Black Widow, The: How One Woman Got Justice for Her Murdered Brother

by Lee-Anne, Cartier,

  In these early stages, Helen told me and others that Phil had killed himself because he had found out he had narcolepsy. She told me that Phil had collapsed at work and been taken to hospital by ambulance a few weeks previously, and had had tests done. He was told he would need to go to his GP to get the results. He had gone back to the doctor by himself and been given the news that he would need to be on medication for 12 months before he could drive again. This would mean he would lose his job driving, which he loved. This was why he had killed himself.

  When she told me this, I went straight on the computer, frantically Googling and trying to understand it all. My stepson Sam told me he knew someone who had narcolepsy, and after a successful period on medication she had been able to drive again. This shock diagnosis was the explanation I gave to my friends for Phil taking his life.

  Anyway, I asked Andrea if she and her husband could pick up Mum and Dad from the airport on the Wednesday night. She was more than happy to, and I knew she would be the best person to support them as they arrived in Christchurch and faced having to go to Helen and Phil’s home. When I told Helen that Andrea would be picking them up, she said she could do it, but I insisted that Andrea brought them to her place, as I felt the airport wasn’t the best place for them to see each other for the first time since Phil’s passing.

  Andrew, Roger and I were all about to book our flights to fly over on the Thursday at teatime and returning on the Sunday when I realised that was Mother’s Day. We couldn’t leave Mum to face her first Mother’s Day without Phil without any of her children there, so we changed our plans and booked to fly home Monday, planning a family dinner out on the Sunday night.

  In my conversations with Helen about the funeral we had discussed my doing a reading, so I contacted Andrea and Bernadette for ideas. Andrea emailed some lovely options, and Bernadette suggested a Bible reading from Ecclesiastes, which was also made into a song by The Byrds. It’s a beautiful passage, saying there is a time for everything, but when I spoke to Helen she didn’t want me to read it because it mentioned ‘a time to hate’ and ‘a time to kill’.

  I respected her feelings on this and agreed to read a card that Phil had left her, that she said she had found on the Wednesday in her underwear drawer. In one of our conversations Helen also said she had found a note Phil had started to write that said Ben wasn’t his son, but there was so much going on I didn’t have time to think about it.

  Family portrait: Dad and Mum with (from left) Roger, Phil, me and Andrew.

  Two

  Our Family

  My mother, Yvonne Anderson, was born in 1933 in Dunedin, and shifted with her parents to Christchurch when she was 18. Yvonne had a Christian upbringing and attended St Albans Baptist Church when they arrived in Christchurch.

  My father, James Nisbet, was born in 1932 in Christchurch, and also had a Baptist upbringing, attending Spreydon Baptist Church. The two met on a youth-group camp just before Yvonne’s 21st birthday, and married three years later on 26 October 1957.

  James had learned his trade as a fitter and turner and toolmaker, and was a hard-working man. They bought their first home in Bickerton Street, Wainoni.

  After suffering a miscarriage, Yvonne fell pregnant again and gave birth to my eldest brother, Philip James Nisbet, on 20 March 1962. Their second son, Andrew, arrived on Christmas Eve 1963. Yvonne miscarried again before having my youngest brother, Roger, in November 1967.

  After three boys and two miscarriages, they chose to adopt a daughter to complete their family. Back in those days there wasn’t a scarcity of children to adopt, so you could choose the sex of the child and have them well matched to the adoptive parents’ height and colouring.

  That’s where I came on the scene. I was born in November 1969 and they picked me up from Bethany Hospital after the annual Christchurch Christmas Parade. I still haven’t forgiven them for not picking me up first and taking me along!

  Philip and Andrew attended Linwood North Primary School, and when we shifted to Bassett Street in Burwood in 1971 they trans ferred to Burwood School, continuing on to Chisnallwood Intermediate. We lived not far from the Bassett Street bridge, and the boys often fished off it.

  Philip attended Boys’ Brigade, and at high school was a keen squash player. He attended Shirley Boys’ High School, leaving at the end of the sixth form. He took woodwork through to the end of his schooling and the pool table he made in the sixth form sat pride of place in the middle of the lounge. I have many great memories of family times playing pool on it, including my 80-year-old grandmother beating me because Phil was coaching her!

