Nigel Hampton KC has conducted more than 100 murder trials and is one of New Zealand’s greatest-ever defence lawyers. He talks to Herald senior journalist Kurt Bayer about representing killers, alleged killers, the mental and emotional toll, and how the Peter Ellis case nearly killed him.
Placidly, unnecessarily, he clears his throat and stands grinning. Instead of addressing the jury directly, Nigel Hampton paces, slowly, hands clasped lightly behind his gown and white butterfly-collar shirt. He pauses. He has to choose the right tone, timbre, the right inflection for the moment. Plain language, that’s the key for this rugged bush, mining, fishing town, not plummy like the Last Days of the Raj-sounding Solicitor-General Dick Savage who has parachuted in for this trial; a court drama that has become the talk of saloons and lounge bars across the nation. No, that has been a critical mistake. And now, the cocky, long-haired rising star of the defence lawyer world is ready for the kill.
“It was too premature, far too premature,” he begins, still pacing, glancing at the jury to make sure they are going along with him, “to put into effect some plan to kill her and claim on the policy.”
He pauses again, hiding the rush of now-pulsing adrenalin, stroking his gunslinger’s beard and pretending to study the ornate rimu panelling of the imperial baroque-style Greymouth courthouse’s interior. His client Ronald David Bailey, a loathsome conman with a predilection for young boys, sits quietly, eyes down. It is deathly quiet.
Bailey is standing trial for the February 8, 1976 murder of his wife, Margaret. The odds are firmly against Hampton getting his man off. There is a deadly mountain of Crown evidence, including Bailey’s financial woes, that the “devious liar” had forged his wife’s signature on a revised life insurance proposal, and even a cellmate confession, something Hampton hasn’t encountered before but will become increasingly concerning in coming years.
But Hampton, an uncompromising, undersized flanker quick to the knuckle, loves the fight. This case – where a young policeman has even tragically died during a botched scene recreation – is making his name. Through the rest of the ’70s, all of the 1980s, and beyond, Hampton will emerge as the country’s prime gun-for-hire for many accused killers, and will contest more than 100 murder trials. The rush of high-stakes courtroom drama will become an addiction that will almost kill him.
For now, though, he is just coming into his pomp. And it won’t be the last he will hear of Ron Bailey, a thoroughly bizarre tale with a disturbing end. Hampton quietly coughs and ambles closer to the jury box.
“And where in the Crown case is there any evidence of Bailey claiming on her policy?” he asks slowly, deliberately, those crinkled eyes, very much like a young Robin Williams glinting in the angled, afternoon courtroom light. “And why would anyone try to take out life insurance and then immediately kill the person insured?”
He starts pacing again, up and down.
Hampton was a country boy who, unlike many of his contemporaries, didn’t come from lawyer stock.
He grew up in Leeston, 40km south of Christchurch, the first son of six children to a mother who had six kids while still in her 20s and a motor mechanic who had both legs crushed during a childhood railway yard misadventure.
Hampton read hungrily, devouring Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels, and after three years at Southbridge District High School, his family scraped together enough money to send the precocious youngster to St Andrew’s College, Christchurch to finish his schooling. Coming to the big smoke was a shock to the system and he developed a stammer that he would battle for the rest of his life.
But he excelled academically and, following some other bright mates, decided to study law at the University of Canterbury. It hadn’t been something he had really considered. Medicine had been ruled out by his “woefully inadequate” maths and science grades, but he soon found the law interesting.
“I thought I could possibly end up as a country solicitor, going back home to Leeston and working as the small-town lawyer doing small, run-of-the-mill lawyer work, wills and land transactions and so on,” the 79-year-old says, looking back. The trademark beard is bushy as ever. His sleeves are unbuttoned and rolled back one turn. Staring out the window, thinking about his life and career, razor-sharp, it all comes rushing back. He recalls not only the names of defendants from the ‘70s, but full names of witnesses.
“I don’t know where this is coming from. I haven’t thought of some of this stuff in years,” he says.
Good marks kept coming and at the start of his second year, Hampton took a part-time job as a law clerk at R A Young Hunter & Co. The pay was pitiful compared to summer jobs carting grain and hay, and the work largely menial, but it was a foot in the door.
He would often sneak into the Magistrates’ Court or High Court (then the Supreme Court) and observe how the top advocates of the day argued their cases and cross-examined witnesses. Big characters, some almost Dickensian in delivery. Picking up little tricks of the trade was “unbelievably valuable”, Hampton says, for his future career.
