The trial was so horrible and it was heart-wrenching to hear all the lies and deceit. During the trial I broke my foot and I am now further restricted in movement. The pain and discomfort in my foot is a constant reminder of the trial and of the whole nightmare which is now a part of our lives.
It makes me feel sick to think that Helen had the audacity to comfort me after Phil’s death, knowing that she was the one who killed him and caused my heart to break.
I will never get over the loss of my wonderful son. I hope that no one else ever has to endure this.
This is my statement, which I read aloud at the sentencing:
Phil Nisbet is my brother.
Before Helen came into our family I had an amazing relationship with Phil, spending time with him when I visited New Zealand and him often staying with my family when he visited Australia.
Phil was my big brother who when I was young often dropped me to Girls’ Brigade on his motorbike and took me with his girlfriend and her siblings for day trips to Hanmer etc. He made wonderful pavlovas for all family get-togethers and as a teen used to make yummy pancakes for dinner on Friday nights. We had lots of wonderful family holidays as kids which Phil still attended into his 20s.
I will always have lots of great memories of a wonderful, loving and caring brother. But Helen has taken away so many future memories we would all have had.
Not only did I lose a brother but my children lost a wonderful uncle and the link to their cousins.
Not only has Helen put our family through pain but I feel for Greg and Adam. They are wonderful young men and they will get past the trauma you have dragged them through.
Helen has not only taken my brother from me but she has also taken years off my elderly parents’ lives, shortening the time I will have with my parents. Helen has taken Zak and Ben’s father from them, Phil loved his children with all his heart.
Helen’s murdering actions have taken up so much of my head space. Today once you are sentenced and I know Phil can finally rest in peace, I can evict you from my head space until the date you come up for parole.
I would like to thank Detective Inspector Greg Murton and the members of the ‘Operation Checketts’ team for their excellent, diligent detective work in bringing Helen to account for her crimes.
Helen’s actions have not only hurt our family and friends but also affected the wider New Zealand community through the jury, Crown and judge etc. I am so thankful to them for being so diligent.
Rest in peace, Phil — you will always be my big brother.
The Crown and the defence then presented their arguments on what sentence was appropriate, then Justice Gendall read his sentencing remarks, saying to Helen:
The pre-sentence report has indicated that you have issues or problems to deal with including depression, anxiety and occasional panic attacks, a propensity towards violence, relationship difficulties and an unhelpful lifestyle balance. It was noted that you showed no remorse at the loss of your husband and that you continue to deny involvement in the offending. It also suggests that premeditation and planning had gone hand in hand with every offence committed by you in the past.
Justice Gendall then referred to the sentencing procedure. Murder carries a mandatory life sentence, so the only question is the period that must be served before being eligible to apply for parole. Under section 103(2) of the Sentencing Act 2002, 10 years must be served before a person is eligible for parole, but where offending is sufficiently serious a minimum of more than 10 years can be imposed. He referred to this case falling into the specified circumstances of section 104 of the Sentencing Act 2002, where the court must impose a minimum of 17 years before parole can be applied for. This law was introduced into Parliament to ensure a very substantial minimum term of imprisonment for the most serious of murders.
He further explained that a life sentence is just that, and once granted parole the person is subject to being recalled to jail for the rest of their life if they offend again or breach the conditions of their parole. He stated the relevant part of the legislation referred to: ‘if the murder involved calculation or lengthy planning including making an arrangement under which money or anything of value passes (or is intended to pass) from one person to another’. Justice Gendall adopted the approach outlined in 2005 by the Court of Appeal by considering her degree of culpability as it pertains to section 104.
The Crown submissions asserted that the case clearly fell within section 104(b) of the Sentencing Act, due to ‘the substantial premeditation and planning with repeated purchases of Phenergan under false names and at least two covert administrations of the drug to Mr Nisbet, the callousness of the killing and the breach of trust involved, the planning and motive of monetary gain, combined with the subterfuge and administration of the substance to her unsuspecting and innocent husband. The earlier attempt to murder him and the premeditation and planning to conceal the actual murder with various suicide notes and the fabricated reason for suicide that Ben was not his biological son. The audacity and level of both pre-murder and post-murder planning and activity here which shows a carefully thought-through and activated murder planned over a reasonably lengthy period of time.’
In response, Helen’s counsel contended that a lesser minimum non-parole period should apply, suggesting there was nothing to distinguish the case from ‘most domestic murders’, and argued that her relative culpability was not high.
Justice Gendall disagreed with Helen’s counsel, stating that there could hardly be a clearer case of pre-planning and premeditation than in this case. He spelt out his reasoning and sentencing on other similar cases that were referred to by counsel and the Crown and how they were relevant to this sentencing.
Then Justice David Gendall said:
‘Now Ms Milner, would you please stand and I will impose sentence.
‘For the murder of Philip Nisbet, Ms Milner you are sentenced to life imprisonment. You are to serve a minimum of 17 years’ imprisonment.
