Who Killed Scott Guy?

by Mike White

  Police had amassed a list of 60 persons of interest, not including family, associates and co-workers, who were investigated. Therefore the only question that remains in this regard is how well they were scrutinised. As the defence suggested at trial, police didn’t seem to thoroughly probe the case against farm worker Simon Asplin, who arguably had motive, means and opportunity to kill Scott.

  In another example, they accepted the alibi of a drug-addled crime queen for the whereabouts of her methamphetamine-addicted partner who was out burgling properties that night and was known to use shotguns. Presumably the case against these and other suspects was considered ‘illogical’.

  Unfortunately, we don’t know the police reasoning behind all these decisions because they and prosecutor Ben Vanderkolk have declined to comment. But Sue Schwalger’s remarks after Macdonald’s acquittal, that police weren’t pursuing anyone else and there were no other avenues of investigation, were easily interpreted as meaning police still believed they’d charged the right man. And if you take a quick or cursory look at the case against Macdonald and the crimes he confessed to, it’s fair to say things look more than suspicious—they look awful. Even Macdonald in his final police interview admitted as much, while insisting he hadn’t killed Scott Guy. ‘You can see the finger points at me . . . I’m in a bad situation, yeah, but I had nothing to do with that.’

  The fact that his crimes were all against property, all done with the encouragement of an accomplice, and the last one committed 18 months before Scott’s murder, count for little in most people’s reasoning. That’s because few of us can imagine setting fire to someone else’s house whether it’s occupied or not, or bashing calves to death. Fewer still can comprehend the thoughts that led Macdonald to take to Scott and Kylee’s new house with an axe, smashing any surface he had the space to swing at, then daubing obscene graffiti on its exterior.

  When everything is lined up against Macdonald, it seems a short step from these crimes to murder, merely an increment of anger. Wielding an axe/pulling a trigger. Shooting a prized stag/ shooting a man.

  In that final police interview Macdonald denied he was a ‘psycho’. But most people can’t imagine how you can limit malice once you’ve crossed the threshold Macdonald had. Then again, most people won’t have considered exactly what it would have taken for Macdonald to carry out the murder—what he would have had to do physically to be in a position to kill Scott, the risks he would have had to take, the many ways he could so easily have been caught if even the smallest thing went wrong.

  If you do analyse this, that simple step from A to B—that instinctive assumption that if you can smash up a man’s house you can creep from the shadows and shoot him—becomes a longer, more difficult one. A step becomes a stride and then a leap—a leap of faith for your common sense and a leap of logic as far as the evidence goes.

  So let’s examine the case against Ewen Macdonald and let’s suppose he’d planned to kill Scott for some time—it’s unlikely in anyone’s scenario he’d have come up with the idea as he climbed into bed the night before.

  As the Crown had it, it was Scott’s big talk of plans for the farm and Bryan Guy’s drawing-up of options for the business that suddenly panicked Macdonald and made him think he was about to lose everything he’d worked for. So, with murder in his mind, Macdonald went to bed on the night of 7 July 2010 knowing he’d be rising early to shoot his business partner, his wife’s brother and the best man at his wedding, as he headed to work.

  What could have gone wrong? Well, here are a few things that might have crossed Macdonald’s mind and given him pause about his plan.

  THE WIVES

  Anna could have woken as Ewen’s alarm went off and noticed the time. Macdonald used a large radio alarm clock that was clearly visible from her side of the bed, and she would have been surprised to see him getting up so early. If this had happened, when police asked about everyone’s whereabouts that morning, Anna would have immediately told them her husband had risen much earlier than expected and wasn’t in bed at 4.43 am when they suggested Scott was murdered.

  Dairy farmers’ wives inevitably develop an ability to ignore their husbands’ early morning risings, so maybe Anna wouldn’t have noticed Macdonald slipping out of bed early. But in a statement to police she said most mornings she would hear or feel him leaving. At trial Anna described herself as a light sleeper because their children often got up in the night. She also described how she got annoyed by her husband switching on the light in their dressing room before he’d closed the door to their bedroom as he went to put on his farm clothes, and this regularly disturbed her. In police documents Anna also noted how she often woke after Macdonald left, and checked the time on the clock. What if she had just got up to go to the toilet and Macdonald was missing?

  And no matter how tired Anna was, she wouldn’t have slept through children crying or coming in to see her. With four children under seven, what if one had woken her? What if Wade, then aged 2, had an unsettled night and Anna had got up to make him a milk as she did the night before and noticed Macdonald gone and seen the time was well before he was due at work? It was a huge risk over which Macdonald had no control.

  Even if Macdonald had prepared all he needed the night before, he would probably have had to get up before 4.15 am to be sure he could intercept Scott. And that doesn’t take into account stealing three puppies from the shed near Scott’s house in an attempt to make it look like a burglary gone wrong. Presumably this must have been done before the murder, so maybe he’s up by 4 am or earlier. If at any time Anna had been woken and noticed her husband wasn’t there, Macdonald’s alibi was scuttled.