Things were moving quickly. After four years of law school, he had graduated with the “gold medal” as the year’s top performer and in February 1965 was admitted to the bar. He was 21.
By then, he was arguing in the Supreme Court, fully wigged and gowned, running a criminal jury trial. A burglary case. He had no junior counsel at his side, he was all alone. The night before, wide awake into the small hours, brushing up on courtroom etiquette.
“I probably spent more time worrying about procedure than worrying about the trial itself,” he says. “The result, I believe, was an acquittal ... but one would need to go back and look to make sure.”
Within 18 months, as a 24-year-old, now with a wife and young family in tow, he was made partner at the firm.
Hampton was a made man. But he wanted more. He wanted the big cases.
Ron Bailey was in deep water himself. The police were circling. He was also facing charges of indecently assaulting boys. He needed to lawyer up. He called Hampton.
Early on, Hampton had come to terms with representing the less-savoury characters in society. On an academic, intellectual level, he had no qualms. “It’s the rule of law ... Everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. It’s as simple as that.”
And while the Bailey case seemed like a relatively straightforward homicide case, with a few wrinkles thrown in, there was the added pressure that the cops wanted him badly. One of their own had died in circumstances that seem borderline unimaginable in today’s health-and-safety-conscious world.
It all began with a nice family holiday. Bailey and his new wife Margaret and four children had gone from Christchurch, over the Lewis Pass, to the West Coast when they stopped at Kiwi Point, on the Grey River, 11km from Greymouth, for a picnic. It was February 8, 1976. Bailey said Margaret had gone to relieve herself when she slipped into the river and was swept away.
The local constabulary had seemed to initially buy his story. But they were still investigating a few weeks later when tragedy struck again. On February 26, police re-enacted the scene at the Grey River, enlisting Sue Walker, a constable from Christchurch, and 22-year-old Atarau-born local constable, Alan Robert Liddell. Both apparently said they were strong swimmers, with Walker having lifesaving experience and being about the same build as Margaret.
Liddell would play the role of Bailey, who he had already met. On the night his wife had died, Liddell had volunteered to drive Bailey and the four children over the Southern Alps back to Christchurch.
They ran some tests. Walker would enter the water at different points where Bailey had indicated his wife had fallen into the river and Liddell would swim in downstream and pluck her out. Two runs had already been done.
But at about 6.20pm, Walker had drifted further than expected. And when Liddell went out to get her, they were both swept along, caught in a strong eddy, which Chief Inspector TV Thomson would later say, was “out of their depth”.
They tried to reach the near riverbank but were struggling. Liddell shed some clothes but still couldn’t make headway. Two other police officers dived in.
Constable John De Lury grabbed an exhausted Liddell but he kept going under. De Lury lost his grasp and he disappeared.
As Walker struggled for breath, she heard a rescuer shout: “He’s gone! He’s gone under!”
Liddell’s body was only recovered two days later.
No precautions had been taken. No jet-boats had been on standby and ropes weren’t considered necessary, given earlier successful re-enactments days earlier.
It made national headlines. And by now, Hampton’s star was already beginning to rise.
He had just defended former Labour Party MP Gerald O’Brien in what was a national cause célèbre. O’Brien, an outspoken anti-war campaigner who was then vice-president of the New Zealand Labour Party, was charged in 1976 over an incident in Christchurch where he allegedly asked two boys back to his motel room for a drink. Hampton successfully got indecency charges thrown out. O’Brien later maintained it had been an attempt by political enemies to “get rid of me”.
Once again, Hampton got the job done for his client.
Then, there was Bailey. After the high-profile trial at the Supreme Court sitting in Greymouth, a jury took less than seven hours to find him not guilty of murdering his wife.
“Thank you, Lord!” Bailey cried out as the verdict was read out.
Client and lawyer parted ways, and Bailey went to jail for indecently assaulting boys. But it wouldn’t long before Bailey was needing Hampton’s help once again.
Both the Bailey and O’Brien cases helped launch Hampton’s star. Over the next two decades, he would run dozens and dozens of trials, often back-to-back. Killers, rapists, thugs and oddballs. They queued up for the best in the business.
For Hampton, it became widely addictive. He loved jury trials. That’s where he got his kicks. Day after day, with barely a break in between, he would be pacing up and down, cajoling, exasperating, ripping Crown cases to shreds.
