A former prison guard accused of murdering his friend Michael McGrath, whose body has never been found, will face a retrial in August, it has been confirmed today.
David Charles Benbow, 54, denies killing McGrath in the Christchurch suburb of Halswell in 2017.
He pleaded not guilty during a seven-week trial at the High Court in Christchurch earlier this year.
However, after hearing from more than 100 witnesses and deliberating for four days, a jury was unable to reach a verdict.
A hung jury was declared and Benbow was remanded on electronically-monitored bail to return to court today to decide what happens next with his case.
This morning, on the sixth anniversary of McGrath’s disappearance, a retrial start date was confirmed by Justice Jonathan Eaton who said it should be heard at the earliest possible opportunity.
The retrial - just five months after the hung jury - was initially not likely to be heard until June 2024 but court space in August and September this year recently became available, the court heard this morning.
The new trial will begin on August 21.
McGrath disappeared from his Halswell home on Monday, May 22, 2017. His body has never been found despite widespread searches of properties, rivers, waterways, and the city dump since he vanished.
A missing persons investigation – which became a homicide probe within days – was launched when McGrath, a fastidious carpenter, failed to show up for a weekly dinner appointment with his brother and mother.
Benbow became a person of interest after it emerged that he was the last person to see McGrath when he visited his Checketts Ave house on Sunday, May 21, 2017 to ask him for help shifting some heavy railway sleepers the next morning.
But the former Corrections officer has always professed his innocence, saying that McGrath never turned up that morning, putting it down to a hard frost, and after waiting a while went to a counsellor’s appointment in the city at 10.15am.
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