‘For the attempted murder of Philip Nisbet, Ms Milner you are sentenced to six years’ imprisonment to be served concurrently with your life sentence.
‘You are subject to the three strikes legislation and I am now going to give you a first warning.’
Helen didn’t look impressed.
ANDREW AND I SPOKE TO the media on the court steps. When I was asked if I was happy with her sentence, I said it didn’t matter what her non-parole period was — I would attend every parole hearing and make sure she never walked the streets of New Zealand again.
When making enquiries on her sentence and her future parole eligibility date I was told the murder conviction ‘trumps’ the perverting the course of justice conviction and they are now being served concurrently, which is why she has a parole eligibility date of 3 September 2030. Helen will not have another hearing with the board until then.
We headed from the court to The Gardens restaurant, where over 50 of us gathered for lunch before heading to the Woodlawn Memorial Garden in Linwood for a lovely service held by Phil’s old youth pastor Peter Hay. There we laid Phil to rest, surrounded by beautiful flowers arranged by our dear Aunty Edna, under the original plaque I had unveiled in July 2011. He now rests there with our Nana and Great Aunty Stella, and is kept company by a tabby cat that attended his memorial and is often found there with him. It was perfect to lay him to rest after getting justice, knowing he will now finally be able to rest peacefully.
(Photographer Paul Anderson)
Twenty One
Game Over
We returned to Australia believing the system had set times in which appeals could take place and the six weeks allowed had already passed. So we thought it was all over and time to find some sense of normality. But that was not so: a week before Phil’s birthday, as we settled into our new home, I got a message from my friend Shelley in Christchurch saying she had just had a call from a victim advisor who wanted to let me know that Helen had appealed her conviction … ‘hope you see this befor
e you hear it on the news’.
It didn’t take long for the reporters to start to ring. The grounds stated on the initial appeal document filed by Rupert Glover was ‘that the evidence which the jury relied upon in reaching its verdict was unsafe in relation to the cause of death and the administration of the promethazine [Phenergan]’.
We were very lucky in that we were given the appeal date, six weeks later. The appeal was set down for 10 July 2014 in the Court of Appeal in Wellington.
A group of us converged on Wellington to see what Glover had to say to the three judges who sat on the Court of Appeal bench for the hearing. Glover’s case was pretty much that if Helen had put ground-up Phenergan in his dinner, Phil would have realised the food had tasted strange and not eaten it.
We were out of there in just over an hour, wondering why taxpayers had to financially support such ludicrousness. From birth, with dependency on our parents, we develop trust, respect and gratitude for the ones who feed us — as in the saying ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you’. This trust, respect and gratitude then flows on into our adult relationships. We were instilled as kids with such things as ‘eat up and shut up’, ‘eat what’s on your plate or starve’, ‘there’s no dessert till you have eaten everything on your plate’. Really, how many men do you know who would say, ‘Dinner tastes disgusting — I’m not eating it’? Hello — men know better than to upset the woman who has prepared their meal. It’s a mixture of respect for her and fear of the consequences of such a statement.
I’ve questioned many guys since the appeal and no one would refuse to eat something their partner had cooked. One said he would salt and pepper it to death and another said sauce fixes everything.
A couple of weeks after the appeal I was talking about it with a fellow uni student, who laughed and described a recent meal his mother had put in front of him and his father that was absolutely disgusting. He said there were sideways glances between them, and his father asked if she had done something different that night. She explained that she didn’t have any X in the cupboard and had substituted it with Y. He nodded in acknowledgement and ate it without complaint. My friend took it into the kitchen and added things to it in an attempt to make it edible. Later that night when visiting friends he joked that his mum tried to kill them with their dinner.
Philip was brought up to be respectful and would have endured anyone’s bad cooking out of respect, because that’s just the type of guy he was. To add to it, Helen was prone to going off the deep end over anything so even an idiot wouldn’t have risked saying anything to her. Of course Phil would have noticed the sour taste but who would ever think that it was because their wife was trying to murder them? It is something a lot of us have said in jest but that’s it.
WE RECEIVED THE COURT OF Appeal’s judgment on 5 August, advising that Helen’s appeal against her conviction had been dismissed.
Again we thought it was all over, but before we could catch our breath Glover announced to media that he was making an application to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the highest court in New Zealand, and is New Zealand’s final Court of Appeal. Before New Zealand established the Supreme Court such final appeals were made to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council which sat in London, and there were usually fewer than 10 such cases each year. The Supreme Court was established in 2004 with the Supreme Court Act, which empowered it to hear appeals in relation to all New Zealand court decisions made after 31 December 2003. There were fewer than 30 applications to the Supreme Court in its first full year in 2004 and the number of applications had steadily risen to 141 in 2015.
The application for leave to bring an appeal wasn’t received in the Supreme Court until 28 August. Again the grounds cited were the mechanics of the administering of the drug. After an application is received the defence counsel has 20 working days to file its submissions, and the Crown has 15 working days in which to respond. Then the judges look at it.
