In their first interview, the shell-shocked parents of Clayton Weatherston tell how they felt "ambushed" by a hug from Sophie Elliott's mother.
Yuleen Weatherston is realistic: "We are not out there looking for any glory or any sympathy."
After their son's murder conviction this week, Yuleen and Roger Weatherston have retreated to their home in Dunedin's Green Island, trying to reconcile themselves to the fact that the son they love is probably
New Zealand's most reviled man.
But despite the potential for a public backlash, despite their acceptance that Clayton Weatherston did brutally kill 22-year-old Sophie, the two are still determined to uphold a few vestiges of their son's reputation.
That is why they insist his defence team was justified in arguing he was provoked. That is why they want to correct certain "untruths". That is why they are not yet ruling out appealing Weatherston's conviction.
And that is, perhaps, why they struggled to accept a forgiving embrace from Sophie's mum after the verdict.
"I was just getting into the lift and there she was," says Yuleen Weatherston. "You know, it's done now, but to be honest I was sort of walking in a daze."
Her husband is more forthright: "We were ambushed in the foyer," he says. "It certainly was not orchestrated from both parties. We were just leaving."
If this sounds harsh, it should be recognised that the couple still believe their son was defending himself from a scissors-wielding girlfriend - even if the jury did not accept that.
"It was hard to hear those words, 'guilty of murder'," says Roger Weatherston, a self-employed electrician who returned to work after the trial. "It was very hard ... The pain is still there and I won't know if and when it will go away for us.
"The use of provocation as a defence is a legitimate legal thing to do ... I think provocation was the only thing left to defend him with."
He cited the three "trigger" points of the defence closing submission from Queen's Counsel Judith Ablett-Kerr: the allegation that Sophie had insulted Weatherston's family, her sexual infidelity, and her angry reaction to his query about an STD test.
It is difficult for them to accept that he is now in Christchurch Men's Prison's "at risk" unit for his own protection.
"To be honest, I don't think you will find a single person in New Zealand who would be friends with Clayton at the moment," says his father.
"The way you hear talkback, the papers and TV, they have painted him as quite black."
Says his mother: "Clayton is an extremely honest and sensitive person and I am not just making it up. He is honest, he tells the truth and we tell the truth. This is why this has been so hard. I have battled with what had been reported - there have been some untruths there."
Even for some of his friends and colleagues, his childhood schoolmates and teachers, it is difficult to reconcile the brutal murderer with the "polite", "quiet", "geeky" person they knew.
"He had a nice sense of humour," says Margaret Wooffindin, one of his teachers at Kaikorai Valley High School.
As well as competing well in several sports at the national secondary school athletics competition, Weatherston was treasurer for the student council in 1993, topped four subjects, and was school dux.
"He was talented, he was popular, he was respectful," adds fellow teacher Garry Chronican. "Never in your wildest dreams could you imagine something like this happening ... He was just a really good kid from a really good family."
But by the time Weatherston arrived in the University of Otago's economics department, his more obsessive traits were emerging.
"He was the one that had to be always right," says another tutor.
From the tight T-shirts he wore to his "shoe fetish", she says he was obsessive.
Associate professor Paul Hansen says Weatherston was a natural debater, manifested in a particular insolence.
