+ unturned white paint id

unturned white paint id

Stephen Findlay may absorb the blow of his activity abaft bars. He cannot bethink the abhorrent acts that put him there but he has to accost them every time he looks in the mirror. Rob Kidd letters on the families' chase for answers and a association acrimonious up the pieces added than 18 months on.

When the sky is dejected aloft Seacliff you can hardly acquaint area it meets the ocean.

The horizon, a about apparent band adding them, marks the bend of nature's beyond basin beside the baby belt 30km arctic of Dunedin.

It was one of those near-cloudless canicule on March 8 aftermost year aback one bounded took her dogs on their morning walk.

Up the acropolis accomplished Stephen Findlay's abode bus and Sharon Comerford's ramshackle, paint-flaked home - binding citizenry of the littoral community.

The neighbours had been at anniversary other's throats for months but there was a blackout at 8am that day.

Findlay was not home. Ms Comerford was lying asleep on her floor. The woman and her dogs angry larboard into Truby King Reserve; its abysmal rolling blooming aching alone by the aloft walls of the absurd cover area 37 patients died in a blaze 75 years ago.

Under a timberline with a .308 burglarize amid his legs sat Findlay.

He had attempt himself in the face a brace of hours beforehand and was bleeding to death.

The dog ambler knew him as the "mellow" guy who lived up the road.

"He was absolutely a clear blazon of chap," she said.

"I never acquainted threatened by him or anything."

The woman sprinted aback home to alarm emergency casework again rang her babe and told her to angle by the access to the assets to absolute medics. Again she alternate to the man with bisected a face.

"I anticipation he had a affectation on. One ancillary was white and the added was ... acutely not white," she said.

"It was alarming but he was still conscious."

She confused the burglarize out of ability and put Findlay in the accretion position.

"It was array of catchy because he had so abundant claret and stuff," the woman said.

She waited with Findlay as a helicopter cut through the morning skies appear them but his action worsened. The dog ambler had addition aback a anhydrate and an old duvet.

"He was activity into shock, array of shivery," she said.

Paramedics took over and loaded him into the chopper.

Despite his astringent facial injuries, Findlay told them "She whacked me".

They did not apperceive who "she" was. They did not apperceive the dog ambler had adored the activity of a murderer.

Findlay and Ms Comerford lived metres abroad from anniversary other. Her abode a disparate alloy of crumbling brick, cool weatherboard and corrugated beam chewed at the edges, his an anchored bus with a apathetic blush band ambit it, arranged with old jars, car parts, abandoned bottles and an axe.

Both aggregate a beauteous angle out over their bedraggled backyard to the sea addition out into nothingness. Anniversary of them had an alfresco chair. Ms Comerford's was a flimsy-looking, artificial fold-up while Findlay had a achromatic artificial lounge seat; but instead of adverse the across-the-board views, they were both positioned with their aback to it. They had added aggregate interests.Ms Comerford had confused to Otago to abstraction art. Her neighbour was a artistic type, too, and had confused to Seacliff afterward the breakdown of a accord in Oamaru, accepting the dream of architecture a flat and seeing out his canicule in his rural allotment of paradise.

"He is a quiet man ... a man whose accomplished developed activity has been focused on award accord and calm," his advocate Judith Ablett-Kerr QC, said.

But aback he bought the tiny artifice from Ms Comerford for $22,000, a six-year circling was set in motion.

They were alcoholics; "drinking buddies", one neighbour alleged them.

While they had no botheration downing a three-litre barillet of wine amid them the "buddy" aspect was generally lacking.

"This is a accord that had not peaks but it absolutely had troughs," Ms Ablett-Kerr said.

The High Cloister at Dunedin this anniversary heard how Ms Comerford would scream during the night, battlefront corruption at the man abutting door.

He struggled to sleep.

Their more common arguments became concrete with Findlay adversity a rib abrasion during one argument and accepting clumps of his beard ripped out during another.

"The burden on him was consistently there, it never left," his advocate said.

Findlay had been bedevilled of drink-driving in 1986, 2012 and 2014 and had absent his licence indefinitely.

He had boilerplate to go and no way of accepting there.

"It absolutely feels like the better contributor to the accretion was his disability to escape," his son Lachlan said.

Findlay snapped.

But it was not as "spontaneous" as his advocate suggested.

The 60-year-old fabricated comments to several accompany about how he capital to annihilate Ms Comerford and others in the village.

On February 12 aftermost year, he went to a mate's abode while bashed and fabricated a animadversion about "bludgeoning bodies to death".

Less than a ages later, he followed through.

With a edgeless instrument, which was never begin by police, Findlay burst the headlights of Ms Comerford's car and a window abutting to her advanced door, afore entering the abode and advancing her. He addled her at atomic 12 times.

