Murder accused told friends he had killed someone, court told

File photo / Bay of Plenty Times

More than once, after he had been drinking, Sean Brown told friends he had killed a man, the High Court at Wellington was told this afternoon.

Brown, 27, a Miramar painter, is on trial before Justice Ronald Young and a jury of seven women and five men for the murder of Harold Skudder, who had a 15.75kg cat statue dropped on his head three times while he was asleep in a Stokes Valley unit on January 24, 2007.

The dead man's mother, Molly Skudder, a Te Puke caregiver, reported her son missing the following month. He had been planning to go home to the Bay of Plenty for Christmas but never turned up, nor was seen again, she told the court, weeping in the witness stand as she identified her son in a photograph.

"We were very close. He was a special boy to us."

Brown was arrested more than three years later and took police to a bush site off Moonshine Hill Road, Upper Hutt, where they recovered the grisly remains of Mr Skudder down a steep bank.

A friend and neighbour of Brown's, Krystal McCarthy, said she used to spend time at the accused's family home and met 38-year-old Harry Skudder when he lived there for a few months in late 2006 and early 2007.

He used to sleep either in the lounge or in Brown's mother's bedroom, Ms McCarthy said. Mr Skudder and Sean Brown appeared to get on alright and she had never seen them arguing.

When Mr Skudder disappeared she asked Brown's mother, Lorraine, what had happened to Harry "because I was curious".

Mrs Brown said he had gone to jail.

On a few occasions while drinking, Sean Brown got upset and said he had killed someone.

"But I didn't believe him," Ms McCarthy said.

"We would just be sat there and it would come into the conversation."

Questioned over anything unusual in the lounge of the Brown's two-bedroom Stokes Valley unit, the witness said she remembered two large cat statues.

"They were ugly," she laughed.

Some time after Mr Skudder had gone, a rug on the carpet was moved. Underneath where it had lain the floor boards were bare.

Her mother, Stacey McCarthy, told of being at one drinking session at the house when she overheard the accused say he had killed a person.

She told him: "You would be in jail if you had.

"We were all probably a little bit drunk."

She also overheard the accused telling someone else in the room that he put a blanket over a man's head and hit him until he was dead.

Mrs McCarthy told the court Sean Brown was very protective of his younger brother, Garry.

She became friends with their mother, Lorraine, because they had quite a bit in common, including children of similar ages and histories of domestic violence.

When she asked Mrs Brown where Harry Skudder was, she, too, was informed he had been arrested and was in jail.

The witness said Mrs Brown had told her: "I won't have to worry about him again. He isn't any good anyway because he used to try and get Garry and me to steal for him."

Lorraine and Garry Brown will give evidence tomorrow.

The Crown plans to call 25 witnesses and expects the trial to last up to two weeks.

- NZPA