  Philip was the only one of us children who chose to attend church after he was 15, and he kept going there until he was around 22.

  Phil’s first job was in the parts department at Hutchinson Ford in Tuam Street, Christchurch, and this is where he gained his bad taste in cars. (I only say that because I’m a Holden girl!) Phil’s first car was a blue and white Ford Mk I Cortina. He was also into motorbikes and would often go trail-riding with his friends up around Maruia.

  Dad was a shift worker, so as he was either sleeping or working in the evenings two out of every four weeks, Phil took up the slack and often dropped me to Girls’ Brigade on his motorbike. Phil upgraded his car to a ute so that he could take his bike away with him.

  I remember Phil taking us to Hanmer for the day with his first girlfriend, Michelle, and her three siblings. Roger and I travelled in the back of the ute — not something you’d get away with these days. Phil would often involve Roger and me in what he was doing. This continued once he had strayed away from the church and he took me along with him and his girlfriend to the Bush Inn pub when I was 14. Mum found out about it when she read my diary. I was grounded for two weeks and Phil was told never to take me to a pub again.

  Phil worked for Tip Top, driving an ice-cream truck on the run to Ashburton. This is how he met the girlfriend from the pub incident, and also how he met his first wife, Vicki. Phil and Vicki married in September 1987. By this time Andrew was also married, and I was engaged to Anthony and was pregnant with my son Lance.

  Phil had had a home-ownership account since he first started work, so once he and Vicki were married they bought their first home, in Parklands, in the northeast of Christchurch. Before their son Zak was born in January 1993 they had sold that and bought another home in Tower Street, Hornby. Phil started work as a corporate limo driver, eventually buying his own vehicle.

  When Zak was around 18 months old, the marriage fell apart. Phil stayed living at Tower Street till it was sold, and got together with Karen, who he worked with. What seemed like five minutes into the relationship, Karen fell pregnant and they had a son, Ben, in April 1995.

  When Ben was a bub, Karen wasn’t well, so Ben lived between Karen’s mother and Phil during this time. Phil was always very close to Ben, and he always held a candle for Karen even after they broke up when Ben was about six months old.

  Phil had a couple of other relationships before he started seeing Helen Milner. The story seems to be that Helen and Phil met when Phil was boarding with a friend, JP. JP had met Helen through the newspaper’s dating column but didn’t click with her, so passed her on to Phil. (If this is true then I’m sure JP will be counting his blessings that he dodged that bullet!) Phil shifted in with Helen in February or March 2004, not long after they started dating. Five years later, he was dead.

  IN TERMS OF THE REST of the family, my older son, Lance, was born in 1988 and Aaron in 1992. My relationship with their father, Anthony, was more off than on. In the middle of 1992 he shifted to the West Coast and I finally felt free to move on with my life.

  Roger had shifted to Australia in 1988 with his girlfriend Jocelyn, a Temuka girl he’d meet on a youth-group camp. They married in 1989 and had five children, shifting back to New Zealand for a year or so in 1998–99, during which time their fourth child was born.

  My other brother, Andrew, and his wife Helen had their son Rhys in 1998. In April
1999, Roger and Andrew, with their wives and six children, made a mass exodus to Brisbane, Australia. Jocelyn, who at the time I classed as a close friend, talked me into shifting over too, with my new fiancé Darren.

  On my 30th birthday, New Zealand Cup Day, I had a scan and found I was carrying twin girls. That week our home was packed up and Darren shifted to Australia. Lance, Aaron and I moved over the following month, in December 1999. Darren and I married in February 2000 and our perfect twin daughters, Rajon and Lacau, were born on Phil’s birthday, 20 March 2000.

  Mum and Dad had made many trips to Australia to visit Roger and Jocelyn over the years and liked it there. Once three out of four of their children were living there they started to make plans to shift themselves, emigrating in 2002. Mum and Dad bought a home in an over-55s village in Burpengary, a half-hour north of Brisbane, where they lived until September 2015. Philip made regular trips to Australia, staying with Darren and me and even bringing Ben.