The Supreme Court registry officer explained the complex appeals process to me. The Supreme Court has a two-stage process for considering appeals. In the first instance, a person wishing to file an appeal must put forward an application for leave to appeal. Submissions are received, and most often it is determined on the papers. However, sometimes the judges want to have counsel further clarify their legal positions via oral argument, so a hearing date is set down for this to occur.
A hearing for an application for leave to appeal is not the same as a hearing on an appeal — it is preliminary and only addresses those points that the judges need further clarification on, to decide whether it meets the very strict legal requirements for passing the first stage of the appeals process. The judges of the Supreme Court decided that they required further clarification on the leave application, so counsel for both sides would be asked to present arguments in court on the questions raised by the judges and the hearing was open to the public.
I asked the court about timing of judgments and was told:
There is no specific procedure surrounding when a judgment on an application for leave to appeal is released. This is solely at the discretion of the Judges. The timing of leave judgments can be affected by many things, such as extensions sought by either of the parties, or the release and determination of substantive appeals that take priority. In the case of Ms Milner, it is expected that a judgment on her application for leave to appeal will be released sometime after the hearing date in February. If leave is granted, then the appeal will move to the second stage of the appeal process — a hearing date will be set and the case will be heard in its entirety.
WE TRAVELLED TO WELLINGTON TO the Supreme Court hearing before the panel of five judges. Glover didn’t seem to have much to say, but said his so-called expert witnesses needed some more time and money to come up with evidence to present. We were out of there in around half an hour, wondering why everyone’s time had been wasted again.
The Supreme Court got their clarification that Glover had nothing and on 16 April the application for leave to appeal was dismissed.
It was finally over. The appeal process was exhausted and we could get on with our lives.
The following day the Public Trust started dispersing the life insurance policy to Philip’s sons. For Milner the Monopoly game was over. Go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $250,000.
Afterword
Where We Are Now
I’ve just poured myself a strong vodka because it’s 10.43 p.m. here on the Sunshine Coast on 2 May 2016. I’m so tired but if I go to bed and fall asleep I’ll wake up and it’ll be tomorrow, and I hate tomorrow, tomorrow shouldn’t exist. I just wish I could travel back in time seven years and stop tomorrow from happening. If only that was possible, if only I could go back and save Phil. If only, if only. When I wake tomorrow it’ll be the day, the day that broke our hearts, the day that changed so much, the day that took a son from his parents, a brother from his siblings and, most heartbreaking, a father from his sons, boys he never got to see grow into men, to see fall in love and have children of their own. So many things we all take for granted stolen from him with his last breath, all for the sake of money.
I often wonder where I’d be now, what my life would be like if tomorrow had never happened seven long years ago. I look at my parents, broken and weary from this horrid nightmare. I wish I could give them their son back.
It’s so long ago but only feels like yesterday that Dad told me Phil was gone. It has been seven years of testing our strength and the determination which has seen our family through to today. Helen Milner may have taken a brother but she can never take our love for him or the years of special memories that we will hold in our hearts forever.
For my children, this journey has been one of many sacrifices. The most heartbreaking thing is the time I haven’t had to spend with them, and secondly the financial hardship my daughters have had to endure as a result. I believe they have come through this with an inner strength and understanding of the world and the r
ealities of life.
This is part of a post Rajon put on my Facebook page:
I really look up to you and how strong and how much of an amazing person you are. You got justice for your brother and fought against the police to do so. You barely got anything back for doing it. I never noticed how much of an amazing strong woman you are until I heard your friends talk so much of you and how strong and amazing you are. I love you for being there for me every step of the way and giving me the motivation to get better and be better. I love you to the moon and back Mum.
The girls have always been absolutely amazing, always doing bits and pieces to make my life easier. From the age of 10 onwards I’d come home to the house clean and tidy, even the washing done, and these surprises meant the world to me and made my busy life easier. My children are my world. I would give anything and do anything I possibly could to make their journey through life a happy one filled with love and adventure.
After I completed my tertiary preparation pathway and my first semester in Justice and Legal Studies and I could apply to transfer to law, I realised I had neither the time nor the energy to succeed in that area. To attempt to wouldn’t be fair on the girls and they had already gone without so much. It was time to be there for them so I transferred to the new course, Bachelor of Criminology and Justice.
I feel this course is best suited to my end goals of working in the criminal justice system to improve and facilitate the journey for other victims. I’m enjoying studying at the University of the Sunshine Coast because of the positive culture and supportive environment which has allowed me to focus on the future and realise my potential. There is a unique sense of community brought about by the relaxed setting and beautiful people.
We returned to Australia because Mum’s and Dad’s health has been affected and their lifespan had been shortened by the trauma of it all. I knew if we stayed in New Zealand I wouldn’t get to Australia very often to see them.
Black Widow, The: How One Woman Got Justice for Her Murdered Brother Page 17
