Peter Lamont was a butcher by trade and owned a business in Greymouth. Photo / Supplied by Greymouth Star
Peter Lamont was a butcher by trade and owned a business in Greymouth. Photo / Supplied by Greymouth Star
Life in prison doesn’t have quite such a literal meaning for a butcher who used three different knives to stab his wife to death.
Peter Lamont will be deported back to Britain in March of next year after serving 15 years in prison for the murder of his wife Lindsay.
Ordinarily, a convicted murderer who is released on parole will be subject to post-release conditions for the rest of their lives and can be recalled to prison if they breach any of those strict rules.
But Lamont will, in essence, be a free man when he steps off the plane in London next year because the New Zealand Parole Board’s authority does not extend internationally.
“We have no control over you when you go back to the UK. If you were released into New Zealand we would have put lots of conditions on you,” a member of the board told Lamont on Tuesday afternoon as his release was approved.
“To some extent, we’re trusting you.”
‘He won’t be watched by anybody’
But the family of the woman he killed are concerned about the board’s decision, according to close family friend Rose Ruddle.
“You’re sending this man back there, the poor person living next door to him won’t have a clue,” Ruddle said.
“It’s very frustrating… he won’t be watched by anybody.
“I don’t trust him.”
Undated picture of Lindsay Lamont with her grand-daughter.
Lindsay was murdered by her husband Peter Lamont (inset) in their family home in Greymouth in 2009. Photo / supplied / Composite photo
Lamont has said he plans to stay in London, rather than head north to his homeland of Scotland. However, the fact no one can stop him if he should decide to move is a concern for Lindsay’s daughters, Ruddle said.
“They’re both flat and disappointed at the decision. But it won’t bring their mum back,” she said.
“In a way, we’re all relieved that we don’t have to keep going through this every year.
“It’s not really life in prison, he’s got 15-and-a-half years.”
Lamont, 61, handed himself into police after murdering his wife at their home near Greymouth in 2009.
A butcher by trade, he had been drinking throughout the day and was preparing food when he lashed out at his wife, stabbing her several times.
The first knife broke with the force of the stabbing so he grabbed another, which also broke. A third knife was bent at a 90-degree angle by the time Lamont had stabbed her 25 times.
He was jailed for life in 2010 and ordered to serve at least 14-and-a-half years in jail. In January, he appeared before the board where it found he had been, by all accounts, a model prisoner. But the panel had concerns about their lack of oversight when they released him, given Immigration New Zealand had served him with a deportation notice.
On Tuesday, Lamont appeared before the board again where he assured them he had no plans to travel back to Scotland as it wasn’t fair on Lindsay’s family.
“I’ve said from the start I won’t go back up there, I’ve caused enough destruction and trauma,” he said.
“I’ve done enough.”
Lamont has been questioned at previous appearances before the board about his explanations for why he killed Lindsay not being particularly credible, with a report from January noting that“really, he did not have an explanation for why he brutally murdered his wife”.
This week he said that on the day of the murder he’d been at the pub drinking when his wife phoned the establishment and had “screamed” at him to come home and make dinner.
Lindsay Lamont with her granddaughter. Photo / Supplied
“She was actually saying, you’re useless, you do this all the time, you don’t think about me. I didn’t like that because she was a big part of my life and I did think about her,” Lamont said.
“It’s an odd reaction though to stab her because you cared about her?” one of the board members said in response.
Lamont explained it had been the culmination of months of building tension, and an escalation in the number of fights the couple were having.
“It was starting to go down the toxic line, constant arguments on both sides,” he said.
Within an hour of returning home to cook dinner, Lindsay was dead. Lamont told the board the phone call to the pub chastising him in front of his friends had made him angry.
But he still claims he can’t remember the murder itself even though he handed himself in at the Greymouth police station shortly afterwards and confessed to the killing, saying a veil had descended over him and he’d “just snapped”.
“The only thing I can remember is telling her to shut up and I had that knife in my hand when I was chopping veges,” he told the board.
He was asked directly why he murdered his wife, with the board noting he’d been unable to give them a firm explanation in the past.
“There were a lot of things that I never dealt with, stuffing them away and then getting angry about it. Things never getting resolved because I was just getting angry,” Lamont said.
‘Rock bottom’
Lamont failed to graduate from a programme for violent offenders in 2021 but took the same course again and passed, telling the board he had initially been too interested in protecting himself.
“I had to go to rock bottom to have a real hard look at myself,” he said.
“It benefited me … I showed my vulnerability, which is a thing I’d never done my whole life”.
Lamont’s registered victims had written submissions, which he had a chance to read and respond to before the hearing began.
“I know what I’ve done to that family has destroyed them,” he said.
“They had trusted me and I broke that trust.”
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
