Kane Wayman died after an altercation at the Mongols MC gang pad outside of Christchurch.
A senior Mongols figure has been found guilty of manslaughter, while his daughter and a gang prospect were cleared of murdering Kane Wayman at a New Year's Eve party last year. The trial lifted the lid on a murky underworld. Herald senior journalist Kurt Bayer reports.
Partying at a rival's gang pad was a bold, some might say lunatic, move, but then again, Kane Wayman was blinded by love. Blinded, and torn, by unrequited love.
And it's not like he was a naïve stripling, wet behind the ears. Wayman knew the streets, their idiosyncratic laws and shades. A pimp, drug slinger, and user. Hustler.
Wayman was also wise to the ways of Christchurch's gang underbelly. Those summer holidays, he had been house-sitting the Head Hunters MC gang's local headquarters at 31 Vickerys Rd. With everyone out of town, he had the run of the fortified place.
But when he was invited to a New Year's Eve party at the Mongols MC gang clubhouse on Main South Rd, near the Burnham Military Camp outside of Christchurch, he jumped at the chance.
Any chance to be near Liz Sheed. Wayman knew she would be there, and probably her dad, one of the senior gang figures, Lyndon Sheed. He didn't know the alleged Mongols prospect Mitchell Carston, or someone who would only become known by police as "curly-haired guy". He didn't care. Maybe he could convince Liz, finally, that they should get back together. That was it.
It was a decision that would cost him his life.
Wayman rolled up in his white Mercedes. Lowered, pimped out, it was his pride and joy. And Liz Sheed, the woman he had been sleeping with earlier in 2020 until she broke it off, desperately wanted it, so the Crown's narrative went during a two-week murder trial at the High Court in Christchurch which ended with late-night jury verdicts on Friday.
He had been around women all his life. Wayman was a well-known Christchurch pimp, looking after sex workers in the city's Manchester St red light district. In the days after his sudden death, a friend would remember him as "the biggest teddy bear" who would "look after any woman and wouldn't do anything to hurt anyone, ever".
In April 2005, he had been acting as a minder when he saw streetwalker Susan "Suzie" Sutherland get into a white Honda Prelude. Hours later, her strangled, naked body was found dumped in a vacant Peterborough St section.
Although there would normally be a pretty strong code of silence in talking to the cops, Sutherland's murder wasn't right. It shook the city's sex working population. And Wayman's subsequent detailed description to authorities of the white Honda's driver – and his later testimony in court – helped convict South African immigrant Jule Patrick Burns who would be jailed for life.
Fast-forwarding to late 2020, however, things had gone sour between 46-year-old Wayman and 26-year-old Sheed. She was messaging people that he'd been "causing s***", the Crown alleged at trial, and she wanted him dealt to. She also allegedly wanted his Merc.
Over the next few days, Wayman said he would make it up to her, that he loved her so much.
On December 20, Sheed invited him to the Mongols pad to meet her father, Lyndon Sheed. The 43-year-old Lyndon was a patched member of the gang, and a senior figure. The meeting appears to have been amicable, and a few days later, Wayman was asked back for a big end-of-year happening. It would have fireworks, a bubbling spa bath. Tunes would be cranked. The pad was well decked-out too, with stocked bar, pool tables, and fun all around.
En route to the party, Wayman picked up Liz Sheed and another friend who would later become the Crown's key witness in the murder trial - the only person willing to talk to police about what they saw in the early hours of the next morning, which would ultimately end with Wayman passing away.
They stopped at the Head Hunter's pad on the way so Wayman could "pick up some stuff". The witness, who had just been released from prison after a sentence for burglary and who has permanent name suppression, would deny it was so Wayman could uplift methamphetamine. And besides, it was claimed that Lyndon Sheed didn't allow hard drugs at the Mongols clubhouse.
The trio rolled up to the well-fenced and guarded Mongols pad about 9pm-9.30pm. A rangy, bespectacled young prospect, said by the Crown to have been 26-year-old Mitchell Thomas McGregor Carston, opened the gates and let them in.
Wayman parked his Merc by a white picket fence, near where the party was already well under way. The mood was good, the key witness would say, with lots of laughing, drinking, chatting, pool and dancing.
Carston worked the bar. Partygoers, some in gang patches, came and went from the inside bar, past Mongols MC flags and paraphernalia, through sliding doors to the outside courtyard area which had the spa, a feature fountain, and fire blazing in a drum.
