Who Killed Scott Guy?

by Mike White

Any doubt that police still believed Macdonald was guilty was soon removed. ‘Police are currently not pursuing anyone else in relation to this investigation nor are there any other avenues of inquiry.’ Schwalger then repeated that if any new evidence surfaced, they would investigate it.

  Her obvious discomfort in front of the cameras was understandable and she didn’t prolong her appearance. Despite having a thousand things she at times wished she could say, Schwalger has largely kept them to herself since the trial and remained silent.

  After they’d escaped the pursuing media, Kerry and Marlene Macdonald went back to their friend Paul’s house. ‘And collapsed and cried,’ recalls Marlene.

  Their phones didn’t stop ringing, texts pouring in saying, ‘We all knew what it would be,’ ‘Awesome awesome awesome,’ ‘Congratulations,’ and ‘We wish we could be there to celebrate with you.’

  ‘But we thought, celebration’s not the right word,’ said Kerry. ‘It was the verdict we wanted and were waiting for, but it wasn’t leap up and down and punch the air. There was no elation, really.’ That said, he and Paul had a few whiskies to settle their nerves and eventually they went to Blair’s home for dinner.

  Blair had texted Anna to say if she wanted to talk, to give him a call, which she did. Later Marlene rang her and asked how her family were.

  ‘Relieved,’ Bryan called out in the background.

  ‘Tell him we feel exactly the same,’ replied Marlene.

  ‘At least I can go home and tell the kids that Daddy didn’t do it,’ said Anna.

  Meanwhile, back at court, Greg King was trying to avoid the maelstrom of media and public reaction. Many reporters, including Mark Sainsbury from daily current affairs programme Close Up, who King knew well, approached him for comment, but he politely declined, simply saying, “Not today.”

  The reality was that King was spent, both physically and mentally, able to feel little more than overwhelming relief. When the jury filed in for the last time he’d found his heart racing. ‘I was just numb. I couldn’t look at them—just head down. It took time to register, quite frankly, time to sink in.’

  After seeing Macdonald and tidying up paperwork he eventually slipped out a back door unobserved, hoping to grab a quiet beer across the road at the Thistle Inn. But as he pushed open the door he saw a group of jurors at the bar so immediately turned around and flagged down a taxi.

  The driver was Ewen Chatfield, a former New Zealand cricketer who was a mate of King’s. ‘Chats’, as the country had come to know the unerringly accurate medium pacer in the 1980s, was celebrating his 62nd birthday and was on his way back home to the Hutt Valley.

  When he dropped King home, the pair went inside for a drink and before long Peter Coles and Liam Collins arrived. Ties off, beers in hand, they slumped on sofas in the lounge and watched news coverage of the verdict on TV.

  By 9 pm they’d all crashed out, the staccato pinging and ringing of unanswered phones the only thing breaking the silence.

  CHAPTER 20

  The aftermath

  The next morning’s papers were swamped with reaction to the verdict.

  In an extraordinary move, The New Zealand Herald’s first seven pages were devoted to the case, coverage scarcely seen even in times of war and World Cup victories. As well as having an online reporter in court the whole time, the paper had two experienced crime reporters covering the end of the trial: Andrew Koubaridis and Jared Savage. For the trial’s last week, Koubaridis had been holed up in his hotel room preparing a long background piece on the case, ready to run as soon as the verdict was delivered.

  Ewen Macdonald had been transported back to Rimutaka Prison, where his parents visited him the day after the verdict, his mother Marlene saying for the first time he had a spark back in his eyes ‘and was starting to look like Ewen’.

  In his court diary he’d simply written, ‘After 13 hours of deliberating, the jury have made a decision. NOT GUILTY!!’ Later, Macdonald described how he’d held fast to his father’s belief that common sense and justice would prevail. ‘On that last day I thought it was going to be a not guilty, but I was prepared for the worst. I just had a feeling. They said, “You’ve got to go in,” and I came out of the little back cell and I paused right at the door before I entered [the court] and I just said a little prayer in my head and just got this funny feeling and I just thought, “Everything will be all right.”’

