Killing 'like watching movie'

Murder accused Gordon Hieatt. Photo / Natalie Slade

Murder accused Gordon Hieatt says it was like he was watching a movie when he strangled his girlfriend to death after stifling her cries for help.

Hieatt, 48, has pleaded not guilty in the High Court at Auckland to the murder of Nuttidar Vaikaew, claiming that the killing amounted to manslaughter and that he was provoked.

Her badly decomposed body was found in a bed in her Western Springs, Auckland, flat, nearly a month after her death. Hieatt was still living there.

Hieatt, a computer programmer, told the court yesterday that he and Ms Vaikaew, a Thai sex worker, had been in a dysfunctional relationship which he had been trying to break up for years.

She made him leave the house during the day so she could see her clients, so Hieatt spent his days working on his computer at his storage unit, at the local library and in a nearby park.

Hieatt was paying more than half the rent so felt he should be able to work from home, and he wanted her to stop working as a prostitute.

On April 17 they got into a heated argument about this situation and she started screaming at him.

"I couldn't take it anymore - being shouted at, ordered around, talked down to, treated like crap - I just wanted her to shut up." Hieatt said he "just lost it" and punched her several times.

She said: "You want kill me."

"It's like something happened and all of a sudden I heard my voice saying 'yes, I'm going to kill you' ... I watched my hands, I couldn't stop it, it was like I was watching a movie, I couldn't stop it happening." Hieatt will continue giving his evidence tomorrow.