A price on his head

By TONY WALL

When Justin Dyne disappeared without trace from the Tui Glen motor camp in Henderson in July last year, his meagre possessions left in his shabby, rented caravan, there was no missing person report, no headlines, no fuss.

He had not been seen for a while, so staff looked inside the caravan that the 25-year-old sickness beneficiary rented for about $115 a week. They found a mouldy meal in two pots on a stove, mud tramped across the floor, but no sign of the transient drug-user whose "in your face" behaviour had led to his being kicked out of halfway houses and drug recovery centres across Auckland.

The staff assumed Dyne had "done a bunk" so they cleaned up, put his clothing in a bin for use by other residents of Tui Glen, a haven for the down and out, and rented the caravan to new tenants.

They did not know that Dyne's body lay rotting in the Waitakere Ranges. That his habit of "taking a joke too far" had annoyed the wrong person. That he had been driven to a secluded bush carpark with the promise of intravenous drugs and strangled with an electrical cord.

Forty-eight days later a woman walking her dogs along the Taumata track off Opanuku Rd found the body. Tui Glen staff saw publicity about the discovery of a body of a man in his 20s, believed to be a transient, but they still did not contact police.

"If we told the police every time someone disappeared, we'd be up at the police station all the time," one staff member told the Herald.

A pathologist was unable to determine a cause of death but because of the suspicious way the body was lying, partly covered with ferns, police launched a homicide inquiry. In the first sign that it would be a difficult, drawn-out investigation, it took them 10 days to identify the victim. Finally, after seeing publicity about the case, a friend of Lower Hutt woman Linda Dyne suggested it might be Linda's troubled son, Justin.

Police were given a focus for their inquiry and soon after confirming the identity with a fingerprint taken from Dyne during an arrest, they descended on his last known address, Tui Glen.

Dyne, who suffered from severe attention deficit disorder and was said to have the mental age of a 13-year-old, had well and truly fallen between society's cracks by the time he arrived at the caravan park on June 2.

He had grown up in the Wellington area. His mother noticed he was different from a very young age. "It was like he was supercharged," she says. "He did not have time for hugs, he fought to get off my lap. I used to feel like he was trying to do everything possible at once."

He found playcentre and primary school difficult and his mother tried several different schools. At one, St Bernard's College, his mother says, he fell in with a bad crowd that led him into trouble with drugs and the law.

Mrs Dyne was despairing. "We tried all sorts of things. Supportive environments, therapy, community groups, work schemes - all to no avail."

She believes her son's constant use of cannabis was a form of self-medication as it slowed him down. Eventually Dyne drifted to Auckland, where he tried to get help for his addictions. He lived in halfway houses, night shelters, drug and alcohol recovery centres, or, if things were really bad, on the streets.

Although he may have had a borderline personality disorder, mental health services did not consider him bad enough to warrant their intervention.

After flatting for a short time in Avondale, he 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 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."

Desperate to fit in somewhere, Dyne arrived at the 100-year-old Tui Glen motor camp and found it was home to other people like him. One was a 22-year-old drug user, Tristan Lawson. The pair struck up a friendship, and Dyne became Lawson's cannabis supplier.

Lawson introduced Dyne to a friend he had met a year earlier, 26-year-old Lance Graham, who also used intravenous drugs such as morphine and methadone - he had several drugs convictions - and had taken Ritalin in the past for attention deficit disorder.

Graham lived with his mother at a flat in Border Rd, Henderson, and was the only one of the three to have a car - a Ford Cortina with a noisy muffler.

Lawson and Graham regularly gave Dyne $20 to buy them cannabis "tinnies" - cannabis leaf wrapped in tin foil. All three would then sit around all day - none worked - smoking joints and watching television.

Dyne developed a liking for teasing Lawson, whom he called "Cullen" (presumably a reference to Lawson's slight resemblance to All Black Christian Cullen).

In particular he would taunt him about his girlfriend, Jennifer, who Dyne considered ugly. "You can do better," he would say. Lawson would tell him to shut up, but he would not leave it alone.

Once in Lawson's caravan, Dyne picked up a kitchen knife and lunged towards Lawson, who grabbed the blade. Dyne pulled it away quickly, drawing blood. "I have no idea why he did it, I told him he was a [expletive] dick," Lawson would tell the jury in his murder trial.

On the afternoon or evening of July 25, Graham arrived at Lawson's caravan. He had with him a quantity of pink tablets called Rivotril, a muscle relaxant.

What happened that night depends on whose version of events you believe.

Lawson, in a casual, videotaped interview with police, during which he ate, drank a cup of tea and matter of factly confessed to killing Dyne, claimed that he and Graham sat in the caravan, discussing killing him because he was annoying.

Lawson said the pair drove Dyne up to Opanuku Rd, promising to give him morphine, but instead injected him with Rivotril to knock him out, then took turns strangling him with an electrical cord as the homicidal lyrics of rap star Eminem blared from the car stereo.

