Lisa Mercer and Mark Breingan after their arrests for manufacturing meth in 2019. The couple were later targeted in a violent home invasion, which inadvertently led to the fatal shooting of an unarmed visitor. Photo / Andrew Warner
Lisa Mercer and Mark Breingan after their arrests for manufacturing meth in 2019. The couple were later targeted in a violent home invasion, which inadvertently led to the fatal shooting of an unarmed visitor. Photo / Andrew Warner
In 2019, a meth lab was found hidden in the bush in McLaren Falls near Tauranga and a couple was arrested.
Released on bail, they were later beaten up in a brutal home invasion. Later that night, another man turned up at the address unannounced.
The visitor was unarmed but shot dead by the terrified homeowner. Suppression orders have lapsed so the wider circumstances can now be revealed.
Surrounded by thick native bush on the rural outskirts of Tauranga, at the bottom of a steep track, was a makeshift tent covered in camouflage netting.
If anyone had stumbled across the crude shelter, at first glance they might have thought it was a hut built by adventurouskids, or perhaps hunters staying overnight in the Kaimai Ranges.
But inside the shanty was an odd assortment of miscellaneous items: a six-burner barbecue, a 9kg gas cylinder, plastic buckets, frying pans, cutlery and rubbish bags, all scattered across terraced steps hewn from the earth.
Curiously there was also a hose syphoning water from a natural underground spring, as well as an enormous metal cylinder.
It was a reaction vessel, which detectives searching the remote property in June 2019 immediately recognised as a crucial piece of equipment to cook methamphetamine.
The welded cylinder was so heavy that police needed a helicopter to winch it out of the bush.
Five years later, a judge threw out the most serious charge against the couple, Mark Breingan and Lisa Mercer, during a jury trial in the Tauranga District Court in June.
The jury also acquitted Breingan of manufacturing the key ingredient needed to cook meth, but was hung (unable to reach a decision) on six lesser charges.
The possibility of a retrial loomed but last week the Crown decided against prosecuting the remaining charges for a second time.
Breingan was free to go - straight back to prison.
What the jury didn’t know was that Breingan had also been convicted of manslaughter in a separate, but intertwined, trial.
The conclusion of the drugs case means name suppression was lifted and the Herald can finally reveal the chaotic fallout of Breingan’s drug lab arrest, which ended with an unarmed man being shot dead in his driveway.
A helicopter was needed to lift the heavy reaction vessel from a clandestine meth lab out of the bush in the Kaimai Ranges in 2019. Photo / NZ Police
In February 2019, detectives in the Tauranga branch of the National Organised Crime Group started a covert investigation into the commercial supply of methamphetamine in the Bay of Plenty.
The police planted a listening device in Monk’s home and also bugged his phone calls, which revealed Monk was supplying drugs to his criminal associates, some who were selling on his behalf.
During a search of Monk’s home, detectives found 76 grams of methamphetamine and nearly 300 grams of cannabis, as well as other tools of the trade: CCTV cameras, a police scanner, electronic scales, plastic bags and glass pipes.
Monk immediately confessed that he sold meth to “pay some bills” and support his own heavy addiction, a claim which was corroborated by the private conversations intercepted by police.
The evidence gathered showed his drug dealing was not as widespread as first suspected, however Operation Abbey did uncover Monk’s violent behaviour towards his girlfriend.
The pair had been in a relationship for about three years until an assault in April 2019, where a jealous Monk pushed and shoved his partner around their apartment.
Angry and unsure of what might happen, the woman hit him over the head with a half-full bottle of vodka. The blow shattered Monk’s eye socket and in a rage, he threw the woman, who was much smaller than him, to the ground.
He stomped and kicked her between six and eight times, then punched her in the face at least four times. Monk then grabbed her by the throat.
“The strangulation lasted a few minutes and the complainant thought she was going to die,” according to the summary of facts.
She suffered bruises to her chest, a swollen face and lip, a torn and bleeding ear, a black eye and red marks on her neck.
The victim obtained a protection order from the Tauranga Family Court.
Monk breached the order several times by sending emails in which he told his girlfriend he loved her and wanted to talk about their relationship.
After he was arrested in May 2019 and charged with assaulting his partner and breaching the protection order, Monk made “numerous and persistent requests” to dissuade her from giving evidence in court.
“He offered her money on around eight occasions, including one instance where he offered her $25,000 for her not to attend court,” according to the summary of facts.
“The defendant’s efforts to dissuade the complainant from attending court also included the defendant requesting the complainant to say the assault was less serious, asking her to help him get off the charges and telling her that he would kill himself if she went to court.”
A police mugshot of Bernard Simon Monk. Photo / NZ Police
Although Monk wasn’t the drug lord the police suspected at first, he did inadvertently lead a second phase of Operation Abbey straight to the door of Mark Breingan.
