Escape from a mad, bad world

Emma Lewis has turned away from P, but her garden remains a central part of her life. Picture / Alan Gibson

Emma Lewis is living with the legacy of her connection to Anthony Doyle, the Rotorua truck driver who this week confessed to the Wairoa River Bridge murders.

Ms Lewis, a former prostitute whom Doyle visited within hours of shooting Mikaere O'Sullivan and Toni-Anne Nathan, was called as a witness in a pre-trial hearing held when Doyle was maintaining his innocence.

She was also at the house where Doyle was arrested six days after the killings and was herself taken into custody.

Her testimony shed light on the circles in which Doyle moved, andon the mad, destructive world ofmethamphetamine.

She told the Weekend Herald that appearing in court was an unpleasant experience, publicising details of "a tiny little experimental phase" of her life that she had since left behind but which continued to taint her.

As a witness, Ms Lewis, 21, gave colourful testimony about the effects of P, which she first tried in June last year, not long before she met Doyle.

She found the drug made her indulge her passion for gardening with a fervour bordering on maniacal.

"Being fried made me garden all hours of the day and night," she told Doyle's lawyer when he cross-examined her about why she was gardening at 5.30am on the day of the murders.

When he asked what she was cultivating, Ms Lewis replied bamboo, potatoes, and native plants to stabilise a bank.

"So gardening was your first priority?" the lawyer, Paul Mabey, QC, asked.

"Yes," she said. "Most days it was the first thing I'd like to do, get down to my garden, fried or not."

Ms Lewis told of meeting Doyle through an ad she placed in Rotorua's Daily Post.

She had sex with him once in a sleepout where he lived on Konene St, receiving cash and Ecstasy tablets as payment.

She listed his number under "Bad E" on her phone after the tablets he gave her made her sick.

She did not have sex with him again, but met him several more times, including when he turned up at her house on October 31 at 5.30am - less than three hours after the murders - looking for a friend called "T".

Ms Lewis was out in her garden, tending her plants and high on P, as was T.

She said Doyle was "frittered" too.

She was visiting the owner of the Konene St property on November 6 when the police armed offenders squad arrived to arrest Doyle.

After her arrest, she lost custody of her youngest child, a 19-month-old girl, to the child's father.

"In helping the police with their case, I shat on myself and my daughter unwittingly," she said.

Her other child, a 4-year-old girl, was taken from her by Child, Youth and Family this week.

Ms Lewis believes her admission that she used P in court led to CYF's action, saying the agency had told her it was concerned she was still using drugs.

But she claimed she gave up the drug within months of starting because of the toll it was taking on her.

"I noticed I was getting stupider. It was enough to stop me. It ate my brain."

Ms Lewis said she was sad for the families of Doyle's victims, but she had no sympathy for the murdered couple themselves.

"I don't care that they're dead," she said. "They were as scummy as Tony. They were a whole bunch of scummy people."

By dealing P, they caused other people grief.

"They chose to be in that world they were in. They were selling to underage people, little girls."

P exposed people to a "dog-eat-dog world", she said.

"Being a P user drops you into that whole world where people regularly do nasty things to each other for no apparent reason.

"The moment you dissociate yourself from the drug world, you lift yourself out of that world - you're totally oblivious to everything that goes on in it because you have no connection to it.

"That's the world I'm living in now, and I'm loving it."

Ms Lewis has consented to drug testing in a bid to get back her 4-year-old daughter.

She is also working on her garden.