Pilot's estranged wife scared of what he might do next

When pilot David Turnock stood in the dock at Auckland's district court, he made it clear he was trying to kill himself when he threatened to fly a stolen plane into Auckland's Sky Tower.

He told the court his wife Anna shattered his life when she left him for another man and stressed he "did not then, nor do I now, wish to live without my wife, with whom I am deeply in love".

The words haunt Turnock's wife Anna King, who is considering fleeing New Zealand because she is scared Turnock is not getting the mental care he needs while in prison. She fears her husband will try to kill her on his release.

He is capable of anything, she says, and has already staged three suicide attempts. Anna is getting counselling to help deal with her fear but she says there is nothing she can do to stop David contacting her when he comes up for his first parole hearing in June - apart from leaving the country.

"I have to deal with the fear that when he gets out, he is going to try to kill me or hurt me or whatever," Anna told the Herald on Sunday.

"I have dealt with how I am feeling about what happened, but it is the real tangible stuff that I have trouble with," she says.

"I know it sounds dramatic but I have little doubt he will try to hurt me and my new partner when he gets out."

Anna had filed for a protection order against her husband in the months before the Sky Tower incident last September but he continued to contact her. Even after he was imprisoned for 27 months in January, she says, David wrote abusive and graphic letters to his wife and another to her partner.

"He also accused me of writing to prison staff demanding he be kept in solitary confinement. He said he saw the letters under the Official Information Act but the letters don't even exist."

Anna says the claims were further evidence that her husband was mentally unwell and needed to get help so that he no longer posed a threat to himself, or to her and her new partner.

Anna says while David was on remand before his trial, he became even more obsessed with her and her new relationship, which he blamed for the break-up of their marriage.

The night David Turnock buzzed a stolen plane over heavily populated areas of Auckland, buzzing the Sky Tower before ditching into Waitemata harbour, was a terrifying ordeal Anna will never forget.

The couple, both pilots and flight instructors, had been married for just 10 months, after meeting in 1999 through work.

With a seven-year age difference between them, the marriage became troubled after David lost his job and became depressed.

Anna says she found them work in Fiji but things soured and David started drinking and became verbally abusive.

Anna returned to New Zealand telling David she needed breathing space - he suggested she stay with a friend of theirs, an Air New Zealand pilot, in Auckland.

Weeks later David returned, calling Anna up to five times a day, texting her continuously and driving past cafes looking for her as she lunched with her sister.

"I just wanted a bit of space after Fiji but he didn't give it to me," she says.

"I didn't leave him for another man, there was nothing untoward."

The man David suggested his wife stay with while they separated had won her heart, but Anna insists the relationship began after her marriage was over.

"The man I am with now was supportive during all the trouble with Dave, but he was nothing more than a friend. He had just been through a break-up as well and we naturally grew close."

On the day of the Sky Tower threats, David phoned Anna continously, calls she ignored. He phoned her father, journalist Kelvin King, asking for Anna, and eventually she phoned back.

"I called him and told him I didn't want to talk to him and it was pointless because we were not going to get back together.

"He said it was okay and I wouldn't have to talk to him again unless I wanted to."

Anna asked him "if he was going to do anything stupid" but he said he wasn't.

"Despite all that had happened I still cared for him a lot and didn't want him to come to any harm. I still don't," Anna says.

Later that night, while having dinner with her new partner at his home, he received a text that Anna knew was ominious.

"Well, you can call the police now. Goodbye Anna, I love you," it read.

It was an alert to David's third suicide attempt in as many months.

"A friend who was having dinner with us, who also knew Dave, went outside to call him to see if he was okay," Anna says.

She rang David's family while her partner called the police. Outside, the friend saw a plane circling the house.

"My partner rushed inside and said we needed to get out of the house immediately," Anna recalls.

"We ran out of the house as the plane swooped down. It was because the roof was sloped that he didn't hit it.

"Dave was going purely for visual effect.

"I'd say he was planning on hitting it but changed his mind at the last minute. I am guessing he was thinking of the newspaper photo the next day of a Cherokee buried in the roof of a house."

The three friends stayed outside, hiding under a tree until David flew off in the direction of the Sky Tower.

Anna called the police and her father and warned them David was heading towards the city. In town, election night turned to chaos as people were evacuated from the Sky Tower and police tried to get the plane out of the skies.

David flew close to Kelvin King's St Helier's home, thinking Anna was inside while she was really at the police station.

"We were there until three in the morning making statements," she says.

Then came the news: David had crash-landed into the sea at Kohimarama.

"The police said 'we are sorry but he's probably dead'.

"It was awful, we just went numb. But then we heard by text from a friend that reports were saying he was alive and had been taken from the wreckage."

Anna knew it was a suicide attempt; months earlier David had let himself into her family's home while she was out and slit his wrists while lying on her bed.

"I came in and thought he was dead and panicked," Anna says.

"I found a pulse but he wasn't breathing so I started to do mouth-to-mouth. He spluttered and said 'I love you Anna, will you come back to me'.

"When I said I wouldn't, he stopped breathing again so I started mouth-to-mouth again and then he was okay and was talking."

In court David said he believed his wife never loved him and wished he had died in the crash. Hearing him say that angered Anna.

"He just discounted our marriage as if we never had love. We had a lot of good times and he has thrown them away like they didn't mean anything."

Anna says she had worked with psychiatric services to get the best treatment for her husband but he was given only a few days' care after his first suicide attempt.

Weeks later he broke into her new partner's hangar at the North Shore airfield, where he took an overdose of antidepressants.

Anna says she is telling her story because she is tired of hearing that she was to blame for David's demise. Since his arrest she's found it difficult to get work in the aviation industry.

Anna and her new partner are now seriously considering shifting overseas so Anna can find work and live without fear of David. They plan to write to police and the parole board to express their fears.

"Aviation is a small industry and Dave can make a phonecall and find out where I am in a heartbeat.

"If I go overseas then at least there are parole and passport issues to stop him."

No Help

Why can't David Turnock get help?

Mentally ill inmates in Auckland prisons are treated at North Shore's Mason Clinic but up to 15 patients are waiting for treatment at any one time.

Clinic director Dr Sandy Simpson said mental health services are struggling to cope.

"Demand is outstripping supply and we've been aware of the problem for some time."

The clinic has room for 84 inmates and is opening 10 more beds this month and 12 more in May.

Dr Simpson published a 2001 study showing 81 per cent of inmates with bipolar disorder were treated in prison, but only 46 per cent with depression and 37 per cent with schizophrenia received professional help.


Story so far

Sep 17, 2005: David Gregory Turnock, 33, steals a Piper Cherokee plane belonging to Massey University from Ardmore Airport in South Auckland. After circling Auckland suburbs, flying close to where his estranged wife Anna was having dinner, and buzzing the Sky Tower, he plunges the plane into the sea in a suicide attempt. He had been released from a West Auckland mental facility about a month before the incident.

 Jan 27, 2006: Turnock is sentenced to 27 months in prison in the Auckland District Court on a slew of aviation charges including unlawful taking of an aircraft. Turnock's counsel Todd Simmonds said his client had received "woefully inadequate" care from mental health workers. Turnock told the court his sentence "will pale in significance to the lifetime sentence Anna has imposed on me".

- HERALD ON SUNDAY