Polling data from Monk’s cellphone indicated he was a frequent visitor to McLaren Falls, on the lower Kaimai Ranges about 20 minutes from Tauranga, where Breingan lived.
The friends had a shared passion for table tennis, and after playing a few games, Monk would often stay for dinner with Breingan and his partner Lisa Mercer.
Breingan ran a firewood business from the rural property, but the police suspected he was supplying another product as well.
In June 2019, a few weeks after Monk was arrested, police executed a search warrant at Breingan’s property and found $22,585 in cash and 15 grams of cannabis.
During the two-day search, detectives climbed over a boundary fence and into the neighbouring property, where the clandestine meth lab was eventually discovered in the bush.
Also concealed in the undergrowth, just on the other side of Breingan’s boundary, was 14kg of dried cannabis (wrapped in black bin bags and sealed in buckets) and $120,000 cash sealed in a suitcase.
Breingan and Mercer were arrested and charged with possession of equipment and materials to manufacture methamphetamine, manufacturing the Class A drug, and possession of cannabis for sale.
If convicted, the couple were looking at a long spell in prison. They were bailed to an address in Te Awamutu where they were electronically monitored with ankle bracelets.
Later that year, Breingan wanted his bail conditions changed so they could return to their McLaren Falls home and work on the firewood business.
Judge David Cameron declined the application in the Tauranga District Court, on the grounds that Breingan returning to the scene of the drug-making allegations would only increase the likelihood of re-offending.
The remoteness of the property would also make it difficult for police to monitor Breingan, Judge Cameron reasoned, and allow him to re-establish contact with any criminal associates he had in the region.
Through his defence lawyer Maria Pecotic, Breingan tried again to move home.
Pecotic appealed the bail ruling to the High Court, where she argued there was very little direct evidence linking her client to the drug manufacture for which he had been charged.
Nothing was found on his property. The meth lab was found on a neighbouring block of land which could be accessed from Breingan’s home, but also two other adjacent properties.
There was no DNA evidence that linked Breingan to the lab, although there was cutlery and a frying pan that the police alleged came from matching sets found in his kitchen. A fingerprint of Breingan was found on the frying pan, but that could have been removed from the house without his knowledge.
There was also an innocent explanation for the $22,000 found in the McLaren Falls home, Pecotic said, as her client ran a business selling firewood for cash.
Her client had no significant criminal history, with the only drug-related conviction for possession of a cannabis plant in 2010 for which Breingan was fined $250.
As for criminal associates, Pecotic pointed out that the police had not identified any drug associates other than Bernard Monk, whose arrest had sparked the search of Breingan’s property in the first place.
Monk himself was in custody on the drugs and assault charges, so Pecotic submitted the friends could not meet in any event.
Taking all these matters into account, and the fact that Breingan’s movements could still be restricted on the property because of the ankle bracelet, Justice Grant Powell granted the bail variation.
It was a small win for Breingan and Lisa Mercer but one they would soon regret.
Lisa Kathleen Mercer and Mark David Breingan after being charged with manufacturing methamphetamine. The couple appeared in the Tauranga District Court by audio-visual link from prison. Photo / Andrew Warner
On a Monday morning in late January 2021, Breingan was at home splitting firewood with his nephew, while Mercer was inside their sleepout a short distance away.
Two cars arrived in convoy unannounced, a black BMW and a grey Holden Commodore, just before 11am. There were two women in the Commodore, while a group of large men emerged from the black BMW.
One of the men approached Mercer and grabbed her by the hair, before punching her face and body. He demanded that she hand over cash and began looking through drawers. He snatched her iPhone before kneeing her in the face.
The others in the BMW walked over to Breingan, and told him that he “owed them”.
Someone struck him from behind, then the pack took turns punching him in the face, head and chest.
Breingan was knocked to the ground and unable to get back up. They kept beating him as he cried out for help.
The assailants were linked to the Rebels motorcycle gang, either former or current members, and had turned up at the behest of Bernard Monk to retrieve his vehicles.
He had stored a caravan and a bus at Breingan’s place at McLaren Falls, but for some unknown reason, the vehicles were not returned to Monk when his sister tried to get them back previously.
She had been chased off with a shovel that day, but had returned in the grey Commodore today with some back-up from the Rebels.
The caravan was not there, so Breingan invited the men to take the bus, which was in a state of disrepair. He was a skilled mechanic but was unable to get it started, so the gangsters started hitting him with a baseball bat and golf clubs.
He was struck in the head about nine times, and stabbed through the shoulder with a piece of reinforcing iron.
Orchard workers at a neighbour’s property heard the commotion and came over to investigate, but were scared off.
The beating eventually came to an end, with the gang associates smashing the hard drives that stored the security camera footage of the property and driving off in a van owned by Breingan.
They would be back, the gangsters warned Breingan as they left.
