Witness points finger at Fiends

Mikhail Pandey-Johnson, Karl Nuku and Rhys Fournier are accused of killing Dean Browne. Photo / Rob Tucker

Her appearance was eagerly awaited. When Crown Witness 29 arrived, every head in the High Court in New Plymouth turned her way.

She had been billed as the witness to watch.

Already she had admitted injecting murder victim Dean Browne, 38, with morphine. She claimed it was an act of mercy to ease his suffering after being smashed in the head with a hammer, or possibly two. Those charged with murdering Browne say there was no mercy in the act at all.

CW29, 24, has name suppression until the end of the trial. She has been told she will not be prosecuted for the drug dealing and taking disclosed during the trial. She has not been charged for injecting morphine into Browne.

On Thursday, three men for whom no exception has been made, sat and listened as she described the murder with which they are charged.

For those few days, the accused - Mikhail 'Casper' Pandey-Johnson, 23, Rhys 'Tex' Fournier, 22, and Karl 'Little C' Nuku, 19, were not the centre of attention.

The court was transfixed as CW29 spoke. Even Browne's mum Faye could not look away, as she cried and listened to how the Crown's star witness claimed her son had died.

Crown solicitor Cherie Clarke stood just feet from CW29 and over hours led her to the point Browne was murdered.

CW29 took the court from the first time she met Browne at a party at her home on Oriental Parade in Wellington. She described how Pandey-Johnson was the leader of the Killer Clown Fiends and Fournier and Nuku would do as he told them. "They did drug dealing, even going to get groceries, cooking dinner." CW29 spoke of how she smoked methamphetamine. "As often as I could, when it was around."

But, she said, Pandey-Johnson was using so much meth that he was having trouble functioning. "It had got so bad he was turning into a different person." Fournier and Nuku became desperate, coming to her for advice, she said. "They didn't know what to do to please him. They felt he didn't care about them any more."

CW29 described how Browne - who called himself "Matt" - had come to live in her home, sleeping on a sofa-bed in her room. Browne and Pandey-Johnson were "trying to form some sort of business relationship together to purchase and sell drugs". Browne had invested money and was angry he hadn't seen a return.

She said Browne was smoking meth heavily - "if he was able he would be using all day, every day" - and was becoming aggressive with a "short fuse". "Mikhail was equally, if not worse, deteriorating."

CW29 explained how Pandey-Johnson would release frustration by talking of how he would kill people. He was, she said, "imaginative" and "creative". "He would talk about hitting people on the head with a hammer." Talk also covered how to dispose of bodies.

She said Pandey-Johnson also began to speak about Browne in the same way.

CW29 later described waking in the room she shared with Browne and watching him being killed. She had shared her bed that night with three others - Fournier, Nuku and Misha Pandey, Pandey-Johnson's sister - but woke to find herself alone with the other woman.

"I woke to see Tex and Karl standing over Matt. They were attacking him." She said she was unsure if there was one hammer or two.

CW29 said she and Misha Pandey pulled the covers over their heads. She could hear "Matt trying to scream" and "a lot of bumping and struggling".

She said she looked out and Browne's hands had been tied. "Obviously he was struggling and trying to get up.

"They were still trying to hit him again to knock him out. Tex [Fournier] used a choker hold on him which made him lose consciousness. He passed out."

She said Browne's feet were tied together, and then his ankles and wrists tied together behind his back. Browne's head was "covered in blood, his eyes were swollen shut, his hair completely soaked with blood".

"He was breathing extremely heavily but he didn't seem to be moving at all."

Clarke asked: "Did you have any contact with Matt?" The judge stopped the questioning and warned CW29 to the possibility of self-incrimination. Clarke asked: "Do you want to answer my question?"

CW29 replied: "No. I've been advised not to."

CW29 arranged to collect Pandey-Johnson from central Wellington. Picking him up, she told him what had happened.

He didn't seem fazed, she said. Fournier was "shaky and jittery" while Nuku "was fine".

CW29 said she spoke of "my horror and hurt and anger and I wanted them all to go and I wanted them to take their situation they had created away".

"They did. They took him. The three of them carried him downstairs and put him in the boot of the car."

Browne's body was found in a garage in New Plymouth.

Fournier, Nuku and Pandey-Johnson each deny they murdered Browne. In the defence opening statements they admitted helping dispose of his body. The case continues.