Angela Kalinowski is baffled by the mystery surrounding Tony Stanlake whom she knew for 40 years.
She was chilled by the radio report she heard naming him as dead.
She keeps pondering what could be the link between Mr Stanlake, a property developer from the wealthy suburb of Karori, and a man 41 years his junior from the poorer suburb of Naenae in Lower Hutt.
Police have said the accused, Daniel Robert Moore, was known to Mr Stanlake.
Mrs Kalinowski had known Mr Stanlake for 40 years, but had not spoken to him since just after his son died in 2000.
"If there was anything untoward going on, anything nasty or sinister, my sister would have said, but I didn't hear anything, and there was never any mention of drugs."
Mrs Kalinowski, the former sister-in-law of Mr Stanlake's late first wife, first heard of Mr Stanlake's cannabis use when he was convicted in 2001.
"Once he got caught, maybe he thought it wasn't worthwhile growing it so he just bought it, but I can't imagine why he would be in [drug] debt. If he owns all these houses ... I can't imagine he was short of money."
She said it chilled her to her bones when she found out the identity of the murder victim.
"I just went through the roof when I heard his name. It has ruined my appetite. It's beyond horrible."
She said Mr Stanlake was a caring person who gave back to his community as a firefighter and Victim Support volunteer.
But he had been through two broken marriages, the ordeal of a son who killed himself and the trauma of finding out he was adopted.
"His father was an American serviceman, visiting during the war, and his mother might have hoped to be a war bride but it didn't turn out that way.
"Both his [adopted] parents died of cancer about the same time, and he found out he was adopted and completely lost it.
"He found his [biological] mother, working in the post office in Lower Hutt, but that was very brief and didn't come to anything.
"It blew him and his young family apart, and he became difficult, quite impossible. He was angry with women for being dumped. It broke up the marriage eventually."
She said she stayed in touch when Mr Stanlake remarried, and was sad when his second marriage ended following the cannabis convictions because "things were going so well".
"I was a little bit surprised at the [cannabis conviction], but people do surprising things. After you've been through that amount of trauma, maybe you go off the rails."
Fireman's murder leaves friend 'chilled to bones'
Tony Stanlake
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