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

by Lee-Anne, Cartier,

  Helen then opened a Christmas card that my parents had sent to Ben. An Australian $10 note fell out, and Helen handed it to me, telling me to keep it. I sat it on the CD rack; there was no way I was taking my nephew’s money. What planet was this woman on?

  As I sipped my vodka she continued her lies and a character assassination of Phil. I indulged her with nods, sympathy and looks of shock and disgust about my brother’s alleged behaviour, while trying to work out what the story was with Barry and what part he played in this.

  What was I going to do? I couldn’t leave — I’d drunk too much to drive — and besides, what would be my excuse? My gear was in the bedroom and I didn’t have a working New Zealand mobile. My head was spinning — not from the vodka but this horrid place I was in.

  Some people say everything happens for a reason. Was this the real reason that Sean hadn’t come to New Zealand — so I could work out what had really happened to Phil?

  I had no doubts at all: she had killed him. The autopsy had shown high levels of Phenergan in his system, and Helen had told me about the police finding the empty packets. So somehow she poisoned him with Phenergan. Why? So she could be with Barry? And if so, was Barry a part of this; had he helped her? Did he know the truth or was he just really dumb?

  A million questions were running through my head, all spiked with vodka. It was all too much. Sitting there in her house I felt like a chicken in a lion’s cage. I needed to play her at her game — and I needed a poker face. She had killed once and so far gotten away with it, so I couldn’t risk her suspecting I was on to her.

  Using the long day ahead, with errands to run and my early-morning hair appointment as an excuse, I headed for bed. I closed the bedroom door behind me and stood leaning against it, my mind racing. How could I sleep knowing what I knew? Was I safe?

  I decided that I was safe, on the grounds that if something happened to me while I was in her home the police might then think she had murdered Phil, so she wouldn’t dare do anything. She seemed intent on filling me with her lies, however. I’m sure she thought I was stupid and that I believed her crap and was spreading it for her.

  As extra insurance, I grabbed my Australian phone out of my handbag and texted Sean:

  Fark Helen murdered Phil I’m stuck at her place I’m so scared

  I pushed send with a sense of some relief that at least someone else knew. But I couldn’t remember if Sean was on day or night shift, so I wasn’t sure if he’d even get the message till the next morning.

  My phone beeped, but my relief was short-lived. I opened the text and it read:

  Insufficient funds — please top up your account.

  My heart dropped. Now I had no way of contacting the outside world.

  I put my heaviest suitcase against the door and went and looked out the window. There was about a metre and a half between the house and the back fence that ran the length of the property. If I had to, I might’ve been able to get out the window and walk somewhere. But I was in Halswell, on the outskirts of town, and didn’t think anything would be open nearby at this hour. All I could do was try to get some sleep, and hope that when I woke in the morning this was all just a nightmare.

  I lay in bed, still and quiet, listening to every sound in the house: the toilet flushing, water running in the bathroom and the muffled voices of Helen and Barry. Once there was silence I lay there analysing my options.

  What proof did I have? I presumed the police didn’t have the suicide note; what she showed me looked like an original not a photocopy, and the police would never have left her with the original. The contradicting stories I had been told … well, that was just my word against hers, and were easy for her to deny.

  Somehow during my analysis of the situation and my options I fell asleep. The next morning, I woke to two voices saying goodbye and a car starting and leaving. Now there was just Helen to face.

  The downside of drinking enough vodka to get a good night’s sleep was that I now needed to go to the toilet. There was no sneaking out and back in without Helen knowing I was awake. So it was time to put on my poker face and get on with the day. It was Lance’s 21st birthday and I couldn’t ruin his day with this horrid nightmare.

  I sat on the toilet for a minute, contemplating staying there till Helen left for work (like that was going to succeed!). In the bathroom I stared at myself in the mirror, wondering if it showed on my face that I knew she was a murderer. After lots of deep breaths and cursing I headed out to face her.

