Flatting with the enemy

When a bright law student let a stranger share his flat it was the start of a conflict that would end in violent death. ALISON HORWOOD chronicles a tragic crime.

It began with an insignificant-looking advertisement in the classified columns of a Wellington newspaper. It read something like: Flatmate wanted for Karori bungalow. To share with two others.

And in March 1999, David James Gates, a 27-year-old fundamentalist Christian and diagnosed schizophrenic, circled the advertisement and cut it out.

Despite his deteriorating mental health, Gates, son of a middle-class Karori family, was capable of presenting a normal face. Before seeing the advertisement for Wavell St, he had convinced two cohabiting psychologists he was an ideal flatmate. And a few months later, when he re-applied to join the territorials, a routine medical did not detect anything untoward.

So Gates was able to convince Victoria University law student Gavin Edward Dash and his flatmate Sally Patterson that he was the best candidate for the spare room. On March 10, 1999, he moved his broken-down bed and meagre belongings into a bedroom at the end of the hall.

Taking up residence with a stranger is common in the world of rented accommodation. But the events that unfolded over the next few months were far from ordinary.

Before the end of spring, Gates would strangle to death Dash, a quiet 24-year-old who until then did not have an enemy in the world. He would stow Dash's body in a spare room for a few days, before dumping it on the Makara Hill, several kilometres behind the home they once shared.

He would return twice to the rotting corpse, once with a sharp axe, which he use to remove the head. He put the head in a Wellington City Council rubbish bag, knotted it and put it in the hollow of a tree 7m from Dash's naked body.

Gates' peculiar behaviour resulted on Monday in an 11-person jury in the High Court at Wellington finding him not guilty by reason of of insanity of murdering Dash on September 27, 1999. But they did find him guilty of later burgling Dash's flat.

Gates was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in April last year, and has been there since. Consultant forensic psychiatrist John Crawshaw gave evidence that if Gates had not been locked up he could have committed a second murder.

During the four-week trial, shaven-headed Gates spent much of his time with his head bowed and looking at his feet. Justice Neazor excused him from attending on several days.

He had admitted the main facts of the killing, phoning police and even drawing a map of where the body parts were disposed.

The jury had to decide whether to accept the argument nte put forward by his defence counsel, John Rowan, QC, that he was legally insane at the time of the murder or the prosecution case that the elaborate precautions he took to avoid detection showed he was of sound mind.

Gates, who suffers from a paranoid type of schizophrenia, was so ill he either did not know what he was doing or did not know it was morally wrong, Rowan had told the court. Gates believed Dash was evil, and his execution was necessary to save himself and others from harm.

During the four-week trial, details of Gates' deteriorating mental health over the past decade were given. When he was about 15, he worked for, and temporarily lived with, anti-crime campaigner Mark Middleton, the stepfather of murdered Taita teenager, Karla Cardno.

All the talk of Karla's murder would have had a profound effect on Gates, his mother, Doreen, told the court. She blamed Middleton for introducing her son to smoking, probably cannabis, and religious and racist ideas.

Years later he would show a friend a pornographic magazine in his room, but claim he had it only for an article on the Ku Klux Klan. He also spoke of the God-given differences between white and coloured people andnte while receiving psychiatric help this year he believed a Pakistani doctor was a threat and that an Indian patient had an unclean spirit.

In the past few years, Gates had become increasingly moody and unpredictable. Joining a Fundamentalist church fuelled his obsessions with homosexuals - whom he called sodomites - adultery and fornication. He had delusions he was the prophet Elijah who, according to the Old Testament, slaughtered hundreds of prophets of another cult and had been sent back from Heaven on a mission from God.

Further delusions about incestuous relationships between his siblings and about his father, John, having a Satanic involvement in Freemasonry caused a rift with his family and his parents took out a trespass notice against him after he attacked his brother, Stuart.

Drifting in and out of work, Gates spent time sleeping in his vehicle and in hostels around the capital, before moving into Wavell St.

About the time Gates answered the advertisement, his parents had considered having him committed. During the trial, they testified they decided against it because they were scared he would not cope or would cut them off completely.

