Nicky Watson shattered by death

Dominion Post

DEVASTATED: Model Nicky Watson is 'shattered' by the death of party pill millionaire Logan Miller.

Relevant offers

Nicky Watson has been shattered by the sudden death of her former lover, party pill king Logan Millar.

The grief-stricken supermodel rushed to Millar's North Shore, Auckland, mansion on Wednesday evening after being told of the tragedy just hours earlier.

Clearly distraught, she told Sunday News she was "devastated" and "so sad so very, very sad".

"I want people to know what sort of lovely guy he was," Watson said outside the luxury Campbells Bay home.

"Logan was a beautiful man. I just couldn't believe it when I heard about this."

The next few weeks "would be really hard without Logan, he was one of my best mates".

Watson loudly ordered "five bottles of Tequila, now" when she arrived at Millar's gated property, for an impromptu wake by a celebrity-spangled gathering of close friends.

Among those bidding a last farewell were porn king and Auckland mayoral hopeful Steve Crow, property tycoon Pat Rippin and boxer Monty Beetham's trainer, Danny Codling.

Watson dated Millar late last year, when he split briefly from his long-term girlfriend, model Michaiah Simmons.

Millar and Simmons reunited and Watson stayed close friends with both.

Former Miss Erotica Simmons said 31-year-old Millar who built an estimated $5 million-a-year empire in just five years had been "depressed for quite some time".

"I think a lot of people didn't know the full extent of what was going on," she told Sunday News.

"We did everything we could for him, like getting him to see doctors and psychiatrists."

Millar's infamous parties at his cliff-top mansion had dried up in the past months and along with them, the company of some friends who were happy to play but not stay around to help in the bad times.

"That was part of why he was upset. It would have been nice for (them) to be around him during the sad times," Simmons said.

Describing Millar as "my world for the last two and a half years", she said: "Logan was too generous for his own good. He did put a lot of trust into people and there were some who had not been pulling their weight," she said.

Millar is understood to have died in his bedroom in the middle of the afternoon.

"I heard a loud scream, (then) the ambulance arrived," an elderly neighbour told Sunday News.

Millar was one of New Zealand's first entrepreneurs to make a fortune from selling BZP products, the main ingredient of the soon-to-be-banned party pills, and was the undisputed king of the controversial industry.

His company, Advanced Herbal Supplements which employed 16 people was behind the pills Charge, Rapture, Crank, D-lite, Red Hearts and Ice Diamonds which sold for around $40 a pack but cost less than 50 cents to produce, say manufacturers.

At the height of his fortune, he drove a 2005 Lamborghini Gallardo worth more than $500,000 and a 2003 Jaguar Model S worth more than $130,000.

Close friend and head of the Social Tonics Association of New Zealand (STANZ) Matt Bowden told Sunday News from Ireland Millar felt "pressured" by the prospect of his business being affected by the government's crack-down on party pill products.

The Misuse of Drugs (Classification of BZP) Amendment Bill will make the manufacture, supply, import, export and sale of party pills illegal by the end of the year.

Police confirmed Millar's death was not suspicious and said no one was being sought in connection with it.

His funeral will be held 2.30pm today at North Harbour Chapel, Albany.

- © Fairfax NZ News