If Frances “Faye” Phelps knew her gardener Elliot Cameron was a mental health patient who shot his brother dead in bed 50 years ago, she never would have allowed him in her home.
The 83-year-old’s family say she should have been told about Cameron’s violent and unstable past - but for at least 10 years, nobody who knew of his background said a word.
Phelps was found dead at her Mt Pleasant home in October last year. Cameron had attacked and killed her with an axe three days earlier.
After the murder, he took a bus back to Hillmorton Hospital, the psychiatric mental health facility where he had lived for much of the last 57 years.
His first stint at the hospital - then known as Sunnyside - was in the 1960s after he had surgery to remove a brain tumour. Along with the mass, a “significant” amount of brain tissue was also extracted.
He was never the same again.
In 1975, he shot his 21-year-old brother Jeffrey as he lay in bed at the family’s home in Bryndwr.
Cameron was charged with murder but found guilty by reason of insanity. He was detained as a special patient at Sunnyside indefinitely.
By 2016, there were no court orders keeping Cameron at the hospital. But he refused to leave.
He told staff on multiple occasions that if he was forced to leave, he would kill someone.
Phelps knew none of this.
No one from the hospital ever told her a thing about Cameron’s past and a suppression order meant that while his brother’s death was reported, no names were published.
“We obviously didn’t know ... it would have made a difference,” Phelps’ daughter Karen told the Herald.
“Mum was extremely security conscious living on her own and there is no way she would have felt safe having someone like Elliot doing her gardening, especially as we now know how severe his past mental health history was.”
When details of Cameron’s violent past surfaced, all Karen Phelps felt was “shock”.
“We have a lot of questions about how someone like Elliot was able to be out in the public with no monitoring, doing gardening for single elderly women,” she said.
“You could tell he didn’t think quite like other people and was a bit unusual, but seemed harmless.”
Karen Phelps told the Herald that Cameron was an “odd character” but nothing about him indicated the violence he would inflict on her mother.
“We knew he lived in some sort of shared living situation where meals were cooked for them. He was intelligent and could hold a good conversation, so it seemed more like he was someone who just needed some living support but wasn’t dangerous in any way,” she said.
Karen Phelps firmly believed Hillmorton Hospital had a responsibility to alert her mother to Cameron’s past.
“If Mum had done a police check on him, it would have shown nothing up, so she had no way to protect herself and make an informed decision,” she said.
“I personally don’t think that someone with a history like Elliot should ever have been allowed out unsupervised to interact with the general public. It was a disaster waiting to happen.”
Health New Zealand has refused to comment on the case other than to confirm a review is under way into the handling of Cameron’s case.
They have cited the prosecution and future coronial inquest as reasons they cannot disclose further information.
Karen Phelps and her brother met with staff at Hillmorton Hospital soon after their mother was murdered.
“They seemed to know very little. They said they only had his notes from 1999 onwards or something and didn’t seem sure where his historic notes were, which didn’t give us great confidence about how his health was being managed,” Karen Phelps said.
“They seemed disorganised. We knew more about this case than they did.”
Cameron’s court file notes stays in mental health facilities in Dunedin and Auckland – as well as Sunnyside/Hillmorton. Since 1975, he has not lived outside of an institution.
“What I am interested in is how we are managing people like Elliot – not very well, obviously. He’s far from the only case of people from Hillmorton killing members of the public,” said Karen Phelps.
“I want Hillmorton to realise the impact of the decisions they made around Elliot’s health has been on our family and the wider community,” Karen continued.
“I suspect there was some decline in his mental health that was not picked up. My mother was the unfortunate victim of this.
“Elliot has done almost exactly the same thing he did decades earlier.”
The suppression order was made by Chief Justice Richard Wild at the end of Cameron’s one-day jury trial in September 1975.
He ruled it was “proper” to make such an order - at the request of the defence - in the interests of Cameron and his family.
He noted he was usually reluctant to make such orders because “the public were entitled to know what went on in the courts”.
The suppression meant that outside of the Cameron family, close acquaintances, mental health professionals and police, no one had any idea what had happened to Jeffrey and who was responsible.
Had the Phelps family been aware of Cameron’s grisly history, they say he certainly would not have been welcomed into their lives as he was.
Earlier this year, the Herald applied to revoke the historic suppression order so Cameron’s previous case could be reported. Other media joined this application before his sentencing this week.
Karen, Grant Phelps, and the police supported the application.
Cameron’s lawyer, Craig Ruane, opposed the revocation.
“It was clearly intended that this should be a permanent order,” he said in his submissions to the court.
“Reports make it clear that he has genuine and long-standing mental health issues which are beyond his control.