Two police officers arrived at around 11.30am after concerned neighbours called 111, although Breingan was unco-operative.
“You guys just make it worse, it’s your fault they came here. If they come back, I’ll be sorting it. If you guys can’t sort it out, I’ll be using my channels,” Breingan told the pair of constables.
“Lucky they ran out of puff or they might have killed me. They will be back later. Mark my words, they will be back later, and I will have to handle it.”
For their own safety, the police suggested Breingan and the others should leave the property although he was adamant he wanted to stay. Eventually, St John ambulance staff took Breingan and Mercer to Tauranga Hospital for treatment.
He had suffered wounds all over his body, including a deep cut to his scalp and a broken nose, eye socket and cheekbone, two puncture wounds to his stomach, three broken ribs and two fractured vertebrae.
Despite these serious injuries, not to mention the psychological damage he suffered, Breingan discharged himself from hospital.
He came home to find a friend had dropped off a new hard drive for his security camera system, as well as two shotguns and some ammunition
If the Rebels came back, he was going to handle it.
“There’s someone coming down the driveway,” Lisa Mercer shouted to her fiance. Breingan was eating toasted sandwiches for tea and still nursing the injuries he’d suffered earlier that day.
He looked at the CCTV monitor and saw another strange car coming down the driveway. It was 9.58pm, so Breingan grabbed his shotgun, switched on a floodlight and went outside.
The car had stopped outside the driveway gate, which was closed, and a man in the passenger seat got out of the vehicle.
“Leave, f*** off,” Breingan yelled. " I don’t want any more of what happened today.”
He was behind a shipping container and as he moved closer to the corner, to get a clear line of sight to the gate, he threatened to shoot. The gate was about 20 metres away.
“Leave, or I’ll shoot,” Breingan yelled, three or four times.
Illuminated by the car’s headlights and a security light on the house, the man stands by the gate and waves at the security camera. He is unarmed and makes no attempt to enter the property.
“It’s Jar,” he said, trying to identify himself. “It’s Jar.”
Boom. Breingan fired the shotgun. In explaining himself later to Detective Joel Potaka, Breingan said: “They weren’t f***ing off, they were trying to get in.
“They were only there for one thing and it wasn’t good. I fired a shot at the car. It took off. I heard a groaning and thought ‘f***’s sake, I hit someone’.”
He ran inside and told his partner to call 111, grabbed a torch and went back to the gate. The man he shot was prone on the ground, breathing and groaning but not responding to questions.
“When I rolled him over, I could see something on his belly that looked like holes,” Breingan told Potaka.
“There wasn’t much blood, so I thought he must be bleeding internally.”
Told that the man had died from his injuries, Breingan said: “Oh shit that’s no good, f***ing shit day all right.”
He was charged with the murder of Jamin Harrison, known as Jar to his friends.
Harrison, 30, was a father-of-two and worked with steel fabrication on construction sites around Tauranga.
At one point, he had been a patched member of the Rebels - although his mother said he had left the gang - but was also a close friend of Bernie Monk.
Breingan had actually met Jar Harrison twice before. Once with Monk at the McLaren Falls property, and the second time in prison.
Jar wanted to know where his brother could buy firewood, so Breingan gave him a phone number for his business partner. Now Jar was dead.
The case for murder seemed straightforward.
An unarmed man waiting at the gate, not threatening anyone. Mark Breingan shooting first and asking questions later.
Even he admitted the security camera footage, which captured the entire episode, “does not look good”.
Now Harrison was dead. Breingan was charged with murder and the prosecution case seemed straight-forward. Even Breingan admitted the security camera footage, which captured the entire episode, “does not look good”.
Mark Breingan, 55, was charged with the murder of Jamin Harrison but faced a separate trial on methamphetamine offences. Photo / Alex Cairns.
The first trial in the High Court at Rotorua in 2023 resulted in a hung jury, but the retrial in February 2024 ended with Breingan acquitted of the murder charge.
The Crown had argued that even if Breingan did not mean to kill Jamin Harrison, he did mean to cause him a very serious injury, knowing there was a risk that he might be killed.
Defence lawyers David Niven and Phil Hamlin countered that Breingan only fired a warning shot in self defence believing that a Rebels gang member, or more, had returned to the McLaren Falls property to “finish him off”.
They called Dr Caleb Armstrong, a forensic psychologist, to give expert evidence as to their client’s state of mind.
In Dr Armstrong’s opinion, Breingan, at the time he fired the shotgun, was operating under an acute stress disorder because of the bashing he had received earlier that day.
Such a disorder can affect perception by altering someone’s sense of reality, as well as impairing judgment and processing ability. Essentially, such a disorder primes an individual’s nervous system to overreact.
That raised the possibility that although Harrison was unarmed and did not pose a threat, Breingan genuinely believed there was a real threat because of the combination of the physical and psychological injuries he suffered.
