Harry's double murder storyline stuns families

Oscar Kightley (left) and Sam Neill star in the hit TV3 show Harry, based on the career of South Auckland detective Neil Grimstone.

Hit TV show has painful echoes for people of South Auckland

Families who lived through a South Auckland double murder were never told their painful experiences would be used as part of the hit TV3 drama Harry.

The plot of the six-part series, starring Sam Neill and Oscar Kightley, has striking similarities to the crimes of Ese Junior Faleali'i, who is serving a life sentence for killing bank teller John Vaughan and pizza shop worker Marcus Doig in 2002.

The character Lua in Harry - played by Shortland Street star Beulah Koale - kills a bank teller and a shop worker. Both Faleali'i and Lua were dominated by older men and beholden for supply of pure methamphetamine, or P. Both smoked P before the armed raids, both were reported to police by their parents, who recognised them from newspaper reports, and both victims were complying with demands when they were shot execution-style.

Ese Senior Faleali'i told the Herald on Sunday this week that the family had not heard from the producers of Harry. They were shocked to get phone calls during the show's debut from family and friends who recognised their story.

Victim Support chief executive Tony Paine said using real stories in the drama series was unnecessarily insensitive. "The people who work on the show must have realised the consequences on the victims' and the offender's families seeing that," he said.

"Why do they have to rely so heavily on real events - they could have made up a case every bit as stark and gritty as that.

"You would expect the producers of the show to have a bit more compassion and respect for these people," he said.

As happens in the show, the Faleali'i family were ordered out of their house by the armed offender squad. Ese Senior said he recognised himself when the series showed the offender's father going into a police cell and hitting his son, ordering him to tell the truth.

He said the family had been offered money in the past to turn their story into a movie but had declined. The show - funded with grants of $3.6 million from NZ On Air - has rated extremely well.

Faleali'i was also convicted for the attempted murder of pizza shop owner John Bell. Bell was filling a bag with cash when Faleali'i shot Marcus Doig in the back of the head. Bell said this week he had seen bits of the show and noticed similarities.

"Obviously it brings back memories but it's with me every day. I lost a good guy and staff member."

TV3 spokeswoman Megan Stuart said the show was inspired by true events but was based on a number of cases. "They did look at what was in the public domain. It drew from the experiences of Neil Grimstone who spent 27 years working in South Auckland police.

"Yes there was a shooting in a bank but that has happened lots of times around the world," she said.

Grimstone was writer and technical consultant on the show. He said the storyline of Harry was drawn from about 40 cases. Faleali'i is serving life in prison with a non-parole period of 17 years - whereas Lua died in the second episode.