Man jailed for minimum 11.5 years for stabbing friend

Mark Vern Strang appears at Masterton District Court. File photo / Wairarapa Times-Age

A Masterton man who stabbed his friend in the heart, then made a cup of tea as he bled to death, was today jailed for life with a minimum non-parole period of 11-and-a-half years.

Mark Vern Strang, 44, was sentenced in the High Court at Wellington after earlier admitting murdering his flatmate and lifelong friend Blair James Hingston Graves, 47, on May 7.

Mr Graves, a sickness beneficiary, suffered from Klinefelter's syndrome, a one-in-a-thousand condition that gives men an extra X chromosome.

Strang choked and punched Mr Graves before stabbing him in the chest with a 30cm-long kitchen knife.

The day before the killing the two men had been arrested separately on cannabis possession charges after a police warrant was executed at their flat

The court was earlier told that Strang had reached breaking point because he thought Mr Graves had set him up in a cannabis sting and had sex with his wife, causing the breakup of their 20-year marriage.

- NZPA