Car dealer John Murphy says he will privately prosecute the property developer.
Car dealer John Murphy claims Kenyon Clarke grabbed his phone off him after he took photos of the property developer in the street.
Murphy claims police returned the phone waterlogged and told him it had been recovered from Clarke’s pool.
Murphy says he is moving to bring a private criminal prosecution against Clarke for theft and intentional damage.
Clarke told the Herald he’s “laughing my arse off”.
Car dealer John Murphy says he has filed papers with the Auckland District Court seeking the registrar’s approval to take a private criminal prosecution against Du Val founder Kenyon Clarke.
The charges listed in the document are theft and intentional damage - Murphy claims Clarke grabbed and stole hisiPhone 15, which he says police told him was recovered by police in the Du Val founder’s swimming pool.
The alleged incident occurred at about 4pm on Monday 17 February - beginning with a stand-off between Clark and Murphy, who had used his mobile phone to take photographs of the beleaguered property developer outside Clarke’s rented home in the affluent Auckland suburb of Remuera.
I went, ‘oi, oi, smile, smile’. Then I started taking his picture
At the time, police confirmed they had responded to a “disorder incident” involving two parties on Victoria Ave.
“There were no injuries. One person was taken into custody at the time, however they have been released without charge” police said on the day.
Property developer Kenyon Clarke in a photograph taken in the street by car dealer John Murphy.
When alerted to the potential criminal prosecution by the Herald, Clarke burst out laughing and said the move by Murphy was tiny against the scale of other challenges he was facing.
“You’ve got a $600 million business in statutory management and [unprintable expletives]” said Clarke.
Clarke told the Herald “The guy’s a total [expletive]. A total weirdo. He tried to run me over.” Murphy denies this.
Asked if the phone wound up in the pool, Clarke said: “Who knows where the phone is? I don’t give a [expletive].”
Clarke said he was unaware Murphy hadn’t been charged. He said police had told him at the time they were “going to pick [Murphy] up”, that Murphy was already facing charges and “he had breached his bail”. Murphy denies breaching bail.
Used car dealer John Murphy.
In the papers filed to the Auckland District Court dated February 28, Murphy said he took a series of photographs of Clarke after seeing him leave the boutique Victoria Ave Butchery.
The papers claim Clarke then “reached in through my wound-down driver-side window and snatched my iPhone 15 out of my hands” before walking to his home.
“The act of snatching the phone out of my hands was recorded in a short video to be included as evidence. Prior to the proposed defendant snatching the phone out of my hands, it was fully operable with no water damage,” the papers say.
Police called to Victoria Avenue, Remuera, on February 17 2025 placed Kenyon Clarke in handcuffs on arrival. He was released without charge. Picture supplied
Murphy told the Herald he had recognised Clarke on the street, and thought “there’s Kenyon Clarke - I’ll get a photograph of him for my mates”.
He claims he shouted to get Clarke’s attention. “I went, ‘oi, oi, smile, smile’. Then I started taking his picture. Then I was probably a bit stupid - I allowed him to walk over to me.
“At that point, he grabs my camera [phone] and walked off across the road. So I followed him across the road [in the car] and asked for him to give it back.”
A witness in the butchery told the Herald she “heard someone yelling” and looked up in time to see a car screech into Clarke’s driveway as the property developer was trying to get through his own gate.
“A guy was yelling and going off his rocker,” she said. “Then there’s cops with guns and dogs and tasers.”
Kenyon and Charlotte Clarke in 2021. Kenyon's altercation with John Murphy happened outside their house in their upscale neighbourhood of Remuera. Photo / Supplied
That was the moment Clarke was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car for a short period.
The witness said it seemed likely that the photographer - Murphy - had been in place for some time and would have seen Clarke walk into the butchery.
“We all thought it looked staged,” she said. “It just looked like a set-up.”
Murphy said: “I certainly wasn’t up there trying to hunt the pr*ck down. I wasn’t stalking him. I knew nothing about him until that day.”
Murphy told the Herald that a few weeks later, police brought him his phone, saying it had been recovered from Clarke’s pool.
“I said, ‘are you going to charge him’ and they said ‘you can’t go around taking photos of people’.” He said police told him no charges would be laid against either man.
“I said, ‘it looks like I’m going to have to charge him myself’.”
Murphy said he turned the recovered phone on, saw the photos were still on it, then plugged it in only to have it shut down. He claims he then found water inside the cover.
The iPhone 15 has an Ingress Protection rating of 68 meaning it is water resistant but not waterproof - the phone is supposed to withstand being submerged at 1.5 metres for about 30 minutes.
Murphy said he took the phone to two repair shops, both of which told him it was water damaged.
He said the second repair shop was able to repair the phone at a cost of $919.43.
Murphy confirmed he was on bail at the time of the incident, having been charged with threatening to kill someone.
He said he expected to successfully defend the case, which is still to be heard. He said he had not breached bail. “I’ve been on bail [for various charges] for the last 12 years and I’ve won every court case,” he said.
Clarke, asked for comment on the prospect of a private prosecution, said: “You can report I laughed my arse off.”
A spokesperson for police said the initial decision to not lay charges was currently under review.
“Since this date complaints have now been made by both parties involved in this matter. These involve allegations of wilful damage, and harassment.
“At the time when the incident was first reported to Police, a decision was initially made to take no further action. The matter remains under review at present.”
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.
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