“The publication of his name and the circumstances of 1975 trial will leave him open to prejudice as a ‘multi-murderer’, and it is unlikely that the subtleties of the 1975 verdict will be apparent to the general public.”
One of those subtleties was the “remarkable brevity” of the first trial, spanning just one day.
“The legitimate public interest in how those subject to residential treatment... are managed, and how the risks to the public are met - or perhaps not met - can properly be dealt with in other ways, and in particular by the inevitable coroner’s inquest, without requiring publication of circumstances under which Cameron was detained in 1975.
“Mr Cameron’s case is also part of a greater, and important, public debate about how Hillmorton in particular, and New Zealand’s public health services in general, manage and care for patients whose conditions may mean that they pose a serious risk to themselves or the public...”
The Herald and other media argued there were “very good reasons to revisit” the order, including “serious concerns about the adequacy of the care” Cameron was receiving and whether he posed a risk to the community.
“Mr Cameron’s case is also part of a greater, and important, public debate about how Hillmorton in particular, and New Zealand’s public health services in general, manage and care for patients whose conditions may mean that they pose a serious risk to themselves or the public... Mr Cameron is not the only mental health patient who has killed in recent years.
“The public has a direct interest in an informed public debate regarding these issues, and Mr Cameron’s past is relevant to that debate.”
Crown Solicitor Barnaby Hawes supported Cameron’s previous case being reported, despite his counterpart in 1975 apparently being in favour of the suppression order.
“For the public to properly consider this issue, it needs details of the offender’s criminal history,” he said.
“He has killed twice, once as a young man and once as an older man. Why and how Mr Cameron came to be living at Hillmorton Hospital could be a matter of legitimate public interest, particularly considering his circumstances, including his treatment and status since that time, as well as the events of 2025.
“It is submitted that this arguably cannot be properly considered without the detail of why he came to be in a state-run facility in the first place.”
Hawes noted the original order intended to protect Cameron’s father and brother. Both were “long deceased”.
“And there is no one else known now who would fall within the definition of victim for the 1975 matter... There does not appear to be anything in Mr Cameron’s present circumstances justifying the continuation of the order.”
In writing, Karen Phelps told the Herald and the court why she and her family wanted Cameron’s past offending to be made public.
“I firmly believe Mum’s death was entirely preventable, and suppression helps prevent public scrutiny of the decisions made by the facility responsible for his care and supervision.
“The public has a right to know when serious harm has resulted from failures within systems meant to protect us. Without lifting the suppression, the media cannot fully report this story. Without full reporting, we cannot have an informed public or hold institutions accountable.
“This is how change is made. If nothing changes, I strongly believe this could happen again, not just with relation to Cameron but other patients as well. The media’s ability to report this case fully and truthfully could help bring reform, whether in how mental health patients are supervised and cared for, how the public is informed or how risk is managed.
“That possibility of preventing future harm must now take precedence.”
Karen Phelps said she felt “silenced” by the historic order.
“The order prevents me from speaking honestly and openly about what happened to my mother and why.
“As this is the second time that Cameron has killed, his age and the fact that he has no living immediate family, I believe name suppression serves no purpose.”
Justice Dunningham agreed that the historic order should be revoked.
She said the basis for the order was to protect Cameron’s privacy, “and allow him to lead as normal a life as possible without the stigma of being identified as someone who has killed”.
She said that he was “entirely spent at the point he attacked and killed Mrs Phelps”.
“The public interest, including the principle of open justice, requires the full facts of Mr Cameron’s history to be disclosed, allowing a free and frank exchange of opinions on whether the risk he ultimately proved to be, could have been identified sooner and managed better,” she said.
“The revocation of the order is also required to explain why the purpose of protecting the community was so central to the sentence I imposed on Mr Cameron for the murder of Mrs Phelps.”
Justice Dunningham was “sympathetic to the risk” Cameron may be “incorrectly identified by the general public as a “double murderer”, she expected the media to report the proceedings correctly.
“That he killed his brother but was not found guilty of this murder,” she reiterated.
“The mere risk that members of the public may not appreciate the difference between a homicide and the offence of murder is an insufficient reason to retain the 1975 suppression order when none of the grounds for making a suppression order still exist, and when the public interest in the proper management of potentially dangerous individuals with mental impairments points strongly in favour of publication.”
Anna Leask is a senior journalist who covers national crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2008 and has worked as a journalist for 19 years with a particular focus on family and gender-based violence, child abuse, sexual violence, homicides, mental health and youth crime. She writes, hosts and produces the award-winning podcast A Moment In Crime, released monthly on nzherald.co.nz
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