  Australia wasn’t good for any of our marriages, however. Andrew and Helen broke up, soon followed by Roger’s and my marriages ending simultaneously in 2002, with his wife and my husband hooking up. Before this we had been a close family. Yes, I know what you’re thinking — obviously a weenie bit too close.

  With the breakdown of our marriages came the breakdown of our extended family. However, I made several trips to New Zealand with my kids, and always caught up with Phil. A trip in April 2003 included an Easter weekend holiday in Hanmer Springs with friends and family. Phil had Ben with him and we had an awesome weekend.

  I had wanted to return to New Zealand after my marriage fell apart, but my daughters were not legally allowed to leave the country. This was especially heartbreaking as I had connected with my birth father Kevin Bunting, and then he passed away suddenly on 12 March 2004. After much hassle with the courts and my plane being held up while immigration cleared the girls to leave Australia, we finally made it to New Zealand for his funeral.

  Mum and Dad arrived in New Zealand a few days after me, on a previously planned trip to visit Philip and stay with him and his new partner Helen for a month. I stayed part of the time in Christchurch with my friend Jane and her family (this was before she too shifted to Australia).

  Because the twins’ fourth birthday fell while I was in Christchurch, Jane and I decided to make the most of the opportunity and throw a big birthday party for them at her house. It was an awesome day that continued into a barbecue tea and watching a Crusaders rugby game on TV. Philip, Helen and Helen’s oldest son Greg attended, but as there were more than 50 people there that day I didn’t get the chance to really get to know Helen.

  I first met Helen properly in October 2004, and then that Christmas when we spent a month and a half in Christchurch. Phil and Helen married on 12 November 2005. Our family’s invitations to the wedding were very last-minute, so I couldn’t make it, but Lance was living in Christchurch at the time and attended. Mum and Dad flew over and stayed with Phil and Helen, and Roger and Andrew both went to the wedding too.

  To be honest, when I first met her in March 2004 she seemed like a boring, ordinary person who didn’t stand out in any way that I remember. If only I’d known then what a huge part she was to play in all our futures …

  I WAS SO BUSY WITH my own life in Australia as a single mum of four kids, I wasn’t in regular contact with Phil. However, things soon went awry between Phil and Helen and my son Lance.

  In early 2006 Phil contacted Lance and arranged to meet him at O’Shea’s pub in Shirley. At this meeting Phil asked if Lance could get a hit man to ‘take out’ Karen. He claimed that they were having a lot of problems with Karen — that she was working as a prostitute from home and other lies. Apparently Helen had thought it would be best if it was an ‘accident’, like the house burning down with Karen inside on a weekend when Ben was with Phil.

  Lance contacted me after this meeting, very concerned. I told him just to ignore it and not indulge them any further. I thought Phil would never go through with such a thing, and I didn’t think Helen would have that much influence on him. I thought if they were asking Lance they must have had no other options, so if he did nothing to help them then it would fizzle out.

  When I was next in New Zealand, in June 2006, Phil also told me about Karen working as a prostitute from home and having men sleep over on the couch afterwards. At the time I had to refrain from laughing: the mental picture of guys coming out of a room with a prostitute and then crashing out on the couch just didn’t ring true. I asked how he knew this, and he said that Helen had found Karen advertising herself on the internet. My next question was, so where on the internet is it? He had no idea — he hadn’t seen it himself. OMG, I thought; I would have wanted to see it with my own eyes or I wouldn’t have believed it. Helen was obviously making this up, and Phil was so naive and trusting he believed it. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t even curious enough to look for himself. He didn’t bring anything up about getting rid of Karen so I decided it must have fizzled out.

  A few months later Lance was doing an equestrian course, and Phil and Helen offered for him to live at their place. One Thursday — Lance’s pay day and day to pay board — a few weeks into staying there, Lance disappeared to a girl’s place and didn’t come home for the weekend. Helen was furious, and they rang me in Australia.

