By TONY WALL
Nobody wanted Justin Dyne.
Twenty-five years old, but with a mental age of 13, he was pushed from pillar to post, agency to agency, home to home.
He lived in halfway houses, night shelters, drug and alcohol recovery centres or, if things were really bad, on the streets.
His income was a sickness benefit. When the money ran out, and it often did, he would live off Salvation Army or City Mission food and clothing parcels.
Sometimes he would return to a boarding house to find his belongings had been stolen. He was kicked out of at least two homes because his "in your face" behaviour frightened other residents.
He had trouble overcoming his cannabis and alcohol habit, was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and may have had a personality disorder.
But mental health services did not want to know about him.
Justin Dyne had well and truly fallen between society's cracks when he arrived at the Tui Glen Motor Camp in Henderson on June 2. He found the 100-year-old camp full of old caravans that were home to people just like him.
He desperately wanted to fit in, to have somewhere to call home and people to call friends. Maybe this was the place.
But he may have fallen in with the wrong crowd or offended the wrong person. On September 12, Mr Dyne's decaying corpse was found near a track in the Waitakere Ranges. He had been murdered more than a month earlier, police believe, but no one had missed him.
Police took 10 days to figure out who he was. Eventually his mother, Lower Hutt woman Linda Dyne, saw publicity about the mystery body and recognised her son's Maori pendant and clothing.
She contacted police last Friday and they confirmed his identity with a fingerprint check.
They had arrested him several times for minor offences.
Detectives have taken away the caravan Mr Dyne lived in for forensic testing, and have begun the mammoth task of tracking down the people who came into contact with him at the camp. Most are transients and have since moved on.
Mr Dyne arrived in Auckland about a year ago. He flatted for a short time in Avondale, and late last year moved to the Salvation Army's Epsom Lodge.
He was asked to leave, and began a Salvation Army Bridge programme to beat his substance abuse.
From there, he went to a recovery home in Mt Eden run by the Wings Trust, which also asked him to leave after about three weeks.
His counsellor, Diana Goveas, said it quickly became obvious that the home was not the right place for Mr Dyne.
"He had no idea of personal space, he was right in your face. He'd stare you in the eye and carry on staring. It was just inappropriate behaviour. He didn't threaten violence, but he was always in people's faces and it seemed to bother them."
Ms Goveas said she tried to put Mr Dyne in touch with mental health services, but they believed he was feigning his symptoms to get prescription drugs to fuel his habit.
"I believe he had a borderline personality disorder but the mental health services would not accept that that was a mental health condition," she said.
"What I saw was a person who didn't quite fit anywhere. There was nowhere for him to go ... he felt shellshocked and rejected. It was really sad."
Wings manager Shane Lewis said the trust had no real choice but to ask Mr Dyne to leave.
"I had no way of knowing that Justin would end up dead in the Waitakeres. We gave it our best shot but, at the end of the day, we can't work miracles."
Another social worker who dealt with Mr Dyne, Wilf Holt of the Auckland City Mission, said he enjoyed Mr Dyne's company. "He used to joke around that I would be the one to bury him because I'm a clergyperson. I never thought it would come to that."
Mr Holt said Mr Dyne had a young daughter whom he hoped to see more often. "His dream was to go straight, get a job, get a place and have more access to his daughter."
Ms Goveas believes Mr Dyne may have made friends with the wrong people.
"He badly wanted to be a part of something, anything, to belong somewhere."
Sad, lone life of murdered misfit
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