Napier shooting: Inside the mind of a killer who 'snapped'

Bomb disposal teams prepare to enter Jan Molenaar's house. Photos / Herald on Sunday, supplied

He wasn't a P freak. He wasn't a lone extremist. By all accounts, Jan Molenaar was simply a tense, angry man who broke.

The gunman at the centre of Napier's Hospital Hill siege had stored away his fury at "racist" police, his fury at P-dealing gangs, his grief at his brother's suicide, just as he tidily stashed his guns and ammunition in a locked bunker under the stairs.

The outcome of that anger - combined with the unpredictable side effects of reported anabolic steroid use - was perhaps inevitable.

When Molenaar got home on Thursday from walking his dog, Harley, he found police talking to his pyjama-clad girlfriend, Delwyn Keefe, 43. They were executing a routine search warrant - but Molenaar snapped.

He sent Delwyn away, then went into the house and collected a high-powered rifle. Minutes later, one policeman lay dead and three people were seriously injured.

Police said yesterday that there were still questions about Molenaar's motive: "His actions seem inexplicable and completely out of proportion to a cannabis search warrant," said police Superintendent Sam Hoyle.

For a man first described as a loner, Jan Molenaar, 51, had a lot of people who called themselves friends. Police will talk to them over the coming weeks, as they try to piece together what drove this quiet man to kill.

They will tell of a school bully who had seemingly learned to control his anger, as he grew up. He got a job on the railways, joined the territorials, settled down in Napier with a partner and fathered a son.

In the armoured division of the Hawke's Bay Wellington Regiment, he would have learned first aid, field work and basic combat tactics. He learned to use weapons.

He left the army in 1988, and a few years later his railways job ended. Over the next few years he did odd jobs such as working as a bouncer at Napier pubs. His relationship ended, and he started one with Delwyn.

Friends described a quiet, "immaculately tidy" couple. Neighbour Paul McKee said: "He would look after our place when we were away. He was a good neighbour. Obviously something just snapped."

A friend and former workmate of Delwyn's, who would be identified only as Darryl, said the couple, with Delwyn's sons, were a normal family with normal issues. "They had a nice, tidy house - they didn't seem pretentious," he said.

Molenaar was private: he didn't like people going on his property without permission. And, according to two friends, he felt he was being harassed by police, whom he believed had acted in a racist manner towards Delwyn, who is Maori.

At the gun club and pig-hunting, Molenaar's army background gave him an advantage, according to a fellow hunter, who would be identified only as Dave.

At the gym, he built up his impressive physique, allegedly with the aid of steroids. Those drugs may have pumped him with aggressive testosterone hormones, according to Dr Lynne Coleman, a member of the Sports Tribunal.

"If this man was psychologically unwell and on anabolic steroids, that would not be a grand combination," she said. "What we will never know, I suppose, is whether the steroids caused his state of mind."

But Molenaar didn't drink, smoke, or do drugs, said friend Allan Roser. He "absolutely detested" gangs and drugs, Roser explained.

Another Napier man, who shared the same surname as Molenaar but was not related, said he slept with a gun by his bed in case the Mob mistakenly came for him, instead of Jan.

His loathing for drug-dealing gang members came to a head in 2003 when his brother, Johan, reportedly killed himself after an alleged battle with the methamphetamine P.

His mother, Anna Molenaar, said her son was "always pumping away with weights" but she knew nothing of him doing drugs.

"He loved the gym. But you know, I just know my boys growing up, drinking lots and lots of milk and Jan had protein food for his body building. But when they have grown up and have their own wives I don't know what they do in their own homes. But I have always told the boys I hate drugs of any kind."

According to friend Kevin Rollinson: "He's dead against drugs because his brother dabbled in P and committed suicide."

His mother told Hawkes Bay Today that she had last seen Molenaar at Johan's grave, earlier this year. "We have always been close but ... there was this incident," she said.

"It was about his brother's house being sold. He thought it should be kept for his sons. He got pretty aggressive."

Rollinson said Molenaar had a temper on him, though. "If you know him you know how to talk to him."