Fond memories still clear of slain farmer

Puketitiri farmer Jack Nicholas was shot dead in 2004 and no one has been held to account.

Not a day goes past that Agnes Nicholas doesn't think about her late husband, Jack.

Today, the memories will return front and foremost at a special remembrance service.

It has been almost 13 years since the Puketitiri farmer was shot dead by a gunman who waited for him to venture outside his Makahu farmhouse in the frosty dawn of August 27, 2004.

Although time has passed, Mrs Nicholas can't comprehend why somebody would cut his life short and still yearns for answers.

"Even today I can't understand how this person could stand there and shoot another person in cold blood without a reason. It seems too drastic to take somebody's life."

"This is the hard thing to comprehend that we didn't have a reason."

During her travels to Australia, the Scottish woman met Jack's sister Joy and came to New Zealand to meet her family.

After travelling back to England with Joy for what would turn out to be two years, she and Jack wrote to each other and after a year he asked her if she "would come back and see how we got on each with each other."

In 1967, they got married in Hawke's Bay and they had two children, Oliver and Edward.

"He was my life. I came out here because of him and he was the reason why I was here."

A homicide inquiry was launched but it wasn't until May 2006 that Murray 'Moe' Foreman was arrested. In 2008, after six-week trial he was found not guilty.

It's a verdict that made Mrs Nicholas feel "freer to get on with my life and think of Jack in my own way without the court case and anything else hanging over our heads."

To this day, she has fond memories of Jack taking her out in the fresh air up the Kawekas and she still lives in the river stone farmhouse which he built.

Her Presbyterian faith has helped her come to terms with the grief.

To help her during her time of grief, Agnes started going to the Feelings for Folk of Murder Victims Annual Memorial Service in 2005. She believes organiser Coleen Davey is doing a wonderful thing for people in a similar position.

The Feelings for Folk of Murder Victims Annual Memorial Service will be held today at Albert Square in Hastings from 12pm.