  Already he was preparing for a return to Manawatu Prison, which was more relaxed and much closer to family. For a few days, though, his parents remained in Wellington, their house fortunately unknown to media and thus unable to be staked out. The relief they felt after the verdict remained, but there was a distinct feeling of flatness, the predictable consequence of months of ever-heightening emotion and tension.

  Many of the stories that were beginning to spill out in the media riled them. Principal among these was a lengthy television interview with a woman who’d gone to school with Ewen. She was so peripheral, Marlene said, that neither she nor Kerry could even remember her, yet she’d happily provided extensive thoughts and memories of Ewen and his character. ‘It’s just people wanting their five minutes of fame,’ said Marlene. ‘They don’t know our son. Because we won’t tell [the media] anything, they just go and find these random people who make all these ridiculous accusations.’

  One of the common claims was that Macdonald had stopped the extroverted Anna from participating in shows and musicals as she had in the past, intimating he was a controlling figure who had smothered Anna’s exuberance and wanted her all to himself, out on a dull dairy farm. But as Marlene pointed out, Anna was in two shows after they were married and before their first child, Finn, was born, but having four children in quick succession hardly allowed her time for anything other than motherhood.

  The fact Ewen worked such long hours on the farm was another obvious reason why a socialite lifestyle was stymied. As Kerry had told police, ‘He doesn’t do the normal social scene. He’s a dairy cocky and so goes to bed about 8 pm or 9 pm—9 pm would be a late night.’

  ‘And the reason he worked so hard was so Anna could have the best of everything,’ Marlene said.

  But the Macdonalds had nothing but utter admiration and gratitude for their son’s defence team, in particular Greg King. ‘Oh, he’s awesome, just awesome,’ Marlene said, recalling how King had always said he believed in their son and how he’d told them at their first meeting that he’d get their boy home. ‘He gave Ewen the best defence we could have hoped for—and more.’

  ‘We’ve always appreciated we were lucky to get him,’ added Kerry. ‘And he’s compassionate and does it for all the right reasons. After his summing up I don’t think there would have been anyone in that courtroom that would have thought Ewen was guilty.’

  ‘I wanted to stand up and give him an ovation,’ noted Marlene.

  More importantly for Kerry, his confidence in the justice system, which he’d held onto ever since his son’s arrest, had been vindicated. ‘Yes, Ewen did have a smart lawyer. Thank Christ. Greg’s a genius, he’s bloody great. But it was the jury that weighed up all the evidence and came out with the right verdict.’

  Already their thoughts were turning to the future, though. King had warned them that Ewen wouldn’t be coming home for some time, the offences he’d pleaded guilty to being serious enough to warrant several years in prison. But for the first time they could make longer term plans, think about what Ewen would do when he was released, imagine having him home in a few years rather than a couple of decades.

  Financially, Macdonald had nothing. No job, no home, no money in the bank. The house he and Anna bought in 2008 for $500,000 was valued at only $460,000 three years later. He’d agreed Anna should have everything they did own and didn’t begrudge her that. But they’d already had offers from people willing to give him a job and help out when he did leave prison.

  In the meantime, there were Ewen and Anna’s four children to help take care of. Finn had asked if
his daddy would be home in a month, but Anna had told him it was more likely to be after Christmas, knowing there was a limit to children’s perspective of time. Thus far, the children had coped remarkably well with losing their father and with the consequent attention.

  Their school at Colyton had done a wonderful job protecting them, Marlene said, assigning teachers to be with the children during breaks to make sure the murder and trial weren’t raised and sending a newsletter home asking parents to be careful what they said about the case. ‘Because I’m sure,’ Marlene noted, ‘there are parents at the school that think he did it.’

  Despite being aware how much attention the case had attracted, Greg King was still amazed at the following day’s coverage. And not overly impressed.

  Although many stories praised his defence of Macdonald, headlines such as the Herald’s ‘Lawyer Chalks Up Another Victory’ irked him. ‘That’s not what it’s about. We don’t judge our lives by whether we win or lose cases. We judge them by how well we do, and we’re just another cog in the wheel of the machinery of justice.’