In the courtroom, Hampton would use his whole body as a defence tool, as ways of getting his point across, subtle or otherwise. His voice would rise and fall, hard and soft, hiding that stammer, sometimes using it to his advantage, finding the language best suited for this particular group of 12 citizens doing their bit for society. A tilt of the head, hunching of the shoulders. Sometimes he would appear almost asleep before slinging a killer curveball question.
Most often he would be on his feet. Not talking down to them, nor preaching, but trying to portray the case, his case, in simple terms: Come along with me.
“To a greater or lesser extent, courtroom law is addictive,” he says. “And the most potent opiate of that addiction is jury work, undoubtedly. It’s theatre writ large and alive, it really is. And you have to understand that as a lawyer practising in that environment, that it is theatre.”
Adding to the thrill was what Hampton calls the “sporting contest” against the Crown with all of its power and resources beyond it.
“It’s you playing against them and, rightly or wrongly, using all the resources you have, most of which are interior in yourself, to try and win that contest. And if, and when, you do win, against all odds, that elation, rightly or wrongly, you feel it, you’re a human being, you feel you’ve won against the odds, that elation is super high.”
The problem is, as with any drug, following the highs, come the lows. Often, crippling, debilitating, lows.
And Hampton was not immune. It’s something he’s wrestled with for large periods of his career.
“Once you do come down, you can plunge pretty deeply down, particularly if it’s been a long trial and you’ve given it everything you have,” he says.
“You’re left physically and mentally pretty exhausted and picking yourself up from that, and starting again, is hard work. And if you’re doing that sort of work back-to-back, as I was doing through the ‘70s and ‘80s, and into the ‘90s, it’s pretty debilitating.
“I’ve seen fellow trial lawyers really crash and burn. Some remove themselves from doing the work, some remove themselves from living.”
One of the most devastating examples is Greg King. A brilliant, charismatic trial lawyer, King suffered a “massive breakdown’' at the end of the infamous Ewen Macdonald murder trial, a coroner found, and four months later took his own life.
Coroner Garry Evans’ report included excerpts from a suicide note in which King described himself as “exhausted, unwell, disillusioned, depressed and haunted”.
Hampton says family life can also suffer, especially when a looming trial occupies and distracts so much time.
“You get into doing trial after trial after trial with no chance of recuperation,” the father-of-seven says.
“And you can’t see any end to the ups and downs. It’s quite forbidding in a way. You’re trapped in it. You’ve got a schedule of trials ahead of you, you’ve made commitments to people. And at times, and I’m talking about my own self here, at times, you think, I can’t keep on doing this, this is just taking too much of a toll.”
He speaks of the need for an outlet. Something a far cry from the law. For him, it was sport. He played club rugby for years, enjoying the social side as much as the footy, and for years has worked as a judicial officer for World Rugby. Then there’s the family bach on the picturesque Banks Peninsula and his role as chair of Okains Bay Māori and Colonial Museum Trust, one of the great small museums in the country.
The need for a release is paramount. Especially when old cases, old names, keep cropping up.
It was late and Hampton was still in the office when the phone rang. It was a local police officer. They knew each other pretty well, the officer getting Hampton out of the odd late-night scrape. But this wasn’t an idle chit-chat. Something was up.
“You’ve got to come to the station straight away,” the policeman said. “Bloody Ron Bailey is on the ledge.”
Bailey had been taken in for questioning over new indecency allegations. But somehow, while being questioned by detectives on the 10th floor of the old Christchurch central police station, he had managed to climb out a window. He was on the ledge and wouldn’t come down. Officers feared he was going to jump.
Hampton flew out of the office without his jacket.
When he arrived, he talked to Bailey from the window. Eventually, he also clambered out onto the ledge. They chatted, but Bailey wasn’t budging. Several hours went by. A brisk north-easterly breeze was relentless and, eventually, Hampton was so cold, he couldn’t take any more.
“Look Ron,” he said. “Either you jump or you come in, I don’t care any longer. I’m finished.”
Hampton crawled back inside and Bailey followed him “like a bloody lamb”.
Officers warmed Hampton up with whisky in the station canteen. He was in trouble again when he got home late, reeking of strong liquor. But the front page of the local paper the following day backed up his wild story.
Even then, it wasn’t the end.
