The husband is now defending an attempted murder charge in a trial being held in the High Court at Palmerston North this week.
Tomorrow the jury deciding his fate will be taken to the scene of his alleged crime.
That scene is the final bend before the couple’s farmhouse in rural Manawatū. The gravel road takes a 90-degree left turn towards their home, while the right side of the road is fringed by what the Crown claims to be a “cliff”. The man’s lawyer, however, describes it as a “steep decline”.
Regardless of the varying interpretations, there is a drop of around 100m with a creek running through the gully below. The sides are bordered by native trees.
It’s those trees that caught the couple’s vehicle about 40m down from the road’s edge. The woman scrambled through a window and clawed her way uphill.
Bloody, bruised and fearful of her husband, whom she could hear calling her name, the woman told the court she climbed for 20 minutes before running home and then to a neighbouring property for help.
Her husband later arrived at the neighbour’s house, banging on the windows and doors while begging the owner of the house to help him find his wife.
Police arrested him at the scene soon after.
Charges
Earlier this week, the Crown told the jury the man had driven off the cliff in an alleged attempt to kill both himself and his wife.
When the wife took the witness stand, she said the pair had been experiencing relationship issues in the lead-up to the crash.
She described him as controlling and as having a quick temper.
The car left the road instead of taking the left-hand bend. Photo / Google
The woman went to Australia for several weeks to visit family and upon her return on June 9 last year, he picked her up from Wellington Airport.
She told the jury they were barely out of the carpark before her husband began “interrogating” her about the state of their marriage.
He pleaded for a second chance for much of their two-and-a-half-hour drive home.
On the home straight, she “snapped” and told him it was over and that she had feelings for the owner of the farm they were living at.
He then said to her “if there’s no you, there’s no me,” before he accelerated through a fence and over the cliff, she alleged.
The man’s lawyer, Steve Winter, rejected the crown’s assertion that the man drove off the road intentionally.
Winter said the car’s internal computer showed he turned 54 degrees to the left four and a half seconds before impact.
He also told the jury that his client was tired at the time of the crash and would never intentionally try to kill himself or his wife.
Evidence
Multiple police officers who attended the crash site gave evidence on Wednesday, describing the gully where the vehicle ended up and the state of the husband and wife after the crash.
Serious Crash Unit investigator constable Matthew Love who interpreted the data from the car’s computer said it showed the brake pedal was not pressed prior to the airbags being deployed.
However, under cross-examination he said the wheels were pointed 54 degrees to the left, indicating the vehicle was turning.
The couple’s daughter, 17, and son, 21, took the stand on Tuesday to answer questions from the prosecution and defence.
Both told the court their father didn’t want them to accompany him in picking their mother up from the airport.
Instead, the parents met the kids for dinner in Palmerston North as they travelled home from the airport.
They told the jury their father didn’t eat, was reserved and when he went to the bathroom their mother told them he’d been relentless in his questioning about their marriage.
“I thought it would be better if I could pick her up, I just didn’t think it was a good idea for them to be in a car together,” the daughter said in evidence.
“It would not have been a very joyful two-hour car ride.”
She offered to take her mother home from the restaurant but she declined, saying it would “be easier” to stay in the vehicle with her husband.
Half an hour later, the girl arrived at their family home none the wiser that within that short period, her parents had crashed.
Moments later, her mother approached the house yelling “he tried to kill me”.
“Your father tried to kill me, we need to go,” the daughter told the court, recalling her mother’s words.
It was a phrase she continued to say as they ran to the farm owner’s neighbouring house who then called the police.
Officers arrived around the same time as the man, who also managed to escape from the crashed car.
Their daughter said he was calling his wife’s name and that he sounded “desperate”. She also recalled him telling the police he’d fallen asleep and thought his wife was still in the gully somewhere.
She then called her brother, who told the court his sister said “Dad just drove mum off a cliff.”
The son immediately drove to the house where he was allowed to see his mother but not his father. He told the court his father was limping and saying “we need to find mum, we need to find mum”.
In evidence, the mother and son described the man as wearing his “funeral clothes” at the time of the crash. But lawyer Steve Winter showed a photo of the man wearing the same attire to his son’s 21st birthday.
The High Court at Palmerston North is hearing the case. Photo / NZME
The son conceded it was fair to say they were his father’s formal clothes, or clothes he wore to make a good impression, rather than what he wanted to die in.
A large portion of the defence’s line of questioning involved drone footage of the scene which showed where the car left the road from a variety of angles.
Rivalry
The owner of the farm the couple had moved to several years earlier also took the stand and said he’d seen his neighbour’s relationship progressively worsen over time.
He said the man often lost his temper and he once warned him “most women wouldn’t put up with that kind of behaviour”.
The farm owner said he went out of his way to avoid being alone with the woman so as not to cause any further conflict between the couple.
He said the man came across as paranoid and would burst into rooms as if he was trying to catch the farm owner with his wife.
The man asked the farm owner if he would “go there” with his wife if they were to divorce.
“I said ‘I hadn’t thought about it’… because we’re just friends.”
The farm owner saw the man the morning of the crash and described him as being “off”.
“He was really not himself … It was of concern to me,” he told the jury.
He didn’t see the family again until later that night when the woman and her daughter burst through his door. The woman was covered in blood and mud, he said.
Shortly after, he heard the man calling for his wife and she told him, “don’t let him in he’s going to finish me.”
He called police, who also advised him not to let the man in and to lock the doors, which he did.
Under cross-examination, Winter asked him whether he was sure the woman had told him that her husband said life wasn’t worth living if they weren’t together before they crashed.
The farm owner said he was 90 per cent sure.
Winter suggested to the man it was understandable the husband was paranoid given the farm owner’s close relationship with his wife, which allegedly included her giving him back massages.