  The focus on him sat uneasily because King knew how vital Peter Coles’ court work and cross-examinations had been. But he was always going to be the person journalists wrote about, his charismatic nature impossible to ignore. Frequent references to his theatrical performance, the trial being a Shakespearean drama and it being the ‘best show in town’ exasperated him, however. ‘I think these people need to remind themselves that this isn’t a flippin’ game and it’s not a performance. This is real life and these are real people who are affected in real ways. It really annoys the hell out of me when it’s cheapened. For myself, I don’t act, it’s not a dramatic performance, it’s just how I am—I wear my heart on my sleeve.’

  Such passion hadn’t gone down well with everyone, though, King admitted. His good friend, businessman Sir Bob Jones, ‘summoned’ King to his Upper Hutt house on the Sunday before the verdict and, in a fatherly fashion, lectured him on his closing address. ‘You yelled at the jury,’ Sir Bob told him. ‘You should never yell at a jury. Frankly, it was an embarrassment.’

  ‘I didn’t yell,’ King insisted. ‘I raised my voice once in a four-hour address.’

  Even so, King was swamped with self-doubt. ‘I went home devastated, thinking, oh my God, the whole country thinks I screamed at the jury and I’m a ranter.’ Nevertheless, his overriding feeling remained one of enormous relief. ‘It’s a huge responsibility you take on, so when you’ve discharged that you feel relieved. If we had lost, everyone would now be analysing the defence and saying how we did it wrong and we should have called Ewen or called more witnesses. You really put your head on the block when you make decisions about how you run a case.

  ‘I never thought this one was going to be impossible but I could see we had some problems right from the outset. And I would have been absolutely devastated if I’d lost this case because evidentially it wasn’t there—but emotionally and sympathetically and prejudicially it was.’

  King was convinced the turning point of the trial was evidence from Anna that she had thrown out Macdonald’s dive boots. ‘If the jury had accepted that he had that type of dive boot then I think it would have been enough. The coincidence factor was very strong and everything else could be made to fit from that point.’

  King also paid tribute to prosecutors Ben Vanderkolk and Paul Murray, saying they did a very good job with what they had. ‘I think they are scholars, they are gentlemen, and I’m proud to say they are my learned friends. But at the end of the day any of us are only as good as the evidence we’ve got to deal with. Unfortunately, they didn’t have it—and fortunately I did.

  ‘And these are the big ones. These are the ones that test every skill you have. This was our World Cup final I suppose. But look, at the end of the day you’ve still got a man who’s dead, a widow, kids that have lost their dad and people who’ve lost brothers and sons. So it’s nothing to jump around and do high fives about.’

  Already social media was alive with outraged opinion about the verdict. ‘What the fuck is the matter with juries in this country,’ fumed big bruv on Kiwiblog. ‘This is just unbelievable,’ added Jimbob. ‘Only a bunch of townies could come up with this verdict.’

  ‘Disgusting!’ declared Eisenhower, while over on Whale Oil, Wayne O weighed in similarly: ‘Retarded jury. Couldn’t see the wood for the trees.’

  King had always known this would be the reaction of many, unable to see past Macdonald’s other crimes, unable to consider any other scenario but the one the Crown put forward. ‘I think what people need to remember,’ warned King, ‘is that 11 normal, decent members of the community heard all the evidence, were able to ask questions, and all 11 of them agreed it was a not guilty verdict. And unless you’ve had that insight into the case, you can’t question their verdict.’

  Right at that moment, King couldn’t contemplate doing another case like this. ‘I suppose when you’ve just climbed down Mount Everest the last thing you want to see in front of you is another Mount Everest.’ But in a few days he would be back on the road, dealing with a homicide case in Hamilton, then a manslaughter and then back-to-back trials for months into the following year.

  For a few days, though, he could be the father to Pippa and Millie he hadn’t been of late. ‘They’re ratbags—they’re absolutely out of control—but they’re my ratbags and they make it all worthwhile.’

  If King thought he would be off the front pages of the country’s newspapers for a while, as people put the case behind them, he was wrong.

  The week after the verdict, The Dominion Post led with a bold headline, ‘Scott Guy Verdict—Court of Public Opinion’, above a large photo of Ewen Macdonald staring straight at the camera.