  And add to this Kylee. What if Kylee, who also described herself as a light sleeper (though less so when pregnant), had been woken by the shotgun blasts? She was lying in bed about 100 metres from the murder scene. Four other people who lived much further away either heard the shots or something that woke them around the time of the killing.

  What if Kylee had woken, looked out her window, seen Scott’s ute stationary, perhaps heard their dog barking in the shed nearby—and gone out to investigate? If she’d found Scott straight away she would presumably have rung 111 within minutes and then Scott’s parents or maybe Anna and Ewen’s home. Whatever, someone would have very quickly tried to contact Ewen to alert him. And what if he was nowhere to be found, not in bed where he was expected to be, not at the farm workshop but still hiding gear or dumping puppies, or perhaps even still biking back home? The killer had no way of knowing Kylee would sleep through the shotgun blasts—and if it was Macdonald, would he have taken the enormous risk that he might be caught out before he could get home and dispose of everything?

  THE DOGS

  It is accepted that the three puppies were taken around the time of the murder. They were fed by Scott the night before his death and there was a constant police presence at the farm from the time his body was found until Ewen Macdonald mentioned they were missing the following day. Moreover, the distinctive dive boot prints around Scott’s body were also found near the shed where the puppies were.

  Macdonald hadn’t had a great deal to do with the dogs, rarely visiting Scott and Kylee’s home. Police claim he stole the puppies to make it look as if someone had been interrupted while committing a burglary. If this was the case, he had to consider that the pups’ mother, Katie, might begin barking, alerting Scott or Kylee, whose house was just 100 metres away, to something untoward happening, thus destroying his elaborate plan.

  While Katie didn’t bark all the time, and police said she remained silent during a reconstruction four days after the murder, Matthew Ireland told the court that she barked ‘real bad’ when he took away Tui, the pup he’d been promised, several days after Scott’s death.

  This aspect of the case has shades of the famous Sherlock Holmes mystery ‘Silver Blaze’ and ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’. The curious incident in the story was that the dog didn’t bark when a burglar e
ntered a stable. In that case it was because the thief was known to the dog, and Holmes was able to solve the mystery for which police had already arrested an innocent man.

  Whether Katie barked when her three pups were being stolen will never be known—but it was something the thief must have considered.

  THE BIKE

  The police claimed Macdonald used a pushbike to get to and from the murder scene, pedalling 1.5 kilometres each way in the dark along Aorangi Road.

  Given the bike was normally kept in the garage behind his house, would Macdonald have left it out the previous night so he was ready to go—allowing it to be noticed by Anna or an unexpected visitor? Or would he risk opening the garage’s steel roller door that morning, potentially disturbing Anna or the kids?

  Once on his way, he couldn’t rule out a car passing him along Aorangi Road. Matthew Ireland, the farmhand who arrived early for work, noted two cars that passed that morning sometime after 4.40 am—one as he turned into the driveway at Macdonald’s house, the other as he headed to the milking shed on his quad bike. So even with the best planning, what was Macdonald going to do if a car came by—lay the bike down and somehow hide on the road verge?

  The Crown theory that Macdonald used a bike to travel to and from Scott’s driveway had no other basis than Macdonald mentioning in his final police interview that he and Callum Boe used bikes when committing the arson and vandalism, helpfully, for the Crown, adding that they were silent and easy to hide. But despite the scene being combed by investigators and forensic experts, no bike tracks were ever found. Despite it having been raining and the earth being soft enough for multiple foot imprints to have been made on the driveway and road verge, there were no bike tyre tracks anywhere. Did Macdonald simply leave the bike on the road when going to steal the puppies and while he hid by the gate waiting for Scott to arrive? Again, a bit risky given a car could come by at any time.

  And then he has to get back home with a shotgun and three puppies. Of course he could have stolen and disposed of the dogs previously, though as mentioned that means he would have had to get up even earlier and thus increase the chance Anna would have noticed his absence. But let’s just say he’s dumped the puppies earlier and after shooting Scott he heads back along Aorangi Road on his bike with the shotgun—which, incidentally, didn’t have a carrying strap or any means of attaching one. By the time Macdonald gets home, in all likelihood Matthew Ireland has already arrived for work and is sitting in his car not far from Macdonald’s house and the garage where the bike and shotgun live. How does he stash the bike back in the garage without Ireland noticing? Perhaps he doesn’t risk it—but won’t Anna or someone later notice and wonder why the bike is outside?

  Even if he does manage to put it back in the garage, it’s been raining—the bike and tyres will be wet and leave tracks on the concrete floor or the bike will drip as it sits there and have fresh mud on it—there’s a real risk someone will notice and later question that. And if he does open the garage to put the bike back, how does he do it so silently and not trip the sensor light above where Ireland is sitting in his car, thus alerting Ireland to his presence? Or the double sensor lights on the corner of his house by the garage?

  And if you suggest maybe he didn’t use a bike—how else was he going to get to and from Scott’s property? The farm quad bikes were locked in an alarmed shed and any entry was recorded by a security firm. His own vehicle was in the garage—to get it out would surely have woken Anna or the kids.