  I could hear Helen going off like a banshee while Phil was on the phone. I was trying to reason with him, saying that Lance was 18 and shacking up with a girl for the weekend wasn’t unheard of at that age. I told them to stop overreacting. I could hear Helen swearing, saying he needed to come and get his gear immediately or she was throwing it out on the street.

  It was made clear to Lance that he wasn’t welcome back there after this, and he definitely didn’t want to go back. Helen had his training allowance stopped on the grounds that he hadn’t kept the appropriate people informed about his living arrangements. The only ID Lance had was his passport, which was with his gear at Helen and Phil’s, so he made arrangements with Phil for his gear to be left outside on an arranged day. Lance bussed to Halswell to pick it up, but Helen had put it back inside after Phil had left for work. Lance tried to get in a window to retrieve his gear but was unsuccessful.

  I came home that day to a totally over-the-top phone message from Helen. She had called the cops on him! Lance called me from the police car as he was being taken to retrieve his gear and deal with the situation.

  When Lance was shifting to Australia not long after, I made arrangements for him to pick up my golf clubs, which Phil had borrowed as he was left-handed like my father, and were also being stored at Phil’s. I had inherited them from my birth father and they held great sentimental value. At the same time he was going to drop off some money for the latch that was broken when he tried to get in to get his gear. I thought it was safest to send his paternal grandmother with him and for the money to be in the form of a cheque, so there was proof that it had been paid.

  I felt sick this day, and my gut feelings are usually right. Helen tried to get Lance arrested for attempting to break into the house, like it was a new incident that hadn’t already been sorted. I was concerned with Lance making it out of the country, so I called the Sydenham police to attempt to explain the previous circumstances.

  I spoke to a senior officer who confirmed he had had previous dealings with Helen. He stated that the previous matter with Lance had been dealt with and no further action would be taken.

  This was the last that either Lance or I had to do with Helen and Phil, other than my short lunch with them in Caloundra on 28 March 2009.

  Phil was a keen golfer, and not long before his death was managing a few games with his boys. Phil loved watching rugby and was a keen Crusaders and All Blacks supporter, often taking Ben to games.

  Phil was a quiet, caring guy whose main fault was his unwavering trust in his wife — at the expense of his life.

  Phil loved watching rugby.

  Three

  The Funer
al

  The Thursday before the funeral crept up so fast. There was still so much to do before I was to meet Andrew and his son Rhys and Roger near the airport at 3 p.m. It was nearly noon and I was still on the phone to Helen, Mum and Dad in New Zealand, discussing the order of service for the funeral, and I still had to race in to work to get it printed off.

  When I got there the printer was jamming — as always, when you’re in a rush everything goes wrong. I still had to pick up the girls and drive for two hours to drop them to Jane on the Gold Coast, then an hour back to the airport. I couldn’t afford to miss the plane so I broke a few speed limits along the way. Jane’s daughter ended up meeting me at a service station near their house, saving me a few kilometres, and I barely had time to kiss and hug the girls and drop their gear on the ground before I drove off.

  Check-in shut as I took the roundabout onto Airport Drive. I called Andrew and told him I would drive through the departure drop-off and give him the order of service, and rebook a flight for the next morning. He rang me back a couple of minutes later to say Roger had spoken to Jetstar staff and they would reopen check-in for me. Andrew took my car and parked it while I checked in, then we met back up at Customs and the four of us took off for Christchurch.

  My stepson Sam picked me up from the airport and dropped me to Lance’s place on the east side of town, where I stayed for my four nights in New Zealand. On Friday morning, I picked up a rental car with Lance and we headed for Academy Funeral Services to see Phil.

  We walked into a lounge and found Mum and Dad, Andrew, Rhys and Roger were all already there. This moment was going to make it all real; I was so scared, I wanted it to be a bad dream and wake up.

  Through an internal doorway came a lady and a young teenage boy, followed by Helen. The lady and boy left quickly before I realised it was Ben, Phil’s youngest son, and his mother Karen. The others had already been in to see Phil, so I looked to Lance and asked if he was ready. He said yes but his facial expression said otherwise.