  Based on a survey of 750 people by research company UMR, the story said 48 per cent believed Macdonald was guilty, 20 per cent not guilty and 28 per cent were not sure. The remaining 4 per cent refused to answer. The question they’d been asked was: ‘From what you have seen, heard or feel about the case, do you think it is more likely Ewen Macdonald is guilty or not guilty?’ It was difficult to avoid the conclusion that both the survey and the article were a crass cash-in on the public fascination with the case.

  As Greg King was quick to point out in the story, none of those surveyed had sat through the trial and heard the 100 hours of evidence presented. Instead, their opinions were based on snippets from media reports, which were often slanted. ‘It’s not informed, it’s not considered and frankly, it’s not rational.’

  It was, however, an example that no matter how trivial or tawdry a detail, such was the interest in the case that media made a story of it.

  When this author published an extensive feature on the trial in North & South magazine, including the first interviews with Macdonald’s parents as well as behind-the-scenes insights from Greg King, the issue isolated by other media from a ten-page article was four paragraphs relating to Anna telling Ewen Macdonald their marriage was over. The stories focusing on this topped news websites all day.

  Recriminations about Macdonald’s acquittal had started almost immediately. The day after the trial ended, TV current affairs show Close Up’s Mark Sainsbury interviewed Auckland Crown Solicitor Simon Moore, who commented that everyone involved in the trial had done a great job and Ben Vanderkolk’s work had been very competent.

  Sainsbury appeared unconvinced: ‘Prosecutors are like lawyers—they’re at different levels. Some would say, “Why didn’t they send in a heavyweight like Simon Moore to prosecute the trial?”’

  Graciously restraining himself from explaining that prosecutors were indeed lawyers, Moore defended Vanderkolk as not only more experienced than himself, but someone who had done some of the country’s most difficult and major trials. ‘He did a phenomenal job in this case.’

  Sainsbury’s insinuation that the prosecution had been inadequate or led by a provincial chump was unfair but also betrayed a rationale that Macdonald was guilty and if only there�
�d been a better lawyer in charge of the case, the proper verdict would have been arrived at. This notion that Macdonald was guilty but that the Crown case was weak, the justice system flawed or Greg King’s silver tongue had bewitched the jury, was something frequently returned to by commentators.

  Away from the media, gossip about ‘what really happened’ continued to swirl. The most pervasive story doing the rounds was the Brokeback Mountain rumour—that Macdonald and Boe had been not only partners in crime but also in bed. The reports were given added detail and zest with the assertion that Scott Guy had found the pair in a compromising situation during the Invercargill conference he and Macdonald attended. The story went that Scott informed Macdonald he had to tell Anna or he would tell her himself—and Macdonald reacted by killing him. Where that rumour originally came from is unknown but it’s gravely told and retold throughout the country and still retains remarkable currency.

  Other rumours were variations on the Brokeback theme—that Scott and Ewen were in a relationship and Scott had broken it off and the heartbroken Macdonald had gunned him down. Or that Macdonald and Kylee were secret lovers and Macdonald had finally decided to take Scott out. The absurdity of these rumours was matched only by the public’s apparent willingness to give them credence.

  But it also demonstrated that many were reluctant, or flatly refused, to take the trial and verdict at face value or even contemplate that Macdonald may have been innocent. Much easier to peddle rumour than reality, innuendo than evidence, to deal in the counterfeit of hearsay rather than sworn testimony and established fact.

  In the days and weeks that followed the verdict, some useful issues were raised. They invariably stemmed, however, from concerns that Macdonald was guilty and had somehow got off.

  There was a rush of support for a system similar to that used in Scotland, where a jury is able to return a verdict of ‘not proven’ as an alternative to ‘not guilty’. A not proven verdict would still see a defendant acquitted, but make no judgement on guilt, only that the charges hadn’t been confirmed. The underlying suggestion to much of this debate, however, was that the jury probably believed Macdonald was guilty but felt their hands were tied and had to find him not guilty based on the test of reasonable doubt—a reluctant acquittal, as it were. Although in New Zealand, unlike the United States, jurors cannot be quizzed as to their logic and decisions, there was nothing to suggest that their verdict was a reluctant one.