A fly-through of the fire damage was shown to the jury during the trial of Gregory Hart and Sean Hayde, accused of killing Wiremu Arapo on October 20, 2020. Video / NZ Police
Two men, friends since high school in Auckland, were accused of murder and turned on each other. At their trial they used everything at their disposal to try to throw the other under the bus. Both were found responsible for the killing. George Block reports.
Sean Hayde had the oldest motive in the world, Paul Borich, KC, told the jury in his closing address. Jealousy.
But there was another emotion at play in the lead-up to the killing of Wiremu Arapo. Resentment.
His flatmate Gregory Hart, a former soldier who spent much of the day sleeping and the remainder drinking or gaming, resented Arapo’s “bullshit chats” urging him to sort his life out and pay the bills.
Meanwhile Hayde, Hart’s mate since the third form, was jealous of Arapo’s continuing closeness with his new flame, Jenifer McManus, and what he viewed as attempts to interfere in their relationship.
Hart’s lawyer, Borich, described the situation as a lethal triangle.
On October 20, 2020, four bottles of cheap supermarket wine were added to the simmering mixture of resentment and jealousy, and the situation came to the boil.
After a Tuesday afternoon spent drinking at Hayde’s flat, the pair drove around to the flat Arapo had recently given Hart notice to leave.
Sean Hayde claimed his co-accused, Gregory Hart, (not pictured) was solely responsible for killing Wiremu Arapo. The jury did not believe him and found him guilty of murder. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Arapo, who was once Hayde’s boxing tutor, was beaten to death.
His body was left in the rental in Cockle Bay’s Minerva Tce to be consumed by the fire. The prosecution said the men used petrol to burn down the house in a bungled attempt to destroy the evidence.
Police and Arapo’s family came to realise it was no ordinary house fire, as Hart and Hayde gave contradictory and self-serving accounts of what happened.
“Either both or one of the defendants killed him,” Justice Geoffery Venning said in summing up the case.
They were charged with murder and perverting the course of justice by setting the fire a few weeks later.
Nearly three years on, a jury took about 17 hours of deliberations to find the pair responsible for killing Arapo.
The Hayde and Hart defence teams had, in effect, a dual role as prosecutors. Each tried to prove that not only was their client not guilty but that the other man was the sole killer.
Hayde, characterised as the ringleader of the assault, was found guilty of murder, while Hart was found guilty of manslaughter.
Both were also found guilty of perverting the course of justice by setting the fire and Hayde was found guilty of two out of three domestic violence charges against a former partner.
LIFE AND DEATH IN THE SUBURBS
Hayde and Hart, who were in their early 30s at the time of the killing in 2020, lived a lifestyle akin to teenagers who had just started flatting.
“Sean was the dominant figure in an awkward friendship that seemed to centre around smoking cannabis and drinking cheap wine from the supermarket,” said Jonathan Hudson, the other of Hart’s lawyers, in his opening remarks to the jury.
The pair became friends in the third form at St Peter’s College in Epsom.
Over the next 20 or so years they hung out regularly, interrupted only by Hart’s stint in the Army after leaving school.
Borich said in his closing address it appeared to be the best time in Hart’s life, and he retained a military bearing and manners.
He was medically discharged after suffering injuries to both legs after about three years.
Gregory Hart in the dock on the first day of the trial, alongside a security guard. The jury has found him guilty of manslaughter. Photo / Jason Oxenham
He had a son whom he co-parented although he was said to be not the greatest dad, with Arapo and his fiancé having to look after the boy when Hart slept in.
Hart took medication for anxiety and depression. His texts to others show a level of self-pity about his plight, an attitude that appears to have increasingly irked Arapo, an energetic self-starter.
Hayde was a keen footballer and fisherman. Like Hart he worked odd jobs.
Both men were prolific users of dating apps. The jury heard they acted as wingmen for each other and there were suggestions Hart envied Hayde’s success with women.
Arapo, who was 27 when he died, was described as an athletic and well-liked young man by Crown prosecutor Ned Fletcher.
He had a fiancee who loved and supported him and shared his hopes and dreams. She had recently joined the Navy and was training at Devonport Naval Base when he died.
Like Hart, Arapo had spent time in the Army. He was planning to move to the North Shore to be closer to his fiancee, where he wanted to take his burgeoning personal training business.
The couple were planning to travel, marry and start a family.
In December 2019, Hayde signed up for boxing classes at a gym in Highland Park where Arapo worked until the first Covid lockdown, where the pair met for the first time.
Arapo was his boxing tutor at the gym and later for a time at the garage in Minerva Tce where he operated his training business.