Dash, his victim, was a stark contrast: a teetotal 24-year-old who played table tennis, belonged to Toastmasters, and spent his Friday nights playing chess at a club in Karori. He held an BA (hons) from Auckland University, but had moved to Wellington to study law. He aspired to work as a policy analyst.

Almost as soon as Gates moved in, the problems began. As Crown prosecutor Grant Burston said during the trial, quite simply the two men did not get on.

In an e-mail to his mother, Lyn, Dash described Gates as "one of the most moody, immature and self-absorbed people I have met. We don't get along at all." Intellectually superior, Dash would infuriate Gates by walking away from an argument with the last word, or by ignoring him completely.

Gates believed Dash looked down on him. He referred to Dash as the "evil fornicator" and became obsessed with the idea he masturbated incessantly in his room. He told a friend that Dash, as an academic and an atheist, disputed his Christian beliefs and made him unwell. "Dash picked on the wrong Christian," he would tell the same friend after the killing.

The situation worsened and in about May, Patterson, a young woman with learning and developmental disabilities whose mother owned the flat, rang the police at 2 am to report Gates had threatened her. He apparently said, "I'm going to put $500 into a bank account to take care of the bills and then do away with you and Gavin." She moved out shortly afterward, leaving Gates and Dash alone.

Over the next six weeks, Dash told his Auckland-based parents, Lyn and Colin Dash, the tension made him uncomfortable. On July 24, Dash moved out suddenly without giving notice to the landlord. He picked a time when Gates was not at home, and did not say goodbye or leave a follow-up address.

During August and most of September, Dash's life continued as normal. During that time, Gates used the phone at his parents' house in Karori to phone Dash nine times. The day before the killing, Sunday, September 26, three calls were made to Dash, who was by then living in a new flat in the suburb of Northland.

The following day, Dash went about his normal Monday routine. He left his new flat around 11.30 am to attend a 12.40 pm lecture. A video camera shows him getting $20 from an ATM machine in central Wellington at 1.45 pm. At 3.30 pm he closed the computer down at the law faculty at Victoria University, picked up his black backpack and left the University, walking towards Lambton Quay.

Some time that evening, Dash had an appointment with Helen Patterson, the landlord at Wavell St, to get his bond back. He never made it. About 5.30 pm he went to Wavell St where Gates was living alone, perhaps to pick up some mail or to discuss a misunderstanding about a power bill.

There, said the Crown, Gates confronted Dash in the lounge. He punched him, knocking him to the ground, then continued kicking him in the head. Spots of his blood were found just behind the door.

Gates told Dr Tony Marks, one of six psychiatrists to give evidence for the defence, he held Dash in a headlock for five minutes and then strangled him with his own belt, but forensic pathologist Dr Kenneth Thompson said the bruising was more consistent with manual strangulation.

After Dash drew his last breath, Gates removed his upper clothing. He cut up a grey blanket and wrapped it around Dash's head and taped it in place. He then got a sleeping bag and put the body head-first inside it and zipped it up. He then put the body in a bedroom, and left it for several days before carrying it into his Bedford van, and driving to the nearby summit of Makara Hill.

Gates got out of the car, said Burston, carrying the sleeping bag and body about 400m along a path, then a further 22m off the walking track and into heavy bush, where he dumped it.

According to the Crown, Gates then began a calculated cover-up to try to get away with the murder. Rowan said he was legally insane and his actions were the work of a confused mind.

Back at the flat, he removed a section of blood-stained carpet from the lounge. It has never been found. Within three days, he took Dash's keys from his backpack, and used them to enter his new flat in Northland. Gates stripped Dash's bedroom of all clearly visible belongings, including bedding, underwear and sports socks.

He left behind a few belongings on top of a wardrobe, his toiletries in the bathroom, and did not touch any of the other flatmates' valuables. The only reasonable explanation for this, said Burston, was that Gates planned the burglary to make it seem Dash had moved out with no forwarding address.

