaney said that, remarkably, MacDonald didn’t tell her that he had previously found a threatening note in the same letterbox. Even after the arson, when Beaney suggested they contact the police, she said MacDonald told her they should keep out of it and didn’t mention the note he’d found. Under cross-examination, Beaney insisted she only learnt her former partner had found a note after Scott’s murder. Yet somehow Alison Rankin knew Brett MacDonald had found a note because she told police this.

  Meanwhile, Brett MacDonald claimed he and Beaney had never discussed the notes they’d each found until after Scott’s murder, despite Beaney insisting they talked about her notes at the time she found them. He also seemed confused about when he’d found his note. Initially he’d told police it was before the arson. In court, however, he testified it was after the old house at Scott and Kylee’s was burnt down and couldn’t explain why his evidence had changed.

  Frustrated at the complete confusion surrounding the notes, King levelled with MacDonald. ‘Are you telling the truth?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ MacDonald replied.

  When the same inconsistencies in evidence occurred with Beaney, King again abandoned the niceties. ‘This is something you have just made up, isn’t it?’ he asked her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘There were no notes.’

  ‘There were definitely notes.’

  ‘But you never raised it with Scott or Kylee?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never reported it to the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You say you discussed it with Brett MacDonald, he has told us you didn’t until after Scott Guy had been murdered.’

  ‘Well, I did.’

  As Beaney left the stand she looked slightly shell-shocked, not having foreseen that she would be accused of having concocted the whole story, nor that she would have to defend the very existence of the notes.

  Unfortunately for Beaney, the existence of the notes could never be proven, because nobody else had ever seen them. Other than Brett MacDonald and Alison Rankin, nobody else had even heard about them.

  The police had never been informed. None of Scott and Kylee’s neighbours had received malicious notes, and only Rankin had heard second-hand about Scott and Kylee getting them. Nobody else on the farm, including family members, knew anything about them. Even Kylee, who they were supposedly directed at, was unaware of them until police informed her of them after Scott’s death.

  This left only one logical answer: that Scott had collected the mail each time and found the notes, but hadn’t told anyone about them. The first element of that premise is plausible: Scott usually collected the mail each day when he came home for lunch. But the second assumption—that Scott would have kept the notes to himself—seems unlikely.

  Scott and Kylee were so frustrated with the lack of police effort to investigate the vandalism of their almost-finished house, sometimes not even returning their phone calls, they had approached justice minister and Rangitikei MP Simon Power. If they were keen to catch the person responsible for smashing up their dream home, why would Scott not pass on the note that supposedly arrived after the vandalism—‘Now you know how it feels to lose something you love’—to police? Why would he not even mention the other notes that allegedly arrived around the time of the arson of the old house?

  When asked about the notes by police, Kylee was adamant Scott would have told her if he’d actually seen them. Even if he’d wanted to protect her and hid them, she was sure he would have informed police. The only reason he would have kept the notes to himself, she surmised, was if he knew who had written them.

  But despite there being enormous doubt whether the notes ever existed, at trial the Crown made them appear a crucial and sinister strand in the case against Ewen Macdonald. The main reason was the wording. More precisely, the word ‘whore’. This was the same derogatory word painted on Scott and Kylee’s house during the vandalism in January 2009—though in that instance it was misspelt ‘hore’.

  Nobody mentioned whether the threatening notes that included that word spelt it correctly. Nor, it must be noted, was it clearly established who wrote the graffiti—Callum Boe claimed Macdonald did it, while Macdonald said they both did. But the Crown insisted Ewen Macdonald was responsible for both the graffiti and the malicious notes, and the link was proven by their similar language. It was, they argued, evidence of a deep personal hatred and resentment towards Kylee, and could only be interpreted as an attempt to destabilise Scott and Kylee and make them leave the farm.