The pair then took the body into the bush and returned to the car. Lawson alleges Graham grabbed a wheel brace and said he was going back to "make sure". He alleges Graham returned without the brace, and said: "If he wasn't dead, he is now."

Graham denies he was involved in the killing. He admits it was his suggestion to drive up to the carpark but says he just wanted a change of scenery from the monotony of the caravan park.

He agrees he injected Dyne with Rivotril, but says Dyne knew what it was and simply wanted to get high. He says all three men took the drug, as well as cannabis. As they sat in the car Dyne took photographs of himself and Lawson on a disposable camera.

Graham says Dyne kept teasing Lawson about his girlfriend and refused to stop. From his position in the driver's seat, Graham says he looked over and saw Dyne "sort of start jerking in his seat, like he was coughing".

He says he assumed he was coughing from the effects of cannabis smoke, although they were not smoking at the time, and so he turned back to looking out of the window. He says when he looked back again he saw Lawson in the back seat putting his hands up and over Dyne's head. He was holding something white. Dyne's head slumped forward.

"I realised something wasn't right, I asked if he [Dyne] was all right and he didn't answer," Graham told the jury.

He says he checked for a pulse but could not find one, so panicked. He admits he helped Lawson dispose of the body, but denies going back with a wheel brace.

After dragging Dyne's body into the bush, the two men drove back towards Henderson. One of them had taken Dyne's wallet, which contained a cash card.

Lawson tried to use it at the ASB's ATM machine in Great North Rd, but the card was rejected because he did not know the pin. The attempted transaction did not provide police with a clue as rejections are not recorded on an account.

Lawson told police the pair then went back to Dyne's caravan, got his date of birth from a court document, and tried to withdraw money from a National Bank ATM. Again they failed.

About a month after the murder Lawson moved out of the caravan park and shifted into Graham's Border Rd flat. After the body was found, police interviewed them both on two separate occasions.

They told slightly different stories but said nothing that made detectives treat them as hot suspects. Lawson told police he had given Dyne $20 to buy cannabis on the day he disappeared and he had never seen him again. He was annoyed he had not returned.

"I thought it was quite out of it that someone I knew was killed," Lawson told police, straightfaced.

Police had spoken to more than 700 people but were making no progress with their investigation until in November they posted a $50,000 reward.

Lawson cut out two copies from the Western Leader, which he showed to Graham, and stuck one to his bedroom wall with a syringe. He also began compiling a list of "Things I Hate".

These included: "Waking up suddenly, sweaty, after disturbing dreams; wishing I was dead; not being a bloodstained, bruised, smelly, dead body; having a head with 50 grand on it; thinking of the money and not getting my hands on it; never being able to give up drugs."

Graham, meanwhile, was about to make his play. A week after the reward was posted, he contacted a lawyer, who wrote to police on his behalf claiming the reward and immunity for anyone with information who was not a principal offender.

Graham allowed police to put an electronic bug in his flat, and he was encouraged to prompt Lawson to talk about the killing. On the night of December 4, after Lawson had injected himself with methamphetamine, the following conversation was recorded:

Graham: "If they find that [electrical] cord, we'll be in [expletive]."

Lawson: "We're not going to get caught. There's nothing worth worrying about. Me and you are the only ones who know what happened. Even the police don't know what happened."

Graham: "Yeah but ... technically I'm an accessory ... I don't want to spend seven years in jail."

Lawson: "Still nothing to worry about."

Graham: "They [the police] are not going to leave it alone, though. They'll keep going and going and going."

Lawson: "They can keep going all they want. As long as me and you don't talk to them, then they're not gonna know [expletive]."

Graham: "Yeah, what about the car, though? All they need is that it was a loud, green car."

Lawson: "Yeah, but they haven't got that so far. They're never gonna get it. They've been like so hard-out with all their resources and 20 people working on it for ages, if they haven't found it now, they're never going to find it. Why do you think they put the reward notice out? Because they're [expletive] and they can't find anything. And they're thinking, 'We're hopeless, we're gonna need help'. They should have in their minds that they can solve it by themselves, and they would not have to put up 50 grand, they'd have saved their money."

The next day at about 7 am, soon after finishing his first joint of the day, Lawson answered a knock on his door. It was the police. He was on his way to trial.

Lawson's conviction brought some comfort to Justin Dyne's family, but they feel bitter that Graham has walked away from his involvement, with immunity and the prospect of a hugely expanded bank balance.

Mrs Dyne, in a letter to her dead son which she gave to the Herald, talks about her lifetime of struggle trying to get him help.

"Justin, I want to say that I did understand the hell you went through a lot in your life. That feeling of being a round peg in a square hole," she wrote.

"You taught me about really living and unconditional love. You taught me patience, endurance, to try to see things in a positive way. You made me laugh and cry. I have absolutely no regrets about being your mother - it was a privilege."