  She offered me breakfast, which I declined, using feeling trashy from the vodka as an excuse. I said should have eaten before I started drinking. Helen giggled and said Barry was worried that I might have heard them having sex the previous night. I just about threw up at the thought but assured her I hadn’t heard anything and attempted to erase the mental picture from my brain.

  Helen reminded me I needed to come to her work to get a phone. I headed for the shower but remembering the text I’d tried to send Sean the night before, I went back to my phone and deleted it. I couldn’t risk her going through my things and working out I was on to her.

  Getting into Phil’s car felt different now that I knew he hadn’t taken his own life — that she had murdered him. If only I could put the car into cruise control and let Phil take me where I needed to go to get all the answers.

  Helen gave me the phone at her work, and checked what time I wanted Barry to take us to the 21st. Back downstairs in the car I checked how much credit was on the phone. It said around $67 — including $50 added today. Oh my God, what game was she playing? Was this her way of tracking me, to work out if I was on to her? I’d have to be careful and not leave her anything to find.

  My hair appointment was for 10 a.m. As usual it was the first thing I’d booked after I booked my flights and accommodation. The salon was just across the road from the hotel Sean and I were supposed to stay in. If only things had worked out as they had been planned, Sean and I would have woken in the hotel, had a buffet breakfast, then wandered across the road. It would’ve been a nice casual start to the day, but instead it was just me driving into town with my mind going a million miles an hour. I couldn’t stop wondering why Helen had murdered Phil and how the hell could she do such a thing to someone like him. Phil was a decent guy, probably too decent and definitely too decent for her.

  When I walked into my hairdresser Lance’s salon he was alone, thankfully. It was great to see a friendly face. When he hugged me, I didn’t want to let go. I was so scared and his arms made me feel so safe, safe from the horrible realities of the previous night.

  Lance had been my hairdresser since I was 17, so he had known my son Lance since he was a baby. Since I’d shifted to Australia nine and a half years earlier, every time I booked flights to come back to Christchurch I’d also book in for Lance to do my hair. I loved my catch-ups with Lance; I could always rely on him to be discreet, as he knew most of the major ups and downs of my life. Lance was also in the know about what was going on around town, and all the best places to go out. And best of all, he’s an awesome hairdresser.

  On my trip the previous month for Phil’s funeral I hadn’t caught up with Lance but he knew I’d lost my brother. As usual Lance asked how my kids were and we chatted about my son Lance’s 21st and my plans for the day.

  When I finally told Lance about the night before and how I was positive Helen had murdered Phil, he looked taken aback. I knew it was a pretty big thing for me to be saying about someone but I was positive.

  It wasn’t till years later that Lance and I discussed that day. I was commenting on how I felt that a lot of people had thought I was nuts when I first accused Helen of murder. He said he didn’t think I was nuts, just that I was struggling to accept Phil’s suicide and this was my way of dealing with it, by looking for an alternative that was easier to accept.

  If nothing else that day, my hair looked great! The afternoon was filled with picking up Lance’s cake and dropping it to the restaurant, getting the twin
s back from Lance before he and Aaron headed to a bar with their father, and scouring the shops for a 21st photo frame for guests to sign. Then we headed back to Helen’s and got ready. I sorted the girls’ gear, ready for them to go home with my friend Shelley after the 21st, and packed myself a carry-on bag ready to leave early in the morning for a night in Queenstown. This was supposed to have been a romantic getaway with Sean but instead was going to be my time to think.

  Helen arrived home from work with the mail in her hand, ranting about Karen wanting Ben’s belongings and money. She said Ben wouldn’t be coming to Lance’s 21st, and ranted about putting Karen in her place regarding Ben not being Phil’s son. I avoided getting involved in the conversation, as I didn’t want to lose it with her.

  I contacted Andrea, who was meant to be bringing Ben, and found out Ben wasn’t coming — that Helen had rung and abused Karen and threatened Ben. I decided not to get into this any further, not wanting to ruin the night for Lance.