  Macdonald had always denied any knowledge of the notes. At his final police interview, when unburdening himself of all the other crimes he’d committed, he repeated he had nothing to do with writing the notes or putting them in Scott and Kylee’s letterbox. Of course, police claimed that he only admitted to crimes he’d carried out with Boe and thus couldn’t deny. It was a fair claim, but one King undermined by surrounding even the notes’ existence with suspicion and doubt.

  It’s worth noting that similar wording can appear in unrelated circumstances—and be merely coincidental rather than ominous. During the investigation, an anonymous note was sent to Kylee’s mother, Diane Bullock, with stylised letters as if they’d been cut out of a newspaper, some appearing to be dripping with blood. ‘Mrs Bullock,’ it said, ‘oh how sad that such a tragedy has beset your family. How awful for you and your daughter. But you are such a cold-hearted bitch . . . I doubt this incident has had much effect on you anyway. What goes around comes around.’ The final sentence here is of course very similar to the phrase Brett MacDonald says was written on the note he found.

  Police eventually traced the note to a former work colleague of Bullock’s, Hastings man Richard Johnson, who’d fallen out with her several years before. Johnson was charged with wasting police time, sentenced to 300 hours’ community work and ordered to pay Bullock $1500 for emotional harm. There was never any suggestion Johnson was involved with Scott’s murder.

  When Johnson was sentenced, Diane Bullock noted in a victim impact statement how the malicious note had caused Kylee ‘a large amount of emotional heartache. Kylee was very distressed about this letter, trying to imagine how someone could do this to us at this tragic time. The letter was clearly designed and sent to cause the most emotional harm possible.’

  Similarly, at trial Kylee said she couldn’t understand how anyone could be so cruel as to leave the anonymous notes in their letterbox the rural posties had given evidence about. As she tearfully related this, it was impossible not to feel huge sympathy for her. But for Ewen Macdonald’s defence team, Kylee’s apparent horror at the hateful notes presented them with an incredible quandary—because they knew something about Kylee that virtually nobody else did.

  Kylee had two sisters, Chanelle and Jessica. Chanelle, who lived in Hawke’s Bay at the time, had been engaged to a man, Hohepa Osbourne, known to his friends as Hoe. During their relationship, Osbourne had met Palmerston North teacher Leanne Wylie and begun an affair. Wylie is adamant she had no idea Osbourne was engaged to Chanelle at the time or going out wit
h anyone else.

  In about November 2007, Chanelle discovered Osbourne was cheating on her with Wylie. Using Osbourne’s cellphone, Chanelle and her sister Jessica sent texts to Wylie pretending to be Osbourne and eventually got Wylie to disclose her address. When Wylie twigged that it wasn’t Osbourne texting her, she received abusive texts calling her a bitch, slut and home breaker, Wylie said. Kylee Guy later acknowledged that while she had no part in the anonymous texts, she was aware of them.

  Not long afterwards, on her 30th birthday on 22 November 2007, Wylie received a phone call from a sister of Chanelle—someone she believed was Kylee. Chanelle, however, says it was her other sister, Jessica, who made the call. Whoever called spoke to Leanne’s friend Petrea Twort and asked about her relationship with Osbourne and called Wylie names, Twort said. Wylie said the texts and call spoilt her birthday.

  After discovering Osbourne was cheating on her, Chanelle broke up with him. Upset at what had happened, Chanelle and her young son began visiting Kylee in Feilding often.

  At some stage during one of Chanelle’s visits, she and Kylee went shopping in Palmerston North. On their way home they drove to Wylie’s home and pulled up in her driveway. Chanelle wrote a note on a scrap of paper, saying, according to Wylie, something along the lines of ‘I told you I’d find you’ or ‘I know where you live’ and put it in Wylie’s letterbox.

  Kylee claims she tried to talk Chanelle out of it and didn’t know what the note said, but Chanelle told police that when she put the note in the letterbox, ‘I couldn’t hardly walk because I was laughing so much.’ Chanelle insisted the note ‘wasn’t anything sinister, it would have been a saying or something funny’.