Kiwi rugby league legend Dean Bell says he has never met the relative convicted of the RSA killings who claimed the former Warriors skipper had offered him a job.
Convicted triple-murderer William Bell made the claim to bar staff at the Mt Wellington-Panmure RSA, where he worked briefly before being sacked
three months before the killings last December.
Bell had said he was learning to be a manager because his famous cousin was buying a bar in Auckland that he would run.
It was the first of many stories that made the bar staff suspicious of him.
From northern England, where Dean Bell heads youth development for the Wigan league club, he told the Weekend Herald that he had not been following the RSA case, but it sounded horrific.
The job offer was "fantasy" and he had never met William Bell.
Dean Bell assumed William was the son of his cousin Michael, who had left William's mother when the boy was aged 7.
The former captain of the Kiwis said William was therefore his second cousin, "and that's a very distant relation".
Dean Bell captained the Auckland Warriors in their inaugural season in 1995, before heading to England to begin his coaching career.
RSA staff said William Bell initially seemed fine on the job, but gradually his lies and tall stories were exposed.
Before he was sacked, after just a fortnight, he had become even cockier and lied a lot.
Full coverage of the RSA murders