It was through Hayde Arapo met Hart, whom he invited to move into his flat. Later, Hayde also met McManus via Arapo.
DAYS OF VIOLENCE
Around the same time he joined Arapo’s gym, Hayde met a woman on Bumble and the pair embarked upon a relationship.
It was a rocky pairing, marred by conflict and Hayde’s apparent indifference to the relationship, the woman and her feelings.
Despite this they moved in together in early August 2020 to a flat in Bucklands Beach Rd. It did not go well.
Hayde was embarking upon an affair with McManus and had less and less time for his partner.
Her suspicions grew, especially after it emerged McManus had been visiting their home, the former partner said in evidence.
Jurors were shown this computer-augmented fly-through of the Minerva Tce rental in Cockle Bay where Wiremu Arapo's body was found after a fire. Photo / NZ Police
“I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her and the fact she kept coming to my house really upset me.”
On August 29 Hayde admitted he was sleeping with the woman.
Far from being apologetic or trying to downplay what happened, he goaded her with details of the affair.
“It was just humiliating,” the ex-partner said.
The day after the revelation, Hayde suggested they have a party to celebrate their break-up.
Over the next two days, she said, Hayde strangled, repeatedly assaulted and threatened to kill her. She said he sprayed her with hot sauce and began singing, “You are worthless, no one’s ever gonna love you” over and over.
Key to both the Crown and Hart cases was a threat made by Hayde to his former partner seven weeks before Arapo’s death.
The woman said he threatened to kill her and burn down her house – the very thing the Crown and Borich said came to pass on October 20.
“If Sean Hayde is telling you the truth, he would have to be the victim of the cruellest coincidence in history,” Borich said.
He was found guilty of the threats and assault but not guilty of the strangulation charge.
Hayde was arrested, charged and bailed a few weeks before he murdered Arapo.
FROM BAD TO WORSE
Over the next two months, relations between Arapo and the two men deteriorated.
He came to take a dim view of Hayde’s relationship with his friend McManus.
For his part, Hayde resented the continuing closeness between his new partner and Arapo. He later learned the pair had once had a fling, something McManus had not immediately disclosed.
Arapo continued not to be shy about letting Hart know that his attitude to the flat, his approach to parenting his son and life in general could use a tune-up.
In a text shown to the jury from Hart to Hayde, Hart expressed his frustration and desire to leave the flat after apparently receiving another dressing-down.
“I’ll move in; n***** boy just had another one of his bullshit chats to me after u left,” Hart wrote.
Texts from Hayde to Hart also showed a desire to inflict violence on Arapo. He once texted Hart saying that, as soon as Hart moved out, he would attack Arapo.
“Bro the day you get your bond back I’ll actually kick his teeth out,” Hayde wrote.
“I’m about to turn on the black a***,” Hayde wrote to Hart on October 17, three days before Arapo died.
“And you should know it’s not good to be on my bad side. Hence move out asap so I can kick his teeth out.”
The day before he died, Arapo sent the first message he had sent to Hayde in a long while, referencing a comment by Hayde mentioning he had found his neighbour attractive.
“It’s Wiremu. Don’t f*** the neighbour. Jen’s my girl and I don’t want you to hurt her.”
On October 20, tensions reached their crescendo.
Hayde drove Hart to the Ormiston police station so his friend, ever the follower, could give a police statement in support of his version of events about the domestic violence allegations.
The pair then returned to the Bucklands Beach home, ate a lunch cooked by McManus and sat on the deck, eventually polishing off four bottles of wine between them. At some point Hayde had filled up a red petrol canister, later found in his boot and used as evidence.
As the afternoon wore on, they drove around to Minerva Tce. Exactly what transpired in the house remains unclear.
Paul Borich, KC, represented Hart, alongside Jonathan Hudson. Photo / Jason Oxenham
What is clear is Arapo was dead before the fire started.
A lack of carbon monoxide in his blood, or burns to his trachea, showed he had not been alive to inhale smoke.
Damage to his hyoid bone, a small, mobile structure in the throat that is typically broken only in hangings or strangulations, suggested he had been throttled.
Hayde’s defence team of Julie-Anne Kincade, KC, and Emma Priest called a former partner of Hart’s who alleged he strangled her in 2018, but no charges were ever brought by police.
The Crown said the pair used petrol to burn down the house, citing the petrol can in the boot and traces of petrol found on Hart’s shoe left at the scene.
Crown witness Peter Wilding, former national fire investigation manager for Fire and Emergency NZ, told the court the cause of the fire was officially classified as “undetermined”.
A detector used to test for the presence of volatile organic compounds did not find enough to establish the presence of a liquid accelerant such as petrol.
