Young killer gets a second chance, but uses it to kill again

By PATRICK GOWER

William Logan Johansson was a young killer who got a second chance in life.

So he used it to mastermind the methamphetamine-fuelled robbery spree in which gunman Ese Falealii shot dead two innocent men last year.

Johansson first killed eight years ago when he was one of a pack who beat a young man to death in a drunken fight outside Auckland's Globe Hotel.

On Saturday, he was one of three men convicted in the High Court at Auckland for their roles in the killings of pizza worker Marcus Doig and bank teller John Vaughan.

The jury was unaware he had a manslaughter conviction.

His earlier victim was Benji Halaholo, a promising athlete and league player with the junior Warriors.

Johansson was 18 when he and eight others took to the 16-year-old.

News reports described a three-minute frenzy as the pack landed up to 50 punches and kicks. Benji was beaten so badly shoe prints were indented on his head.

Johansson pleaded guilty, admitting a minor role. He said he had chased one of Benji's friends and returned to see Benji dead.

He was not sent to jail: he received a two-year suspended sentence and periodic detention. None of the pack received more than 4 years from Justice Sian Elias, now Chief Justice.

She described the killing as a double tragedy because it would cast a shadow for the rest of their young lives.

At the time, Benji's family, who are Baha'i, accepted the light sentences and said that, to an extent, reconciliation had been achieved.

Then they saw last year's news reports revealing that Johansson was implicated in the Doig and Vaughan murders.

"You can forgive, but it's hard to forget," Benji's cousin Tahirih Schutz told the Herald. "And it's even harder when you see them having reoffended in this horrible way."

Benji's mother left the country in distress at the verdicts. Her son would now be 24 and in his athletic prime.

The part-Tongan was 1.93m tall with a muscular 90kg frame, had been the Auckland junior champion in the 100m, 200m, 400m and high jump and was a candidate for the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

He had turned down a scholarship to an American university for the Warriors contract.

Ms Schutz said seeing the way Johansson had used the years since - "they used their fists and feet with Benji, now they are using guns" - made it harder to deal with his loss.

She said Benji's family wanted Johansson's reoffending reflected in a tough sentence for the murders. "He got a second chance and he blew it."

The officer who investigated Benji's killing, Detective Senior Sergeant Jim Gallagher, said Johansson had been a first offender and had been given a "particularly lenient" sentence. He had used it to go from acting in the heat of the moment to a criminally oriented life with premeditated offending.

"There was scope for learning. He obviously didn't."

Falealii, who pleaded guilty to the murders of Mr Doig and Mr Vaughan, is serving a life term with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years and nine months.

He gave evidence of how Johansson and his cohort, Joseph Sam Samoa, schooled him in the art of armed robbery and used him in eight of 12 robberies.

The jury took four days to consider its verdicts after the 12-week trial, convicting Johansson, 27, and Samoa, 28, of both murders and of the attempted murder of John Wilfred Bell, the owner of the Pakuranga pizza parlour where 23-year-old Mr Doig worked.

A third man, Pago Savaiinaea, 27, was found not guilty of murdering 44-year-old Mr Vaughan at the ASB Bank's Mangere Bridge branch but was convicted of his manslaughter.

Falealii said the others provided him with the gun, set up the robberies and gave him pure methamphetamine, known as P, to smoke beforehand as well as driving him to and from the scene.

Each of the three South Auckland men had either pleaded guilty to, or was convicted of, a variety of other aggravated robbery charges relating to the six-month spree.

A fourth man, Kenneth Edward Kitiseni, was found guilty of two unrelated armed robberies.

Samoa was acquitted of one aggravated robbery charge, Johansson acquitted of two and Kitiseni acquitted of one.

Falealii told the jury that when he got back into the car after the pizza robbery and told them he had shot someone, Johansson replied: "Good job, the ******* **** deserved it."

A week later, he said Johansson dropped him off for the ASB job and told him: "You're holding the gun, the gun's the power. Anyone **** with you, shoot them."

The Crown argued that they were aware Falealii had fired shots in previous robberies and knew he could well shoot someone during the raids, which made the other two guilty of the murders as parties.

Johansson's lawyer, Chris Comeskey, said it should be remembered that his client had not actually "done the killing" in any of the three deaths.

- additional reporting: Mathew Dearnaley