Man guilty of prostitute girlfriend's murder

Gordon Hieatt. Photo / Natalie Slade

The man charged with murdering his girlfriend and living with her corpse for more than three weeks has been found guilty.

Gordon Hieatt, 48, was charged with strangling prostitute Nuttidar Vaikaew and has been on trial in the High Court at Auckland. He pleaded not guilty to her murder.

The jury retired this morning to consider their verdict after Justice John Priestly's summing up.

Justice Priestly also addressed the controversial partial defence of provocation yesterday.

He said the killing happened in April last year, before Parliament abolished the defence of provocation in November, and therefore the defence could have been used by Hieatt's lawyers.

However, Justice Priestly said the defence did not apply in this case and told the jurors that they could not consider it when deliberating on their verdict.

Crown prosecutor David Johnstone said yesterday that Hieatt's relationship with Ms Vaikaew was deteriorating, Hieatt was running out of money and he had nowhere else to go.

"He did not love her. He did not even respect her. What he was interested in, despite his protestations to you, was sex," Mr Johnstone said.

He told the jurors that they should focus on a period of less than an hour when Hieatt and Ms Vaikaew had a fight in her Western Springs unit in April 2009.

Hieatt was "brooding" in the back room of the unit after being asked to leave earlier that day so Ms Vaikaew could see a client.

At about 10pm, after smoking some marijuana to relax, he was called to bed by Ms Vaikaew and the pair began arguing about rent payments.

Mr Johnstone said Hieatt punched Ms Vaikaew a number of times, dragging her to the bed, strangling her and breaking a bone in her neck.

Police found her decaying body covered in bedclothes almost a month later.

Mr Johnstone said Hieatt had tried to explain his actions by saying Ms Vaikaew had asked him to kill her. He quoted from Hieatt's own evidence: "I think she wanted to die and made me do it."

Mr Johnstone said: "The Crown submits that it is very, very simple. He must have intended to kill her."

Hieatt's lawyer Peter Kaye said in his summing up that his client loved Ms Vaikaew and had contemplated suicide in the days after the killing.

Mr Kaye said Hieatt had done "something stupid" when he tried to quieten Ms Vaikaew by taping her mouth with masking tape.

She went "wild" and scratched his face. Mr Kaye said Hieatt had taken her to the bed to try and subdue her using handcuffs the couple kept in a box of bondage equipment.

When she began to get out of those, Hieatt grabbed some rope to tie the cuffs to the bedframe.

Mr Kaye quoted again from Hieatt's evidence: "Instead of tying the rope to the cuffs, I tied the rope to her neck."