In August 1981, Bailey was arrested again, this time in Invercargill. While in custody, he took his own life.
Hampton was neither shocked nor surprised when he was told.
But there was one final twist. One of the officers in charge during Bailey’s arrest was also highly involved in the Greymouth murder investigation.
“It was a curious ending,” Hampton says, “that those two figures should come together so many years later in such a way. I don’t try to say anything or draw any conclusions, it’s just a curious ending to that saga.
“Anyway, curious events.”
It wasn’t only the Bailey case that kept cropping up for Hampton.
The Peter Ellis affair nearly killed him.
Ellis shot to infamy three decades ago when he was accused of bizarre and horrifying offences of satanic rituals, torture and sacrifice against pre-schoolers while working at the Christchurch Civic Creche in 1991.
The claims came at a time when “satanic panic” was sweeping the nation, and the accusations against Ellis were later labelled a “witch hunt” by author Lynley Hood.
Children said Ellis and other teachers hung them from the ceiling in cages, made them eat faeces, and cut their genitals off. Other allegations included having sticks inserted into their bottoms, needles stuck into them, being placed in coffins, and taking part in ritual killings and mock marriages.
Children also said they were forced to kick each other in the genitals as adults stood around them in a circle playing guitars.
The case never stacked up for Hampton. He was asked to conduct Ellis’ trial but he simply had too much on his plate and, besides, Legal Aid wouldn’t stump his fees.
Looking back three decades on, it still bothers him.
“The Peter Ellis thing haunts me in various respects,” he says. “I should have, somehow ... somehow got myself.” He pauses, looking troubled. “It’s easy to say pro bono but that was at a time when I was doing an enormous amount of work … I don’t know.”
Ellis was found guilty in 1993 after a six-week trial and was convicted of 16 charges relating to child sex abuse against seven children. He was acquitted on 12 other charges. He was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison.
But Hampton got involved in Ellis’ original legal challenge at the Court of Appeal soon after his conviction.
When he dug into the issues, he had serious concerns about the case, going back to the very beginning, the questioning, and cross-questioning of children, the background, and the “width and absurdity of the greater part of the allegations”. He was convinced a “travesty” had occurred, a serious miscarriage of justice.
The Court of Appeal judges, however, wouldn’t listen. They refused to let Hampton open the case wide and squeezed him to very narrow submissions only. The appeal failed.
Frustrated beyond measure, something happened to Hampton’s body and mind. Some sort of breakdown put him in hospital. Emergency stomach surgery was carried out and his recovery was long, even leading him to question whether he should continue with the law.
“I simply cannot explain exactly what happened,” he says.
“I was at the height of my career, conducting stuff at a high level, at an enormous rate [and] a combination of the intensity, along with the blank refusal [by the Court of Appeal] to hear the argument that I wanted to put …. I just had some sort of collapse. I can’t even now explain it properly.”
He took a sabbatical as chief justice of the Kingdom of Tonga and later got involved in looking at other miscarriages of justice.
When the independent Crown entity Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) was launched two years ago, Hampton was a key player and is one of the commissioners looking at old cases.
That work around miscarriages also saw him become involved in some of the greatest disasters in modern New Zealand history: the collapse of the CTV Building in the February 22, 2011 earthquake where 115 people died; the Pike River mine explosion which killed 29 men; and the March 15, 2019 Christchurch mosque terror attacks where 51 Muslims were murdered during Friday prayer.
“Instead of having dreams or nightmares about homicide, I now have disaster dreams,” he says.
“They are a real part of my life and part of the psychological battles of turmoil that I talked about earlier ... but gosh, that Peter Ellis thing haunts me.”
In Ellis’ final days, before he died of cancer aged 61 in September 2019, just five weeks before a Supreme Court appeal hearing which would ultimately, just in October last year, quash his convictions and posthumously clear his name once and for all, he ended up in a hospice around the corner from Hampton’s Christchurch home.
He would wander around and see him those final dying days.
At the end, Ellis was “reasonably phlegmatic” about how he’d been treated, Hampton says.
But for him, strolling home afterwards, always pacing, it nagged at him, and still keeps him awake.
“After any case, if you haven’t got the result you wanted – and it would be wrong if you didn’t - you will have some regret, perhaps about the tactical decisions you made and that helps shape what you do in the future. But there’s nothing, as far as regrets, as monumental as the Ellis case.”
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