By TONY WALL
Henderson man Malcolm Beggs joked with his sister that his strange new flatmate might be planning to kill him, just four days before he was hacked to death with a knife and axe.
Mr Beggs' feeling of foreboding was revealed in the Auckland District Court yesterday during the start
of a coroner's inquest into his death and that of flatmate Lachlan Jones.
The bodies of the two men were found at Mr Beggs' Universal Drive property last August 30.
The court heard that some time during the previous night, Jones, a 19-year-old mental outpatient, went into the bedroom of his landlord Mr Beggs, a 25-year-old marine engineer, and murdered him using a knife and axe.
Mr Beggs died from severe head and neck injuries.
Jones then washed himself, changed clothes and went to the garage where he attached a vacuum cleaner hose to the exhaust of Mr Beggs' Holden Commodore and ran it through a rear window.
He sat in the car and turned the engine on, gassing himself.
Lawyers representing the police, the Beggs family and Waitemata Health, the health provider which has already admitted it failed in its care and treatment of Jones, were in court for the first day of evidence.
Her voice breaking with emotion, Mr Beggs' mother, Yvonne Beggs, read a statement to the court on behalf of Malcolm's sister, Marilyn, a trainee nurse.
Marilyn described how Mr Beggs came to the family home on August 25 and discussed his concerns about Jones, who had moved into his house a couple of weeks before.
Mr Beggs knew there was something wrong with Jones because he had been acting strangely, locking himself in his room for long periods and listening to heavy metal music.
Mr Beggs had begun staying with his girlfriend, Carmel Cervin, in an apparent attempt to get away from Jones.
"Marilyn, you've worked with these types of people - what are they like?" Mr Beggs asked his sister.
"I laughed and said 'you know the bloke down the road was murdered by his flatmate - you'd better lock your doors at night and hope he doesn't murder you in your sleep.'
"Malcolm replied: 'Yeah, well that's what I'm worried about - it feels like he's planning something. He sits in his room all day and only comes out for a smoke.
"'Every time I walk past his room I can hear the clink, clink of the weights he's lifting - it gives me the creeps'."
Detective Sergeant Gavin McDonald said Jones was an outpatient of Waitemata Health's mental health services and had not been taking his medication.
Seventeen unused doses were found in his bedroom, with a further seven packets found in a spare bedroom. Toxicology tests found no trace of the medication in Jones' bloodstream.
Two knives and a plastic pipe used for cannabis smoking were found in Jones' room but there was no evidence of cannabis in his blood.
Detective Sergeant McDonald said Jones had a history of petty crime including resisting arrest, obscene language, car conversion and theft.
A friend of Mr Beggs, David Falconer, described how he was at his friend's house one day when a nurse arrived looking for Jones, who was not home.
She was holding three envelopes she said contained medication for Jones, and asked Mr Beggs to pass it on. She gave no other instructions or information.
"We discussed how it seemed strange - we joked that Lachlan might be nuts - we were both laughing," Mr Falconer said.
Lachlan Jones' brother, Kynan Jones, described how his brother was admitted to Te Atarau acute psychiatric unit a year before his death after trying to kill himself.
"He went there looking for help and they locked him up and put him on zombie drugs - the drugs didn't stop the voices."
On the weekend of the deaths, Lachlan told his brother he had not been taking his medication because he did not feel normal on it.
Kynan Jones said he saw his brother on the day of the deaths and he seemed fine.
Besides sometimes appearing stressed and nervous and complaining of hearing voices, his brother seemed a relatively normal teenager.
Jones' father, newspaper editor Owen Jones, said he told Waitemata Health staff that if his son ever came into contact with them again after the 1998 incident, he wanted to be told immediately.
He gave them three telephone numbers but when his son arrived at Te Atarau again in July 1999, he never heard a word.
"If I had known you can be sure I would have done something about it," he said.
The inquest continues today.
By TONY WALL
Henderson man Malcolm Beggs joked with his sister that his strange new flatmate might be planning to kill him, just four days before he was hacked to death with a knife and axe.
Mr Beggs' feeling of foreboding was revealed in the Auckland District Court yesterday during the start
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