It worked. Police at first treated the disappearance as a missing person inquiry and it was not until months later, largely after pressure from the Dash family, it was upgraded.

At least one month after the killing - before the murder hunt began - some time after October 27 and before November 28 according to the Crown, Gates returned to Dash's decomposing body, taking with him a pair of scissors, a sharp axe and some rubbish bags.

Using the scissors, he cut the sleeping bag off to expose the head, still wrapped in the grey blanket. He cut the tape around the neck, folding back the bottom edges of the blanket to expose the neck. Using at least two blows from the axe, he severed the head from the body. He then put it into a rubbish bag and put it into the hollow of an upturned tree.

Doreen Gates told the court her son was obsessed with zombies and may have removed the head to prevent his victim turning into one. The Crown said it could have been part of the cover-up to avoid identification through dental records. Months after the killing police found a copy of FHM magazine at Wavell St that included a letter to the editor on dental identification.

Gates then unzipped the sleeping bag and tipped the body on to the ground. The body had been naked from the waist up, but with jeans and underpants on. On this return visit, however, he removed the remaining clothing. He removed all identifying items, such as wallet, glasses and watch.

Gates double-bagged the underwear, jeans, and sleeping bag in a rubbish bags, and put them in the hollow above the severed head. He then covered the bags in leaves, sticks and branches but left the headless body lying on the surface. This had the effect of speeding decomposition, said Burston.

Throughout October and November, Gates remained at Wavell St. On October 8, he drove to the Plimmerton address of an acquaintance, Andrew Miller. He did not know him well, but asked to stay.

Once Miller was at work, Gates went through Dash's property, using scissors to cut some of it up. He put the pieces into rubbish bags, which he put outside for the rubbish collection later that day. He left a suitcase belonging to Dash behind the couch and scraps of Dash's licence were found in the vacuum cleaner bag.

Up to that time Gates had not been in contact with the police. However on November 19, he was contacted by a private investigator for the Dash family, which was frustrated at the slow police progress.

About the same time, Patterson asked him to leave the Wavell St flat because it was being readied for sale. He stayed for a time at Rowena's Lodge in Mt Victoria. There, he showed another guest, Daniel Tattersall, a hunting knife and told him he could imagine stabbing Asians with it. The experience was a frightening one, Tattersall would say later.

On 28 November, Gates travelled to Dunedin then on to Queenstown. He arrived in Nelson between Christmas and New Year, where he bumped into an old schoolmate, Matthew Tulett. He apparently said he wanted vengeance for being picked on at school, making references to the Bible and judgment day, clenching and unclenching his fists, Tullet told the court. He also talked about the rush he got from killing a dog, and how much greater that rush would be from killing a human.

By December, Gates was of interest to the police but was still at large. In January of last year, he returned to Wellington four days before an Army medical to re-enlist in the territorials. Nothing untoward was picked up. Several months earlier, he had sat the written test and scored 41 out of 44 for reasoning - placing him in the top third of all applicants in 1999 and the highest that month.

Not long after he returned to the capital and about three months after he killed Dash, Gates returned to the dismembered body. He took with him a yellow spade from the basement of his mother's house in Karori, buried the remains and hid the spade in his parents woodpile.

During February and March police spoke to Gates several times. At the time he denied any involvement in the killing, Burston told the court. But during the burglary of Dash's new flat, he left blood on two areas of the wardrobe and the curtain. Only the killer would have had the motive to burgle the room, said Burston. That motive was not to get the property but to cover up the death.

Gates also made the mistake of giving away some of Dash's property, which was later traced back to him. He gave his sister, Vanessa, a heater and Kambrook iron. He sold Dash's radio cassette player to a friend for $20 and a calculator for $5 - acts of folly that may have underlined the argument that this was a man in severe mental decline.

But the verdict gave little comfort to the Dash family. After their battle to persuade the police to treat the case as a crime and the ordeal of a lengthy trial they were visibly downcast with the verdict.

"It's a sad day for justice," said his father. And for the Gates family it confirms the loss of their son to the mists of his tormented mind.