Marice McGregor trial: Mulligan guilty of murder

Feilding man Dean Richard Mulligan was last night found guilty of the murder of Wanganui sickness beneficiary Marice McGregor.
The jury in the High Court at Wanganui returned its unanimous verdict at 7.54pm after about four hours of deliberation, excluding a dinner break.
The verdict marked the end of the 2-week trial of Mulligan, accused of murdering 45-year-old Ms McGregor. Her body was found on May 12 last year in a ravine at what is known as Whiskey Bend, off State Highway 4, 50km north of Wanganui.
Mulligan was remanded in custody and will reappear for sentence on July 1.
The Crown said Ms McGregor was killed by three blows to the head with an iron bar, while the defence claimed she was killed by another man and that forensic evidence did not point to Mulligan.
Mulligan initially told police, a friend, his pastor and a stranger that he had killed Ms McGregor, but then pleaded not guilty to her murder.
When the verdict was read, a quiet "Yes" was heard from Mulligan's brother in the gallery.
In a statement read outside the court, Ms McGregor's cousin Martyn Burgess said the family was "delighted" with the outcome.
The family had been subject to an anxious wait in the 14 months since Ms McGregor went missing. Even with good family support it had been a difficult time, he said.
The guilty verdict would hopefully bring some closure.
Much of the evidence heard in court had been unknown to family members, but there had also been a lot of exaggerated and unsubstantiated statements made by Mulligan, he said.
He thanked the Crown for their work, and members of the community who had come forward to give evidence and to support them.
When asked for a comment on Mulligan, he said he had some issues that he had to resolve himself.
Jury members went out shortly after 3pm yesterday, following summaries from the Crown, the defence, and Justice Denis Clifford.
They returned a few hours later to ask the court a question about the blood found on Ms McGregor's car and to review two video clips.
They asked to see a clip from Mulligan's May 25 confession to police, where he described how many times he hit Ms McGregor and indicated by hand that he had hit her on the face over the eyebrow/forehead area.
The jury also asked to see a clip of Mulligan walking in the Marton supermarket, taken on the evening of April 19, where he stopped to buy barley sugars as he headed home from Wanganui having, as he claimed, just witnessed Ms McGregor's murder and himself been raped.
Earlier yesterday, Crown prosecutor Lance Rowe told the jury that Mulligan had taken everyone as "fools, gullible and lacking in common sense", and if they used reason they would see he was guilty.
Mulligan had given five different versions of the events surrounding Ms McGregor's death and had himself acknowledged to police that he had intentionally lied to them.
Mr Rowe said there was nothing confused about Mulligan's lies, he had demonstrated he was a deliberate and inconsistent liar who purposely lied to avoid his responsibility for the murder.
Mulligan had three key motives for killing Ms McGregor: his double life had been exposed by a phone call from Ms McGregor to his pastor, she wanted her money back - it was no coincidence that there was a deed of acknowledgment of debt for around $21,000 found in her car -and Mulligan believed he was going to inherit Ms McGregor's house and assets upon her death.
Defence counsel Stephen Ross said the Crown's case was like a patchwork quilt and, once you started pulling the threads, the case unravelled.
It was "ludicrous" to suggest Mulligan had been "dancing around" on the slippery rocks at the bottom of the ravine - he wasn't a ballerina or a mountain goat, he was a one-legged man, he said.
The man-made mark found at the scene had been proven by experts not to have been made by the bar found in Mulligan's car.
Other "strands of reasonable doubt" included the lack of DNA and blood evidence, Mulligan's inability to get to the bottom of the ravine without his prosthetic leg, and Ms McGregor's "double life" meeting men online and liaising with them for sex in public carparks.
Mr Ross said Mulligan's evidence was perhaps so unbelievable that it might be true.
"If he's so clever, as the Crown says, then why has he added this extra layer that some may say is fanciful?" Each one of the strands of the Crown's "patchwork quilt" case unravelled and on that basis the jury must find him not guilty, he said.