  Maybe he could have walked there, but there’s no way he could have run back 1.5 kilometres in the time available. So the bike was all police were left with as a theory. Yet despite the bike being such a fundamental and critical element of their theory, Detective Glen Jackson, who was in charge of the scene examination and was part of Ewen Macdonald’s arrest interview, had to admit in court, ‘I certainly didn’t find anything in my scene to suggest that a bicycle was used.’

  THE TERRAIN

  While Aorangi Road is rural it’s certainly not remote, lying on Feilding’s outskirts. In the 1.5 kilometres between Macdonald’s and Scott’s house, which the former supposedly traversed twice that morning, there are ten houses with driveways onto Aorangi Road. That’s ten sets of people who could have been up and noticed someone passing on a bike—not something you’d forget at that time of the morning. Would Macdonald really have taken that risk? Surely with his knowledge he would have gone around the back tracks along the river to Scott and Kylee’s house. But no boot prints were found anywhere there so the killer didn’t come that way.

  If Matthew Ireland is right and a car drove along Aorangi Road as he was arriving at work between 4.40 am and 4.50 am, and police are right that Macdonald murdered Scott around 4.43 am before cycling back home—it’s hard to see how this car wouldn’t have passed while Macdonald was lying in wait or riding back along Aorangi Road. Where did Macdonald hide as it sped by, lights on high beam picking up anything along the roadside?

  If he was hiding by the gate he would have been clearly visible to a car coming from either direction, as the gate is just a few metres from the road and there is no shrubbery to hide in. It would have been pretty hard to explain loitering there at that time in the morning carrying a loaded shotgun. Maybe he hid across the road in the shelterbelt until he saw Scott coming—but there were no bike or boot prints there.

  And what would he do if a car suddenly came around the corner while he was biking there or back? If you drive along Aorangi Road you’ll see there are precious few places to hide quickly with a bike. There is a ditch at one point you could jump into, but you’d end up drenched. Again, no boot or bike tyre marks were found anywhere along Aorangi Road to suggest this happened, despite Matthew Ireland’s clear recollection of a car passing at the time Macdonald was supposedly out on Aorangi Road murdering Scott.

  THE SHOTGUN

  Bryan Guy testified that the farm shotgun, used to scare birds and put down sick cows, was stored in three pieces in the office adjoining the garage behind Ewen and Anna’s house—one piece in a cabinet and the other two hidden behind it. He said nobody else knew where it was hidden and when he checked it on the morning of the murder it was exactly where he’d left it.

  Macdonald didn’t have a shotgun of his own—if he needed one for something like duck-shooting he’d borrow one from his father. The Crown argument was that the farm shotgun couldn’t be ruled out as the murder weapon—shorthand for saying they believed it was the murder weapon. This was because it was the only gun they could realistically suggest Macdonald had access to.

  But presuming Macdonald even knew where the shotgun was hidden, for which there’s no evidence, would he really have used the farm gun to shoot Scott? He would have had no idea there would be a delay in finding Scott’s body or that there would be uncertainty in the first few hours about how Scott had been killed. Any killer would have to assume police would immediately be on the lookout for any guns in the area. Thus, he would have had to wipe the gun clean and place it exactly where Bryan Guy had left it as soon as he killed Scott. Any slip in this and Bryan’s suspicions would have been instantly raised.

  So on arriving back at his house after killing Scott, having managed to avoid being seen by other traffic and not be noticed by Matthew Ireland as he rode up the drive and put the bike away, Macdonald still had to stash the gun in the office—also without being spotted by Ireland or the other farm worker, Simon Asplin, who was due to arrive any time. Again, to hide the shotgun elsewhere hoping to sneak it back into the office later, was an impossible risk, given it was fair to expect, as happened, that Bryan or the police would check on its whereabouts straight after hearing Scott had been shot. Nobody noted muddy or bloody footprints on the office carpet, and police testing for DNA there produced nothing.

  You could suggest Macdonald managed to kill Scott and get back to the house before Ireland turned up for work. While it’s impossible to know exactly when Ireland arrived—best estimates are between 4.40 am and
4.50 am—he was very early, hoping to impress Scott because he’d been late the previous weekend. Police theorise the murder occurred about 4.43 am. It could easily have been later, given we don’t know exactly when Scott left his house, but this is the earliest it could have happened because he was still using his computer until 4.41 am at least. We don’t know if he then went to the toilet, how long he took to finish his coffee, if he had a smoke, fiddled with his iPod in the ute or whatever.

  But if 4.43 am is accurate, then Macdonald had at most seven minutes to shoot Scott, check he was dead, cycle back 1.5 kilometres, get rid of the puppies if he hadn’t done so already, ditch the dive boots and shotgun cartridges (none were found at the scene) somewhere they’ve never been found, return the bike to the garage, clean the gun, break it down and replace it in the office and be inside his house, putting on his milking gear, before Ireland arrives. Even if you believe he could have somehow returned and stashed the bike and gun undetected after Ireland had arrived and was sitting in his car not far away, the time available to do everything he needed can only be stretched to about 15 minutes.