Killer's rich girlfriend lashes out

Haiden Davis, convicted for the murder of Augustine Borrell, poses with Lydia Jordan in this photo on her Bebo page. Photo / Supplied

The private school girlfriend of convicted murderer Haiden Davis clashed furiously with the family of his victim on a Bebo memorial page this week.

Seventeen-year-old Lydia Jordan, from St Heliers in Auckland, told the grieving friends and family of Augustine Borrell that she and her jailed boyfriend were as much victims as they were.

Jordan sat through Davis' trial this week, and plans to visit him in Mt Eden Prison today. He is beginning a 10-year jail sentence for stabbing to death Auckland Grammar School student Borrell, 17, outside a Herne Bay service station in 2007.

Jordan was educated at the $27,000-a-year Wanganui Collegiate School and is considering beginning a law degree next semester. She met Davis while he was on bail on the murder charge.

In an interview with the Herald on Sunday, she said she had been "really angry" when she posted on Bebo.

She wrote on the page: "I've been nothing but polite to your family and I respect your loss but does that mean that someone else should lose their life over an accident? What good is it going to do to lock Haiden up for the rest of his life. We should be rehabilitating him ... Everyone's victims in this situation."

Some of Borrell's friends reacted unhappily to her comments, but Augustine's younger sister Sabrina, 16, calmed the tension on Bebo: "We understand why you are upset but this is not our revenge," she wrote.

"This is society's sanctions so it is not a revenge. It is a punishment because actions like his cannot remain unpunished. I hope time will give you some perspective and you can understand what this was all about."

There was a hint of frustration in Sabrina's next message, though: "Look on the bright side ... he gets a brand new wardrobe. Bedroom with an en suite! AND IT'S FREE!"

Jordan was unrepentant and claims the presence of Borrell's family in the courtroom influenced the jury to find Davis guilty.

The killing was not pre-meditated, she insisted, so her boyfriend should not have been convicted of murder. "It was a split-second thing - he didn't plan to kill anyone. He was trying to protect his friend," she said.

"I think it was really stupid because there was no evidence for a motive and it shouldn't have been murder. I think it was, like, the Borrell family being there that put a lot of pressure on the jury."

Yesterday Borrell's father Charlie said his family had not done anything to identify themselves to the jurors and had tried to behave with quiet dignity. "They had the same opportunity to support Haiden, too, so it's disappointing to hear them say that.

"You can say that they didn't take the opportunity to support their son."

He advised his daughter to stay away from the Bebo site to avoid escalating the disagreement. Her comment about the en suite was not appropriate, Charlie Borrell said, but he supported her other comments calming the situation.

"He took a knife out. And somebody would have copped the knife sooner or later, so what Haiden did was no accident."

Jordan said her boyfriend's life sentence would achieve nothing: "Like, when Haiden gets out and he's 30, he'll have no job or anything. So do you think he's going to turn to a life of crime? Err, yes!"

Some of her friends were close to Borrell - one had a crush on him - but it was indirectly through them that she met Davis after the killing. They have been together for nine months, and she described him as her first love.

"A lot of my friends were friends of Augustine, so they were pretty dark about it," she said.

Davis, who is now 20, had bail conditions restricting how far he was allowed from his home - though that hadn't stopped him amassing a list of bail breaches, as well as convictions for drink-driving, wilful damage and aggravated burglary.

Because of the bail conditions, Jordan would cross Auckland to visit Davis at his family home in Otara, South Auckland.

She told her parents only shortly before the trial that Davis was her boyfriend - to her mother's dismay. "I think mum is very disappointed. She thinks I am getting into the wrong crowd and stuff."

But Jordan insisted she had been a good influence on Davis. she hadn't been there when he was driving in a stolen car while on bail on murder charges.

In Mt Eden, as a new inmate, Davis had initially been in the special unit for observation. Jordan said he had been playing cards, watching TV, and contemplating studying for NCEA levels two and three in mechanics.

"I have such a good life, a privileged life. I feel I owe it back to the community to help Haiden."

* Augustine Borrell's Bebo tribute