Notorious killer Clayton Weatherston has told the Parole Board he is “ashamed” and “remorseful” over stabbing his ex-girlfriend Sophie Elliott to death and mutilating her body with her own scissors 18 years ago.
And for the first time, he has offered a detailed explanation of the level of violence and “gore” he used in killing Elliott and said his defence at trial that she “provoked” him was “completely wrong”.
“I certainly regret the nature of that court process … I think the focus should be on my behaviour,” he said at his first parole hearing this morning.
“I really regret the way that it played out at the time,” Weatherston said.
In January 2008, Weatherston stabbed Elliott, 22, more than 200 times, then mutilated her body with scissors.
Elliott’s mother, Lesley, was home at the time and tried frantically to get into her daughter’s bedroom where the horrific attack was taking place.
She managed to pry the door open momentarily – long enough to see her fatally injured daughter lying on the floor being attacked.
At a high-profile and controversial trial, Weatherston – who had been a tutor at Otago University – argued Elliott had “provoked” him into killing her.
A jury rejected his defence and Weatherston was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 18 years.
The brutal crime took place on Weatherston’s 32nd birthday.
He turned 50 this month – on the 18th anniversary of Elliott’s death.
He also became eligible for parole.
His lawyer told the board that Weatherston was not seeking parole today as he had much rehabilitation work to do – and that was before he could even begin a reintegration journey.
“He does feel remorse and shame for his actions, and he understands the huge distress and upset to the victim’s family and her friends and associates … and the wider Dunedin community,” the lawyer told the board.
“In the last 18 years … he has actively pursued self-examination. He wanted to improve his capacity to build close relationships … he has read widely … to try and understand his diagnosis of narcissism.
“For him to read the psychological reports [about himself] has been very confronting – none of them soften the characteristics that caused him to offend.”
Three psychologists presented reports to the board – at least one mentioning “psychopathy”.
Weatherson said he was “not convinced” by some of the experts’ diagnoses but was “open” to working with them to address the root cause of his offending.
He described himself during the hearing as “a warrior” and “just a battler” who accepted he was a high risk of reoffending against women with whom he was in intimate relationships.
He said he was willing to address the reason for that and wanted to better himself.
He also said a new diagnosis of “autism or some degree of neurodivergence” had been suggested, and he wanted to explore that further.
“From a young age, I’ve always felt overwhelmed in certain situations … I became avoidant to taking on emotions,” he said.
Weatherston was asked to explain why he stabbed Elliott so many times and then further mutilated her.
He said he had “a current view” on that “which may change over time”.
“I was alleviating my sense of frustration … alleviating my distress,” he said.
“With Sophie … things I felt about myself were pretty much projected on to her. I was full of absolute rage … A real rejection of her and every aspect of her.
“It was just a really brutal, visceral way of wiping someone out who I felt at the time had hurt me in every way possible.
“I’m embarrassed by the perverse nature of it … disturbed … by the primal nature and aspect of it - it was an ‘eff you’ to everything about her.
“I’m ashamed … that I would channel that much rage and energy towards a person … it was incredibly misguided.”
He said he was “so emotionally fragile” at the time and claimed he had “flashbacks, recollections and nightmares” about the murder.
When challenged about why he showed no emotion when talking about Elliot, if that was the case, he claimed he had learned to regulate his emotions.
“I don’t feel calm, I feel very emotional,” he said.
“Some days I get very emotional about it, some days … I just have to accept what’s happened and deal with it.
“My emotional response is variable.”
Weatherston then began to cry and was passed a box of tissues.
He also became emotional when talking about the loss of friends and colleagues at Otago University as a result of the murder and the ongoing media interest in him.
“People are just aghast at what’s happened,” he said.
“I know that part of this offending is attractive in a grotesque way … the gore aspect of it I can’t control, but I understand.”
He was grilled by the board about how deep his understanding of his actions was and whether he was truly prepared to do the rehabilitation work needed before release could be considered.
He assured the panel he was very committed to rehabilitation and he had learned from a self-help book that “sh*t happens and you just have to drop anchor and learn how to deal with it”.
“I am extremely motivated,” he said.
The board will see Weatherston again in November 2027 and said until then he needed to work with psychologists on his responsivity barriers, narcissism and neurodiversity “amongst other dynamic factors”.
Weatherston’s sentence means that unless the Parole Board is satisfied he no longer poses a risk to the safety of the public, he will remain in prison until he dies.
If he can convince the board that there is a low to zero chance he will reoffend, he will be released into the community.
In that case, he would be subject to strict conditions for the rest of his life – meaning he could be recalled to prison immediately for any breaches or new offending.
Elliott’s father, Gil, spoke to the Herald before today’s hearing.
“Sophie was a lovely girl, just 22, just starting to emerge into adulthood,” he said.
“She had gone right through school and university and was just coming out the other side and with her first class honours degree in economics – and she was really looking forward to graduating in May.
“But of course, he killed her before that.”
Elliott also made a detailed submission to the Parole Board – which he shared with the Herald – saying he wanted the panel to understand “how awful Clayton Robert Weatherston is”.
“As a narcissist [he] is never likely to change his ways – is incapable, in fact, of changing his ways,” he said in the submission, which he penned on what should have been his daughter’s 40th birthday last year.
“He might have been a reasonable prisoner … but prison is not the outside world.”
Elliott has always believed Weatherston’s sentence was “manifestly inadequate”.
“Clayton Weatherston ruined our family; he took any pleasure that I had in my job away, and every minute of every day since, I think of Sophie, how much I miss her and what she might have become in life,” he said in his submission.
“One minute she was alive, the next she was dead. It literally happened that quickly, that suddenly. The light of our lives was extinguished forever.
“How unbelievable that an innocent young woman with her whole life ahead of her is dead … That was the beginning of our nightmare that lasts to this day.”
Elliott was at work 200km away from his family home when Sophie was murdered, and he found out when the police arrived at his office.
“Not only did he stab and cut her 216 times, including almost cutting her heart in two and meticulously stabbing her multiple times in each eye, but there were several unexplained blunt force injuries,” he said.
“Lesley remembers seeing briefly into Sophie’s room and described it to me as a pale Sophie in a sea of red … the pathologist described what happened to Sophie as a ‘frenzied, focused, deliberate and intentional attack’.
“Clayton came up to our place to kill Sophie, and he did just that. Clayton Weatherston destroyed Sophie, our family and her friends and probably destroyed his own family in the process. “
He felt strongly that Weatherston was “not only unpredictable but dangerous”.
“He showed absolutely no emotion or indication to the arresting police officer in Sophie’s bedroom, while covered in Sophie’s blood and with Sophie lying dead on the floor, that he had a care in the world.”
Elliott submitted that Weatherston “should never come out of prison” and would “never show true remorse”.
“After all, in his eyes ‘she deserved it’,” he said.
“Why otherwise would he have … pleaded provocation?
“Please do not give this murderer parole … and I respectfully ask you to consider delaying the next hearing for three to five years.”
Lesley Elliott died in 2022.
After her daughter’s murder, she became a vocal advocate and educator against intimate partner violence and abuse and set up the Sophie Elliott Foundation to help raise awareness of the warning signs.
She also wrote a book about her harrowing experience the day of her daughter’s murder – and the aftermath.
The case will feature in an upcoming episode of Herald podcast A Moment In Crime.
Anna Leask is a senior journalist who covers national crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2008 and has worked as a journalist for 20 years with a particular focus on family and gender-based violence, child abuse, sexual violence, homicides, mental health and youth crime. She writes, hosts and produces the award-winning podcast A Moment In Crime, released monthly on nzherald.co.nz