KEY POINTS:
A judge yesterday suppressed a secretly recorded conversation between the man accused of killing Hawkes Bay farmer Jack Nicholas and the man's former neighbour.
At a depositions hearing in Napier District Court Judge David McKegg upheld an objection by Bruce Squire, QC, counsel for Murray Kenneth Foreman, 50, who has been charged with the murder of Mr Nicholas at his remote farm in Puketitiri, north-west of Napier, on August 27, 2004.
Foreman has also been charged with procuring a witness to give false evidence.
The conversation was recorded by police using a microphone concealed on witness Donna Kingi, who was a neighbour of Foreman when he was living in Haumoana, near Hastings, in 2004.
After the recording was played to the court, Mr Squire objected to its admissibility and Justice McKegg suppressed its contents.
Earlier in the day, Ms Kingi told of Foreman and his young son Che returning unexpectedly early from a planned weekend hunting trip, and Foreman angrily telling her a "f ... ing old farmer" had refused him permission to go through a gate on his farm to reach the area he intended to hunt.
The confrontation with the farmer happened two weeks before Mr Nicholas' shooting.
She said Foreman's behaviour changed during the following few days, when he became "rowdy", often playing music loudly until the early hours. She described his behaviour as "bizarre".
At about 11 o'clock the night before Mr Nicholas was shot, she saw Foreman leave in his car. The next morning she got up early to do some gardening and was crouched beside the fence when Foreman drove up his driveway.
Although she knew he was on leave, she asked him if he'd been to work. He said he hadn't then added, "Girl, I think I shot someone".
Ms Kingi said she told him he either had or hadn't shot someone, and he replied, "Oh no girl, I think I did".
She said Foreman looked "clammy" and his face and hands were white.
Ms Kingi said she rolled a joint of cannabis before they had coffee on his veranda, but he had only a couple of puffs and didn't seem interested in talking. "I couldn't make sense of what he was saying. He talked about a power pole next to a fenceline and talked about a shed.
"They weren't complete sentences, and he was mumbling," she said.
Foreman, whom she called Mo, told her he would have to break down his hunting rifle, a black weapon with a telescopic sight that she'd seen previously inside his house, and "get rid of it".
Later that afternoon she had another conversation with Foreman during which he said he'd broken down the gun and put it under a friend's place.
Ms Kingi said she heard about the shooting of Mr Nicholas outside his farmhouse on the 6pm news, and the earlier conversation with Foreman "crossed her mind". When he told her two days later he'd been called to the police station, he said he thought someone might have seen his car "out there" and there may have been cameras.
He confirmed it had been Mr Nicholas' property he'd been to when he had the confrontation with the farmer. She said Foreman didn't have anything to worry about because that hunting trip had been two weeks earlier.
Foreman then told her that he'd been out there for a drive on the morning Mr Nicholas was shot.
The hearing is continuing.
- NZPA