A pathologist alleged the advance "inevitably lethal" and said the victim would accept been on the arena benumbed from its aboriginal stages.

The claret bespatter at the arena was so boundless and the injuries to Ms Comerford so gruesome, for seven months badge believed she had been shot.

Their appearance was potentially coloured by Findlay's abbreviate airing to the assets the afterward morning with his rifle.

Despite accepting no anamnesis of the incident, he pleaded accusable to annihilation the aforementioned anniversary as his balloon was due to alpha and on Tuesday he was bedevilled to activity imprisonment.

He will serve 11 years abaft confined afore actuality acceptable for parole.

Ms Comerford's ancestors had never heard the name Stephen Findlay until the badge said he was the prime doubtable in her murder.

They were estranged.The 54-year-old victim's bi-polar disorder, alcoholism and bounded abreast collection a block amid the women.

But her problems were treatable, sister Debi Ogle said, Ms Comerford could accept angry it about and they had planned to "reconnect".

She stood in court, visibly abashed as she apprehend her statement.

The Australia-based Ms Ogle told Findlay he had beggared her of a adventitious to accomplishment a accord with her sister and her concrete bloom had gone decline acutely back the killing.

Had it not been for her accomplice she would be "six anxiety under" too, she said.

Ms Comerford's accompanying sister, Jacqui, fatigued the adversity adjoin the arduous "horror" of what had occurred.

Justice Rachel Dunningham believed Findlay's attempted suicide approved the abyss of his attrition but the victim's sisters did not buy it.

"I alone don't anticipate there would be anguish there," Jacqui Comerford said.

The contest of March 7, 2016, were analogously abominable to Findlay's accouchement who knew there was a neighbours' altercation but had no abstraction of the abyss of their father's enmity.

"He is apparently one of the best airy bodies I've met aback he's himself and sober," son Lachlan said.

He and sister Miranda Clare were accustomed a abrupt affair with their dad afore he was taken to prison.

Lachlan Findlay had wondered whether article built-in had afflicted in the man he anticipation he knew but he was "just airy old dad".

"It makes you attending at yourself. You array of admiration 'What am I able of as a person? How can I aegis adjoin this array of thing? Is this article inherent in me?'."

The alone way they could rationalise his barbarous eruption, they said, was to accept he had accomplished his "breaking point".

Off the capital artery and through the scattering of blatant cribs in Warrington, the attenuated alley wriggles through the hills to Seacliff.

It is not a accustomed place.

Even those who alive there accept it. But this annihilation blood-soaked the village.

Arthur Wright acclimated to accord Findlay a lift into boondocks if he saw him hitch-hiking.

"He was a absolute affable person, absolute quiet," he said.

"Always chatting about altered things; he was absolutely knowledgeable."

Mr Wright had lived there back 1961; he acquainted the claret run through the community.

What had happened up the acropolis from his abode had aching everyone.

The dog ambler who begin Findlay said the affliction fabricated her realise how few bodies in the neighbourhood she knew.

"There has been a lot of soul-searching," her bedmate said.

"There ability be aching bodies and burst bodies ... but it's absolutely a absolutely admirable community."

People began talking to their neighbours and a conceivably decidedly avant-garde band-aid was reached: they set up a Facebook group.

They began by talking.

There had been barbecues and the odd get-together; annihilation too formal.

One day, they absolved through Truby King Assets "as a group, to array of accost it", she said.

Mr Wright sensed a change.

"Everyone annular actuality rallies calm aback article goes wrong," he said.

"It's like the argent lining on the cloud."

He looks up and there is alone dejected sky aloft Seacliff.

• Feb 8, 2016:

Stephen Findlay loses his cellphone and finds out Sharon Comerford has acclimated it to bulletin his friends. He believes a -to-be accord has been broke because of her interference.

• Feb 12: Findlay visits a woman while drunk, talks about "bludgeoning bodies to death" and says he hates his neighbours.

• Feb 18: He contacts badge about issues with Ms Comerford and requests a breach adjustment which is never served.

• Feb 20: Findlay texts the association badge administrator accusatory of abundant calumniating letters from the victim.

• Feb 26: He calls 111 and claims his neighbour is "growing dope", tells badge he has had "six years of hell".

• March 7, 10am: Findlay walks to Karitane to buy a barillet of wine.

• 2.15pm: Texts badge to say Ms Comerford about collection into him as he absolved home.

• 7pm: Findlay walks to her home and beats her to death.

• March 8, 5am: Tries to argument a friend, allurement them to alarm him immediately, but he enters the amiss number.

• 8.11am: Findlay is begin with a gunshot anguish to his face in Truby King Assets by a dog walker.

 

 

Share on Facebook

Share on Twitter

Share on Google+

Share on LinkedIn