  Barry dropped us at The Garden restaurant. Phil’s oldest son Zak, his mother Vicki and his stepfather were already there. Helen was overly nice to them, even inviting them over the coming Saturday night for Zak to go through his father’s belongings and take what he wanted. What game was this woman playing? Unlike Ben, Zak hadn’t been mentioned in either the ‘suicide text’ or ‘suicide note’ that Phil was supposed to have written. If she had written those notes, as I suspected, was she intent on making sure the boys never had a functional sibling relationship?

  We sat at two long tables, eating from a smorgasbord. I got myself a small plate of food but hardly touched it. I spent the night with a Smirnoff Double Black in each hand, watching Helen laughing and joking with Andrea and then Lance. All I wanted to do was scream out ‘You murdering bitch!’ to the world. She was getting sympathy from everyone, playing the poor widow, but laughing and enjoying the night — like she’d got away with murder.

  I was surrounded by lovely friends but couldn’t say a thing. It was Lance’s night so I just had to ride it out and bite my tongue. Throwing back vodka was the only thing that got me through the night.

  HELEN DROPPED ME AT THE airport on her way to work. When my plane lifted off for Queenstown I felt a giant weight lift.

  After arriving in Queenstown I dropped my bag at the hotel and walked around the shops. At a jeweller’s there I bought a ‘Lord of the Rings’ ring, and as I put it on I wished that, like in the book, it had special powers. Right now I needed all the help I could get.

  I hadn’t had much chance to talk to Sean with the busy day before. I had sent a couple of texts to him from the loaner phone, and had got only a short, shocked reply to my allegations about Helen. I only had a brief window to communicate with him before he started work again.

  After I’d had dinner at a lovely restaurant I retired to my room and I started to work on a plan. I needed to speak to the police who had come to the house the day Phil died. I needed to work out who else to talk to about it.

  I slept so well that night — no vodka required. I wasn’t in the home of the murderer, I was safe a few hundred kilometres away.

  While playing with the phone, I realised there were some phone numbers saved to the SIM card, so I wrote these down on the baggage-check tag from the hotel as I waited for my flight back to Christchurch. The return flight seemed far too quick; I didn’t want to have to face Helen again.

  My flight landed late afternoon, coinciding with the end of Helen’s day at work, so she picked me up and we headed back to her place. Barry was there when we arrived home and Helen said there was something she wanted to tell us both as she got on her computer and opened up her emails.

  She said that the previous night she had received an abusive phone call from Karen, at around 2 a.m., which Barry had slept through. She then said that the police had arrived at her house at 6.45 a.m. with a death-threat letter they accused her of sending to Karen. She opened an email attachment which she claimed to be the letter the police accused her of sending. It started with ‘Dear Karen’.

  What sort of idiot did this woman take me for? For starters, the police never start new jobs at 6.45 a.m. unless it’s an emergency call-out. Secondly, the police never hand over evidence to an accused. And thirdly, this letter was identical in layout to the ‘suicide note’ Helen had showed me, typed in one big chunk at the top with a handwritten signature just off centre to the right. This time the handwriting said ‘Helen’. And, to top it all off, who starts a death threat with ‘Dear Karen’?

  Helen was bitching that this was an attempt of Karen’s to set her up. I was more than a little bored with her attempts to discredit Karen and paint her as an evil, calculating person who wasn’t fit to be Ben’s mother.

  This rubbish just gave more foundation to my belief that she murdered Phil. It was hard to keep a straight face and not call her out on her bullshit.

  I excused myself, saying I was already late to catch up with my stepson Sam. I headed to his place, and immediately told him and his partner Scott that I thought Helen had murdered Phil and all of the things that had led me to that conclusion. They were blown away by my allegations. Sam, who was meant to come to Helen’s for dinner on Sunday night with the rest of the kids, now point-blank refused to go anywhere near Helen again. The thought of being anywhere near her scared the hell out of him. I hung out there until it was late enough to go back to Helen’s and go straight to bed.

