Mulligan found guilty of murder

Dean Mulligan. Photo / APN

A jury tonight found Feilding amputee Dean Richard Mulligan guilty of bludgeoning to death Wanganui beneficiary Marice McGregor.

After nearly five hours behind locked doors the jury delivered its verdict in the High Court at Wanganui just before 8pm.

Justice Denis Clifford remanded Mulligan, who showed no emotion, in custody for sentencing on July 1.

Mulligan, 44, a one-legged former computer technician, denied murdering 45-year-old Ms McGregor in April last year.

The Crown said he killed the woman he met on an internet dating site with three blows to the head from an iron bar in a ravine off State Highway 4, 50km north of Wanganui.

Earlier, the jury was told by Crown prosecutor Lance Rowe that the accused "has taken us all for fools, gullible and lacking in common sense".

He had concocted five different versions of events that led to Ms McGregor's slaying on April 19 last year, Mr Rowe said.

Mr Rowe said Mulligan had three powerful motives for murdering Ms McGregor.

* She was about to expose their liaison to his wife.

* She was asking for repayment of the money she had loaned him during the course of their 18-month relationship.

* He believed he was going to inherit her house and other assets.

Of Mulligan's five different versions of what happened, number four was closest to the truth - when he confessed to police that he got into a rage and struck Ms McGregor, Mr Rowe said

Stephen Ross, for Mulligan, likened the case to a quilt with loose threads.

"Pull one and the quilt begins to unravel."

The first thread of reasonable doubt was the suggestion that Mulligan danced around on rocks at the bottom of a steep ravine, and struck Miss McGregor with an iron bar.

This was ludicrous, he said. Mulligan was a one-legged man.

Mr Ross said the picture of Miss McGregor presented by the Crown was completely different from the one which the defence had painted - of a manipulative woman who talked dirty and arranged sexual encounters on an internet dating site.

- NZPA