Jury convicts 'psychopath' Bell of triple slaying

By PATRICK GOWER

William Duane Bell faces a lifetime in prison after being found guilty of bashing three people to death with the butt of a shotgun at the Mt Wellington Panmure RSA.

Immediately after a jury found him guilty of murder, Justice Judith Potter told Bell the court would be considering a sentence of preventive detention.

RSA members who for the past seven weeks have heard the gruesome details of the killings cheered at her words.

Bell was found guilty of killing Wayne Johnson, 56, Mary Hobson, 44, and Bill Absolum, 64, on December 8 last year.

Another RSA worker, Susan Couch was left bloodied and near death.

Bell was found guilty of attempting to murder her.

Outside the court, families of the victims and friends held each other, many weeping as they released a year's grief.

Many hugged Faye Hjorth, the RSA office manager who sacked Bell from his work experience job in the bar two months before the murders.

She said she would live with the memory of Bell's revenge.

"I'll probably always wonder what if, what if I had never taken him on."

The jury took 9 1/2 hours to reach its verdicts.

Bell, who smirked and chewed gum during the trial, showed no emotion when the foreman announced the guilty verdicts.

Bell's co-accused, Darnell Kere Tupe, aged 23, who was the getaway driver for the robbery, was found guilty on three charges of manslaughter and one of aggravated robbery.

The jury found him not guilty of murder or attempted murder.

Bell, who is 24, was also found guilty of another charge of stealing more than $300 from the St George Tavern in Papatoetoe on or about December 1 last year.

The Crown alleged that Bell went into the RSA alone wearing a police shirt and carrying a guitar case containing the shotgun he used in the killings.

Tupe waited in the car outside.

Bell had inside knowledge of the RSA premises after his work experience and also bore a grudge over being sacked because the club did not trust him.

When Susan Couch recognised him and opened the door, he pulled the gun out.

He spent 45 minutes inside - about 15 minutes taking $13,000 worth of cash and cigarettes and 30 minutes beating the victims.

All received severe head injuries inflicted with the butt of the shotgun. Mr Johnson was also shot.

The officer in charge of the murder inquiry, Detective Inspector Gavin Jones, described Bell as "the closest thing I have ever seen to a psychopath".

"He is callous, cunning and calculating - he's a psychopathic murderer.

"Make no mistake about it - when he went to do that robbery he was not going to leave anybody alive."

A Herald investigation into Bell's background found that he has a criminal record that covers six pages of computer printout.

He had been out of prison for a violent robbery of a Mangere service station for five months when he attacked the RSA workers.

The Herald can also now reveal that police had two chances to arrest Bell on burglary and theft charges in the days before the killings.

He stole cash from the St George Tavern in Papatoetoe and allegedly stole goods from an engineering firm in Newmarket. In both cases, staff gave descriptions - including his car number plate, his name, address and telephone number.

But the thefts were never given high priority by police.

As the jury foreman prepared to read the verdicts yesterday in the High Court at Auckland, members of the victim's families moved so they could see Bell.

Justice Potter asked that psychiatric reports be prepared on Bell before the two men were sentenced on February 13.

She discharged the jurors from service for 10 years. She also addressed the members of the RSA club, saying they had carried themselves with "courtesy, dignity and strength."

Outside the court, club president Alan Eastwood - who found the bodies - summed up the club's reaction to the verdict, saying "we expected it".

Earl Johnson, the brother of Wayne, a "good club man" who was cleaning the pool tables when Bell arrived, could barely comment on the verdict because he was so upset.

"I hope he goes to jail for a very long time. If it had been a few years ago he would have got the gallows, which is what he deserves."

Susan Couch was not at court but her family issued a statement after the verdicts saying they did not want to be interviewed and wanted to be left alone to prepare for Christmas.

They thanked "the many New Zealanders who phoned, sent cards and gifts and helped support us through the last 12 months".

"This last year has been indescribably difficult for our family, but we are committed to getting through this."

Tai Hobson, the husband of Mary Hobson, worked with Bell in the bar.

He said he was glad he had been found guilty, and hoped he would get preventive detention.

Terrie Hanley, a close friend of Bill Absolum, the club president, said she wished Bell could be hanged.

"An eye for an eye, I wish him dead.

"He has caused a lot of heartache and it's still not over. He has caused anguish and hate.

"He just has no feelings, he looks at you as if you are not there."

One of Darnell Tupe's supporters, Rowena Singh, said they were delighted he was found not guilty of murder.

"He was never a murderer, he does not deserve the tag or the sentence. He's been sitting there with all those big words going around him, he can't read or write, and the only reason he was ever there was because of that Willie Bell."

Crown Solicitor Simon Moore would only say of Tupe's fate: "I think the verdict was just".

Bell's mother Georgina Tahana, a Maori warden, was told not to go to court by her son, and heard of the verdicts at her Mangere home late last night.

"I can't even collect my thoughts. I have a house full of crying kids," she said.

Earlier in the day, Justice Potter told the jury the elements of murder and manslaughter and how the law relating to parties applied.

To be murder, a killing could be either intentional or reckless, she said.

Another murderous intent was intending to do "really serious injury" during a robbery.

If someone died as a result, it was murder even if an assailant did not mean to cause death and did not know that death was likely.

The Crown maintained that Bell had planned the robbery for some time and might even have got his work experience job at the club to reconnoitre the place.

Justice Potter said it was the Crown case that Bell needed a gun, not just to intimidate but to kill so no survivors would be left to identify him.

"It is the Crown case that Bell meant to kill his victims and this was a sinister and brutal undertaking."

But Bell might not have realised how many people he would find inside the club.

After Tupe fled in Bell's car, Bell was forced to take the car of the sole survivor, Susan Couch.

He was later picked up on a number of video surveillance cameras at the Manukau shopping centre, wearing a police shirt and pushing a shopping trolley filled with cigarettes, coins and other items taken from the club.

The Crown maintained that Tupe was part of the plan to rob the RSA.

He knew the type of person Bell was, and knew that he had a gun and that serious harm might well happen to those inside the club.

It was not relevant, the Crown said, that his role was comparatively minor.

It was the Crown case that "he knew that to carry out the robbery, really serious harm might be caused to the people at the RSA and he agreed to go along with it," Justice Potter said.

It was not necessary under law for Tupe to foresee that death would result.

Tupe's lawyer, Mark Edgar, claimed Tupe had been "conned" by Bell - a master of deception - into acting as lookout and driver in Bell's robbery plan.

With the limited knowledge Tupe had, he did not consider that really serious harm might happen inside the club.

- Additional reporting by Tony Stickley