But Wilding believed the speed of the fire and the fact it remained contained to Arapo’s wing of the house could still suggest an accelerant was used.
Kincade called English forensic scientist Greg Waite as a defence witness, who said the fire could have been started by a candle knocked over during a tussle.
The jurors’ guilty verdict on the perverting justice charges showed they were not convinced.
Justice Geoffrey Venning left the door open to manslaughter charges for the jurors if they could not be convinced of murder. Photo / Jason Oxenham.
Nor were they convinced by the yarns the pair weaved during their time in the witness box.
Hayde said Hart had grown incensed after Arapo suggested he seize Hart’s computer because of debts he was owed.
After a fight, Hayde said Hart then sat on Arapo, wielding a knife, and mentioned the fact they had both served in the army, saying “We’re meant to be brothers, we’ve served together”.
He then leaned down, kissed him and slid a knife into his neck. It was a version of events rubbished by Borich in cross-examination as something out of Band of Brothers.
“I want to suggest to you that that is total nonsense,” Borich said. “Did you get that from a film or something?”
Fletcher took a similar view during his cross-examination of Hayde.
“The Crown position is almost every word you told us over the past two days is over-scripted nonsense,” Fletcher said.
Hart’s simpler and less filmic version had Hayde kicking Arapo to death.
HOW TO SPOT A LIAR
Hayde and Hart’s behaviour in the seven weeks between the fire and when they were charged with murder did not help their case.
Both lied to police and gave self-serving and inaccurate accounts of the fire and their actions afterwards. Arapo’s family and friends were unconvinced by the version Hart told them.
Fletcher said their deception began almost immediately, with the pair feigning attempts to get back into the home to rescue Arapo, a charade for the benefit of neighbours.
Detective Timothy Harnett told the court how police found a notebook under a coffee table in the sleepout of his family’s home in Papatoetoe where Hart was living after the fire and before his arrest.
The manufacturer had embossed the phrase “Hidden Agenda” on the cover. Someone had attempted to cross out the phrase Hidden Agenda in pen.
Inside the notebook, Hart laid out his version of events, which he later admitted were lies.
Harnett said they approached Cotton On, the clothing and stationery company that manufactured the Typo-branded notebook, to obtain a fresh copy of the same type as Hart’s.
It showed several pages were missing from Hart’s version.
“This is a case about relationships, relationships gone wrong, and their snowballing effects,” Crown prosecutor Ned Fletcher said.
Police senior document examiner David Boot said the notepad had certain indentations that could not be sourced from text found on the pages still in the book, indicating the removed pages contained writing.
Among the dozens of witnesses called by a Crown was a woman Hart dated briefly after the fire.
Under questioning from Kincade, the woman said Hart had told her he had an e-book titled How to Spot a Liar, written by a former military interrogator with a name curiously similar to his - Gregory Hartley.
Detective Karen Burgess described arresting Hayde on December 8 in Mangere after she spotted him travelling in a car with McManus when on the way to arrest him.
She confronted him with questions as to why Arapo could not get out of the house if he was perfectly happy and healthy, and what he made of reports from neighbours who heard the sounds of a fight.
“I don’t know,” Hayde repeatedly replied, before asking for a lawyer.
The jury of six men and six women retired on Tuesday afternoon, after a shade over three weeks of evidence.
A firefighter picks through wreckage of Arapo's property after the fire on October 20, 2020.
As the hours turned to days with no news of a verdict, questions grew about whether they would be able to reach a decision.
Part-way through their lengthy deliberations, the jury asked the judge for clarity on how a defendant can be liable as a party to an offence.
Justice Venning said even if one of the men did not deliver the fatal blow, they could still be guilty if they intentionally or deliberately participated in the assault at the same time as another who delivered the strike that killed Arapo.
“It would apply in this case that at the time the fatal blows were inflicted on the deceased both defendants were actively involved in the assault on him.”
On Friday morning, the knock came on the jury room door and the foreperson delivered four guilty verdicts for Hayde on the charges of murder, perverting the course of justice, and assaulting and threatening to kill his former partner.
He was found not guilty of strangling the woman.
Hart was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter and perverting the course of justice. The men will be sentenced together on November 24.
When the verdicts were announced there were tears followed by weary smiles in the public gallery, where Arapo’s family and friends had watched every day of the trial.
After it become clear she would not be called as a witness, McManus had also watched parts of the trial from the gallery, sitting with Hayde’s family.
Hayde and McManus stayed together after he was charged.
Throughout the trial, former friends Hayde and Hart did not speak to or look at each other as they sat together in the dock.
The men closed their eyes as the verdicts were delivered but were otherwise emotionless.
