Simon McGrath's brother Michael has been missing for over four years. He often goes on search missions to try and find him. Photo / George Heard
When Michael McGrath vanished four years ago, his family knew something was seriously wrong. An old schoolmate was later charged with murder and is awaiting trial. McGrath's body has not been found but his brother Simon has never stopped searching. Kurt Bayer reports.
Simon McGrath lies awake, wondering. It's just a hunch and highly unlikely, he knows this, but he gets up anyway. If he didn't, it would only eat away at him.
He slips on a jacket, hiking boots, and heads out again.
While driving out west, through the spidery streets they grew up on, with early sun hitting the snow-capped Southern Alps, he mentally goes over the other possible dumping spots which have been covered off during the past four years.
In those distressing early days and weeks after his brother Michael McGrath disappeared, specialist police search teams, including dive squads, scoured gravel pits, paddocks, pine forests, ponds, lakes, and rivers.
The quiet, thoughtful, unassuming carpenter's movements around his local neighbourhood – where he grew up, went to school, played sports, socialised, and never left, or wanted to leave – were tracked through security cameras, neighbours, and witnesses. Nothing.
Simon and his mates used to go out at weekends too. They would target an as-yet unexplored location and comb over it. Amateur efforts, but the best they could do.
Large swathes of Canterbury were ticked off. Nothing.
Both the official and private searches were eventually called off. And Simon was left to his own devices.
His most recent search was just a few months ago. Alone, he picked over a section of the Halswell River, in the flat backblocks between Halswell and Motukarara.
"I know he's still lying out there somewhere," Simon says.
While traipsing along a riverbank, poking in the weeds and beneath macrocarpa hedges, it will suddenly, vividly, dawn on him exactly what he is doing: looking for his brother's decomposed body or bones.
In the past few years, he's circumnavigated most of the 200sq km, shallow, brackish coastal Lake Ellesmere and its accessways. He's picked over the windswept Birdlings Flat and fingers of Banks Peninsula, around Lincoln, up and beyond the Hilltop Tavern on the road to Akaroa, which Michael used to cycle.
Nothing.
When he gets home, fatigued and aching, just a few minutes around the corner from Michael's house, a depression sweeps over him.
"You acknowledge to yourself that you're actually looking for a body and then you think, 'I can't believe I'm doing this'," Simon says.
"But I'm the sort of person who will say, 'Well if I don't do this, I'll never know'. I know something has happened to him. He hasn't just wandered off."
The last time Simon saw his older brother he was smiling. Sitting in his Mum's lounge, he was sporting new clothes with "a massive grin on his face".
"Little did I know that at the end of the night, it would be the last time I'd see him," Simon says.
Every Tuesday, the McGrath boys would have dinner at their mother's house, just a few minutes away for both of them.
They would enjoy a good home-cooked meal, chat with their Mum, and catch up on the neighbourhood news.
But on the following Tuesday, Michael never showed up. And he never missed dinner at Mum's.
Simon immediately knew something wasn't quite right. They were incredibly close. Neither of them had families or children. It wasn't like his brother to miss Tuesday tea - or any appointment, job, or commitment. That just wasn't who he was.
Michael Craig McGrath, 49, was an immensely reliable, dependable figure.
After going to the local Halswell Primary school and nearby Hillmorton High School, he started a building apprenticeship.
He went on to work for some of the larger building companies, predominantly working on large-scale construction projects.
If his tools were on-site, he would cycle to jobs. He'd always been sporting and fit. As a schoolboy, he played rugby, even running out at a curtain-raiser at Lancaster Park.
Later, he became interested in mountain biking and road cycling, competing in the 100km Le Race from Christchurch to Akaroa.
In later years, Michael went out building on his own. He took on small jobs and helped out friends and family.
"You knew if he was going to do something he'd always be there and be on time," says Simon.
"He was highly-regarded by many people for his work ethic and workmanship. He was very diligent, extremely hardworking, and hugely practical. He was also the ultimate perfectionist. He would never leave a job until he was absolutely satisfied with it. He would have to get it 100 per cent right."
During their 20s and 30s, the brothers played touch rugby together with a group of mates. Afterwards, they'd go for a quiet beer – and it was Simon who emphasised the "quiet", often sitting mutely, taking in the conversation and listening.
"Mike wasn't a big drinker... but was a very deep thinker," Simon recalls, "But when he felt like it, he'd always socialise and have a chat and a laugh."
They'd always hang out and catch up. Michael did odd jobs for their mutual mates, always very generous with his skills and time. He wasn't materialistic and drove a blue 1994 Subaru station wagon.
They went tramping together. Simon recalls a trip to Avalanche Peak at Arthur's Pass which left Michael was beaming.
"We were doing that right up to when he disappeared," Simon says.
"Michael didn't smoke, didn't do drugs, he hardly drank... you're not talking about someone who was on the wrong side of life. He was your nice, everyday person. He just wanted to live a quiet life."
Michael was last seen at his modest, tidy red-brick three-bedroom Checketts Ave home on the afternoon of Sunday, May 21, 2017.
Two days later, when he was a no-show at his Mum's for dinner, the police were called.
It sparked a massive police inquiry and missing person probe, that eventually turned into a homicide investigation, Operation Renovation.
Prison guard and childhood friend David Charles Benbow has been charged with his murder. He denies the charge and is due to stand trial in February 2023.
The night Simon knew his brother had disappeared, he couldn't sleep.
"It just all unravelled," he says.
"I've always looked up to Michael – he's virtually a year older to the day. He's been a huge source of inspiration and help to me. And one day you wake up and your whole world gets turned upside down."
He went to Michael's house that night and fired up his antiquated computer, trying to find some photographs for the police.
The next day he went to work, trying to keep his mind busy.
Over the following weeks, the anxiety and desperation grew. A dedicated phone line, 0800 findmichael (0800 346 364), was launched and Simon made a public appeal for information, and hand-delivered leaflets around the neighbourhood.
That first weekend, Simon got some mates together and that went out searching. It was the first of many weekends.
"I could've gone out and done searches in the week by myself, but where do you start? And it was better, emotionally, to go with other people," he says.
"Emotionally it was draining. I had an inkling as to what had happened to him but no idea where he was.
"I told police early on that if it's the person I think it is then he's going to make it look like he's walked off the face of the earth, and it's unfortunately come to fruition, hasn't it."
Bad dreams started to haunt him. In some nightmares, Michael would suddenly turn up at home. In others, Simon would find his body.
Even when he woke, it didn't feel like the nightmares ended. Simon suffered flashbacks and felt a deep sadness. He was heartbroken.
"You don't have the luxury of leaving it behind," he says.
"And it's an immensely lonely place. There's not a day goes by that I don't think about it."
Even now, coming across old newspaper clippings or articles online, the McGrath family find it unbelievable.
"You look at the article and you think, is this real? Not in your wildest dreams did you ever believe it would happen to someone close to you," Simon says.
"The horrific nature and legacy of this despicable act will haunt our family for the rest of our lives. It's a bloody terrible thing to go through."
The only thing that makes Simon feel productive, or useful again to his brother, is when a sudden premonition or notion presents itself, and he goes out searching.
"If something crosses my mind, I will go out and look again," he says.
"The police might've had better focus points than me but, at the end of the day, they haven't been able to come up with anything either. I go and do it just to cover it off."
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