Cop's descent into murder

McSweeney with his son Stevan, who is now 17. Picture / Michael Craig

For more than 20 years, David McSweeney bragged he was the man who put the handcuffs on Rainbow Warrior saboteurs, Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur. It was the sum of his life's work as a policeman. But, away from the police force, McSweeney's marriage was unravelling and a deepening sense of paranoia eventually drove him to violence and murder.

The former Auckland detective sergeant last week admitted killing his wife Suzanne Marie McSweeney, 50, and kidnapping and injuring McSweeney's mother-in-law, 72-year-old Doreen Radford.

"I can never forgive him for what he has done. A life is a life. It's not just the fact he took her life, it's all those years he ruined her life. He made her life hell for years," McSweeney's brother-in-law Peter Grey told the Herald on Sunday yesterday.

Six months on, Radford struggles to erase the memories of the day of her daughter's death in April. "Everyone says I am brave. I don't think that. I still feel there was something I could have done," she said.

"I could have picked up the iron that was there and thrown it. But what if I had killed him?"

Radford believes once McSweeney is "sentenced and gone" she will be able to move on with her life. Her thoughts at this time are for her grandson Stevan, 17, who she says has lost his mother and his father .

The brutal murder of Suzanne McSweeney followed a turbulent 18-year-marriage, dogged by frequent episodes of violence. The couple met shortly after Suzanne had returned from Australia with two children and two failed marriages behind her.

After a whirlwind romance, the pair married and not long after Suzanne gave birth to Stevan.

With alarming regularity, Suzanne would arrive at work with bruises after being attacked by her husband.

On one occasion he turned his fists on one of his stepdaughters Carmila, now 22, after she refused to do what he had told her.

"He never accepted Sue's children, his stepchildren (Carmila and Marlina). He never considered the girls were his," said Grey.

Adding to the stresses in the marriage were ongoing financial problems, largely a result of McSweeney's big spending habits. The couple owned Creative Textiles in Silverdale, north of Auckland, but Grey claimed McSweeney pulled so much cash out of their business it was barely making a profit.

"He liked to spend up large. They would have no money and he would go and buy a $200 shirt, while Sue would be in the same clothes she had had for years," Grey said.

A fortnight before the murder, Suzanne got a protection order against her husband. She moved from their rented Whangaparoa home into her mother's North Shore unit.

"It was huge for her to do that. She had had enough of the constant violence," Grey said. "He had become quite paranoid. He would follow her, check her work emails, check her phone for messages. He was just sick.

"He was a total control freak. He had to have everything his way."

On Good Friday this year, David McSweeney stabbed his wife up to 30 times in the arms and upper body, in what police described as a "frenzied attack" in the offices of the couple's textile business. He then attacked his mother-in-law as she tried to help her daughter. She was left with cracked ribs and internal bleeding.

For the next 90 minutes McSweeney wandered aimlessly around the property before trying to kill himself. He is in custody awaiting sentence in the High Court at Auckland on November 28.

McSweeney also arrested "Parnell Panther" Mark Stephens who served seven-and-a-half years of a 12-year jail term imposed in 1985 for raping an Auckland model and beating film producer Robyn Scholes.

"It was his claim to fame. He told everyone about it. He lived it. It was constant. If he had a conversation with someone it was brought up. He lived in the past," Grey said.

But despite the delusions of grandeur, Grey didn't believe McSweeney was capable of murder.

"When I heard the news it was a sense of utter disbelief. We thought Sue would be fine. It had been two weeks since the protection order and nothing had happened.

"I thought he had chilled out and had come to terms with it. She had very little happiness in the last 10 years. They were just horrible for her. She couldn't get out. She was so scared of him, so paranoid of what he would do."

Radford said she would never forgive McSweeney for taking her daughter. "I will be pleased when he is sentenced. I just want to know how long he gets."

Although she was trying to get on with life, occasionally she felt spooked by the events of that day. There had been times when she felt McSweeney's presence as she was making a cup of tea, as if he was in the room. "After that day, I found it tough being here by myself. I remember running to the door to get out and not being able to get the doors open, then turning around and seeing him there right on my shoulder.

"That was the worst fright I got from it all, not being able to get him off my shoulder."

Suzanne's other brother Alistair said he could not believe someone who had served as a police officer could carry out such a callous crime.

"I don't think I'll ever forgive him. My sister was a lovely woman, a typical Kiwi mum. It did not need to come to this."