Obsessive love drove lonely boy to murder

By PATRICK GOWER

Daniel Luff has a birthday wish: to get a card from the girl who broke his heart, Stephanie Cocker.

His obsessive schoolboy crush on her led him to kill a police officer in her driveway while she cowered inside her home.

Now Luff hopes she will remember his 18th birthday.

He will wait anxiously for the card to arrive next week, just days into the 17-year minimum non-parole sentence he received yesterday from Justice Ron Young for murdering Detective Constable Duncan Taylor.

"I don't care if it is on a bit of toilet paper," he told a family member from prison this week. "I just want her to wish me happy birthday."

Luff should know the card will not arrive. But it was this crazed obsession which led him to shoot his unarmed "friend" Mr Taylor and wound Detective Jeanette Park during a siege at the Cockers' Manawatu farmhouse on July 5.

The 17-year minimum non-parole period given to Luff in the High Court at Palmerston North is now mandatory under the new Sentencing Act for anyone who kills a police officer in the line of duty.

In sentencing Luff, the judge rejected defence pleas that it would be "manifestly unjust" to jail the teenager for at least 17 years.

"The fact that you were prepared to sacrifice the lives of a policeman and policewoman because you wanted Miss Stephanie Cocker to obey your orders and continue to be your girlfriend is deeply disturbing," Justice Young said.

It was a cold-blooded killing, without warning and "effectively at point-blank range".

It was committed while Luff was on bail for earlier firearms-related offending - for which police seized his guns and licence - and after he had burgled to steal more weapons.

The Herald has learned that Luff has spent the past 10 weeks at Wanganui's Kaitoke Prison - the same jail where the father he barely knows is also serving time for petty crime.

Luff's eyes did not once leave Justice Young during the hour-long sentencing as details of the siege at the Rongotea farmhouse, 19km northwest of Palmerston North, became public for the first time.

The standoff began after Mr Taylor and Ms Park went to the house to warn the Cockers that Luff, who had been stalking 17-year-old Stephanie since she dumped him in May, was back in town early from a holiday in Samoa and might have a gun.

The Feilding detectives then saw Luff drive past the house along Taipo Rd in his army-green Land Rover. The two officers chased after him to warn him against breaching the protection order taken out by the Cockers after he had gone there with a loaded gun three weeks before.

They used the police lights on their unmarked patrol car to pull Luff over.

He kept his engine running, and when the officers got out of their car he spun around and sped off back towards the Cocker farm, grinning at Ms Park as he went past.

The officers watched as the Land Rover weaved along the road, believing Luff was trying to steer and load his stolen, five-shot, .270 bolt-action rifle at the same time.

They chased Luff into the driveway and got out, screaming "Run" to the Cockers.

Luff aimed at Mr Taylor's body and shot him.

He said he did not recognise the detective, whom he respected for taking him on as "a project" after arresting him for petty crimes in the area.

Smirking, Luff then levelled the rifle at Ms Park, who was facing him five metres away.

He missed.

The policewoman ran away, weaving to make herself a difficult target.

Luff fired two more shots. One hit her in the buttocks, another whizzed just past her head.

Luff then tried to shoot his way through a locked door into the Cockers' house but had to smash a glass door instead.

Robert Cocker had by then barricaded himself, wife Christine and a terrified Stephanie into a bedroom.

Luff spoke to police negotiators during the four-hour siege, refusing to let them send in unarmed police officers to take Mr Taylor out.

At one point he told them: "All I want is a decent talk [with] Stephanie. I know what I'm doing is sick. I'm being driven to this because they won't let me see her. I know what it is like to not have anybody."

One by one the Cockers escaped through a window.

Luff also fired a shot at another officer, narrowly missing Detective Tony Heathcote.

He surrendered after police fired tear gas into the house.

Yesterday, Ms Park sat just metres from Luff in court as the Crown called for "complete denunciation"' of her partner's killing.

Detective Constable Taylor is the 26th officer to be killed on duty.

In sentencing Luff, Justice Young heard the Crown call for 20 years' jail but took Luff's age and background into consideration.

He condemned the "self-indulgent and neglectful lives" of Luff's parents, who are both opiate addicts.

Luff's part-Maori, part-Spanish father, Ian Thomas, abandoned his son as a baby. They have met only half a dozen times. Now 37 years old, the father was already in Kaitoke Prison when Luff was remanded in custody after the shooting.

They have not spoken in jail, but they have seen each other from a distance.

Thomas has brain damage from a beating in jail believed to have happened when other prisoners were standing over him to make him smuggle drugs in.

A repeat offender with gang connections, he has spent all his life in and out of jail or drug rehabilitation, leading Luff to write to a friend from prison: "One of my goals in life now is not to turn out like my father."

Luff's mother, Tracey, has also struggled with addiction and spent time in jail.

Luff was raised by other family members and in foster homes, attending 12 different primary schools.

He was reunited with his mother at age 8, at which point he "assumed the parenting role", according to his lawyer, Roger Crowley.

A psychiatric report said that when Luff started going out with Stephanie last year, he found what he believed was "real love" for the first time.

He viewed the fourth-generation farming family as "almost as important as Stephanie but in a different way".

Friends of Luff, a dedicated student at Awatapu College, say he became extremely withdrawn as the relationship went on, having time only for Stephanie, Land Rovers and duck shooting.

The relationship began on the school bus from Rongotea into Palmerston North, where Stephanie, a twin, went to Palmerston North Girls High.

She decided to break up with Luff at Christmas because he had become too possessive but had to wait until May because "he wouldn't take no for an answer".

After the breakup, Luff started skipping school, taking part in petty crime and staying awake all night sobbing uncontrollably.

After his arrest for the first firearms incident at the Cocker house, his guns were confiscated and licence revoked.

The Cockers changed their phone number to stop him calling. He made attempts to commit suicide, and on his return from Samoa decided to visit Stephanie "one last time".

Probation reports say Luff has still not realised the consequence of his crime, which he still views with "residual justification".

Justice Young noted that Luff had a "dangerous, fixed and narrow view of the world".

Yesterday, neither the Cocker family nor Ms Park would comment on the sentencing.

Detective Sergeant Ross Grantham, the local detective who led the investigation, would not be drawn on whether he believed Luff was remorseful, saying only: "You saw him standing there in court."

Luff himself, in a letter presented to Justice Young, provided only a little insight into his capacity for remorse.

"Nothing can really explain my actions. I am too young to understand them myself ... Although I sought help, I did not ask enough," he wrote.

"Duncan [Taylor] was not any sort of enemy to me. I had known him for a good few years. We worked well together.

"I am sorry for my actions of cruelty to him and his family.

"He did the most to help me out of anyone."