Everyone was having a fine time; everyone except Wayman. He'd been smoking meth for a few days, and with Liz Sheed swatting off his advances, he had begun acting out.
He was getting louder. And "drunker and drunker". His friend tried to tell him to "stop being a dick".
Others were clearly getting riled, especially when Wayman started "disrespecting" the Mongols - "the family" - and talking about rival gangs.
Liz Sheed's lawyer would claim during the trial that he was even saying things like, "Mongrel Mob, Mongrel Mob, woof woof".
Wayman was seen banging his head against a wooden post. His friend had already told him to rein it in. Now they suggested it was time to leave.
But Wayman wouldn't have it.
At some point in the early hours of the morning, Wayman had pushed his luck far enough. His friend heard shouting and what sounded like a fight breaking out.
They rushed outside to find a "curly-haired guy" pursuing Wayman, chasing him around his parked Mercedes, telling him he'd been "a f****** nuisance all night".
He was throwing punches and Wayman was soon bleeding from the nose, the court heard.
The key Crown witness claimed that Lyndon Sheed, who they called "the big man", king-hit Wayman, sending him to the ground where he was punched more, booted and stomped by Lyndon, curly-haired guy, and also Carston – something they vehemently denied.
"I could hear the gravel crunching," the witness told the jury.
"In that moment, they were just angry. They were just beating him... Giving someone a hiding is something different to that... I've never seen that shit in my whole entire life. The aggressiveness was just something else. It was pure hate."
The witness also claimed that Liz Sheed came out and stood over Wayman on the ground to tell him: "Don't you f*** with my family. I hope you f****** die."
And as they were beating him on the ground, Wayman's friend allegedly tried to stop the assault, saying, "Hey, that's enough."
The assailants looked at them sideways and they "just froze", the court heard.
"I just shut my mouth and I had to stand back and just watch them carry on," the witness said.
"I was scared. I was unsure if I was going to leave there. Sometimes they don't want people to come and tell a story."
The attack only ended when the trio got tired, the witness said. By that time, Wayman was unconscious.
It's not clear if Wayman was already dead but his friend drove him in his Mercedes to hospital.
As they were leaving the gang pad, the witness claimed that the attackers told them to drive Wayman's body off a cliff and was warned, "Hear nothing, see nothing".
Wayman got to Christchurch Hospital's emergency department but at 9.02am on New Year's Day last year, was pronounced dead.
A post mortem found Wayman's cause of death was blunt force head and neck injuries on the background of an enlarged heart, potentially from methamphetamine use and obesity.
The trial largely hung on whether the jury believed the Crown's key witness. All three accused denied having anything to do with his death, raising questions over his cause of death, particularly around his pre-existing health conditions and meth use.
Forensic pathologist Dr Leslie Anderson agreed that, for sure, it was a complex case.
But she rejected suggestions by one of defence lawyers that Wayman could have died suddenly from his pre-existing health conditions, saying it had been "triggered" by a physical altercation.
"He would not have died if not for the circumstances," Anderson said.
The defence lawyers all picked holes in the account of the key Crown witness, telling the jury that the testimony had been unreliable and littered with inconsistencies and lies.
Lyndon Sheed's lawyer Christopher Lange told the jury the key Crown witness should not be believed, especially casting doubt on their story about how Wayman was allegedly struck to the ground with a "king hit" by his client.
DNA samples taken from Wayman's bloodied T-shirt, however, would later match Lyndon Sheed and two "unknown individuals".
Carston's lawyers said there was no doubt Wayman had been assaulted. But they warned the jury that it was not their job to work out what happened that night.
They only needed to judge whether the Crown had proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Carston – and the Sheeds – were part of any assault, or had been party to any assault, and if they found they had, whether it had been a substantial operative cause of Wayman's death.
If they weren't sure, then not guilty pleas must follow, the lawyers argued.
In the end, after nearly eight hours of deliberations, the jury acquitted Liz Sheed and Carston. They also found Lyndon Sheed not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter.
He will be sentenced at a later date.
Justice Cameron Mander thanked the jury for their service.
Wayman didn't appear to have any friends or family come to court to witness proceedings.
But as his friend, the key Crown witness told the jury: "Kane was just being himself [that night]. Obviously, he had a bit too much [alcohol and drugs] but doesn't give anyone the right to, um, do what they did to him."
OPINION: New Zealander reflects on delivering speech at St James' Palace.