The not guilty verdict on the murder charge meant the jury accepted Breingan had acted in self defence, as defined by law.
However, he wasn’t off the hook completely.
Breingan did not have a firearms licence, and deliberately firing the gun was an unlawful act.
The majority of the jury (10-1, with another juror dismissed during the trial) were satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that discharging the weapon in the direction of Jamin Harrison, down a dark and narrow passage, was not reasonable, even in the circumstances that Breingan mistakenly believed.
In other words, the self-defence was excessive, and Breingan was found guilty of Harrison’s manslaughter instead.
That was the factual basis on which Justice Tracey Walker sentenced the 55-year-old in June 2024, which she compared to other similar manslaughter cases and started with six years and three months in prison.
This was reduced because Breingan had in fact offered to plead guilty to manslaughter, which showed a willingness to accept responsibility for Harrison’s death, and the remorse he had shown.
“He has a family, he is someone’s son, and I did that,” Breingan told a report writer for the court. “I just wanted them to go away.”
Justice Walker accepted his remorse was genuine, not simply regret at his own circumstances, and further discounted the prison time because of Breingan’s acute stress disorder at the time of the shooting, and the impact of a custodial sentence on his chances of rehabilitation.
This led to a final sentence of three years and nine months in prison for killing Jamin Harrison.
Despite being convicted of manslaughter, Breingan’s identity remained secret in order to protect his right to a fair trial in June 2024 on the drugs charges.
As it happened, the charge of manufacturing methamphetamine was dismissed by Judge Belinda Mason before the jury could consider it.
There was a lack of evidence of a particular chemical needed to be present to prove manufacture had taken place, although there was an empty container that contained traces of it.
The Crown argued the jury could infer the missing chemical had simply been consumed in the cooking process. But Judge Mason wasn’t convinced and the most serious charge faced by Breingan, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, was thrown out before the jury could even consider it.
The defence case was that Bernie Monk and another gang member had set up the clandestine lab in the bush without the knowledge of Mark Breingan or Mercer; a theory which the Crown rubbished because of the risk of Monk getting caught and the circumstantial evidence pointing to the couple who lived there.
But Monk, with his long history of drug supply - although not manufacture it must be noted - was a useful scapegoat.
The jury acquitted Breingan of manufacturing pseudoephedrine (an important ingredient in cooking meth), leading him to break down in tears, but could not reach a decision on the charges of possessing methamphetamine lab equipment, or the cannabis.
Hidden underneath camouflage netting in the bush of the Kaimai Ranges near Tauranga was a clandestine meth lab. Photo / NZ Police
The Parr bomb, a metal cylinder found in the meth lab, was so large it had to be pulled out of the bush by helicopter. Photo / NZ Police
Another hung jury, which raised the prospect of yet another trial until the Crown’s decision last week to not pursue the remaining charges.
The conclusion of Breingan’s final case meant the wide-ranging suppression orders across the trio of intertwined criminal trials could be lifted, and the full story told.
The man who inadvertently started everything, Bernard Monk, was convicted of aggravated robbery in 2022, and sentenced to serve an additional six years and three months in prison on top of the time given to him for selling drugs and assaulting his girlfriend - a total of more than 10 years.
For his part, Monk was adamant he never ordered, or intended, for his Rebels gang associates to inflict violence on Mark Breingan - his table tennis mate.
“I did it to retrieve my property and that was it. No violence ... I feel terrible,” Monk told the jury at his trial.
They didn’t believe him but in an earlier interview with the police, Monk was able to shed some light as to why Jamin Harrison was visiting McLaren Falls in the middle of the night.
On hearing about the violence meted out to Breingan and Mercer earlier that day, Monk said he took three Lorazepam tablets (used to treat anxiety) and drank a copious amount of whiskey.
The cocktail put Monk into a stupor, who was later shocked to learn that his friend had been shot at the McLaren Falls property.
“I thought ‘what the f*** was he doing up there?’” Monk told the police.
Turns out, an incoherent Monk was overheard calling Harrison to persuade him to visit Breingan on his behalf.
Although he apparently couldn’t remember the conversation, Monk wanted Harrison to pass a phone to Breingan so they could talk.
“Something has happened here and it is sad,” Monk told a detective.
“I wanted my caravan back. I asked Jamin to go up. They knew each other. Jamin had bought firewood off him and there was a relationship,” Monk said.
“If I hadn’t made that phone call, Jamin potentially would still be alive. There is a lot of guilt. Now my mate is f***ing dead, all over a f***ing caravan.”
Additional reporting Hannah Bartlett
Jared Savage covers crime and justice issues, with a particular interest in organised crime. He joined the Herald in 2006 and has won a dozen journalism awards in that time, including twice being named Reporter of the Year. He is also the author of Gangland and Gangster’s Paradise.