  ON THE SATURDAY I STAYED in bed as long as I could until the call of nature blew my cover. Helen was busy sorting things in the spare room. She produced an empty loan application form and made accusations that Phil had recently applied for multiple mortgages on the house without her consent, taking out a mortgage for over $100,000 when he wasn’t even on the title. I thought, you’d have to be pretty clever and have connections to pull something like that and really Phil didn’t have that sort of smarts. When was this woman going to realise she was going over the top with her lies about Phil?

  As the sun set and the beautiful June day turned into a dark cold night I sat in the car outside the Christchurch Central Police Station, trying to muster the confidence to take the next big step. Reception was well closed for the day so I proceeded downstairs to the cells. I asked a lady police officer at the desk if she could please find the officers who attended my brother’s death.

  She looked through her computer and wrote a code on a pale yellow piece of paper. I thanked her and left. I didn’t feel up to going to meet Lance the hairdresser for a drink as we’d arranged, so I headed straight out to Shelley’s.

  Her girls and mine were already in bed and asleep when I arrived. I sat with Shelley and her partner Gee and spilled my guts to them. Later Shelley told me Gee had thought I was nuts. With their youngest only a few months old, Shelley headed to bed early and I sat up with Gee watching the rugby, waiting for 10.30 p.m., as I had been told the detectives working that case would be coming on night shift then. I rang the number I’d been given and asked to speak to the person who attended Phil’s death but was informed that they wouldn’t be on until the morning. So I headed to bed with the home phone and set my alarm for 6.50 a.m.

  I woke before my alarm. I had butterflies in my stomach as I waited for 7 a.m. so I could ring. I asked the policer office how Phil was when they had found him. He told me he looked like he was sleeping. (I had been concerned because my birth brother Grant, an advanced care paramedic who has attended many medication overdoses, had said the victims often convulse.)

  I voiced my concerns about Helen to this officer and he encouraged me to go and see Detective Sergeant Mark Keane at the Hornby Police Station on the Monday. He also recounted the dramatic display Helen put on when she turned her phone on and Phil’s ‘suicide text’ came through. He explained that at the time they had called their boss to the house as they had concerns about Phil’s death but he had insisted they treated it as a suicide. I felt so much better when I got off the phone, as I could tell this officer had also felt that things were
n’t as they seemed.

  Rajon and Lacau packed up their things and we thanked Shelley and Gee for their hospitality and headed back into town. We stopped in to visit Andrea and her husband Paul. The girls played with their grandchildren while I spoke with Andrea and Paul about my concerns and the circumstances surrounding Phil’s death. They both encouraged me to push the police into further investigation.

  Andrea told me that when they had picked up Mum and Dad from the airport and taken them to Helen’s before the funeral they had both thought how strange Helen was behaving. They had both been prepared for a very emotional encounter but found Helen acted more like my parents were just there for a holiday, showing no emotion or signs that she had just lost her husband. They had discussed how strange it was on their drive home afterwards. Andrea also commented about Helen’s attitude regarding the return of items of Ben’s that Andrea had facilitated.

  When we got back to Helen’s, Barry was preparing a roast lamb dinner. Helen told me that Zak and Vicki had come into town the night before. Zak had been through Phil’s things and taken his suit and a few other bits and pieces, and she had given him the choice between Phil’s two prized model cars, both Craig Lowndes Ford V8 race cars. Zak had chosen the multicoloured Vodafone one, leaving the black and silver one for Ben. Helen said she had also shown Vicki and Zak the suicide note.

  Sammy dropped Lance and Aaron off for dinner. I was so glad she declined to join us; it was bad enough I was dragging my own children into the house of a murderer, let alone others. Helen offered both my boys a car each from Phil’s model collection. Lance being Lance said he’d take the black and silver Craig Lowndes car, laughing as he said it, but Helen jumped straight in with, ‘That one’s for Ben, Zak chose the other one.’

  As the boys looked at the cars they were allowed to choose from Helen thrust the suicide note at Lance to read. It was like it was a trophy to her, or maybe her ‘get out of jail free’ card — or so she thought. But to me, it was the beginning of the end for her.