'It could have been any house'

BY TONY WALL

A group of elderly friends in New Zealand's northernmost town are shattered after one of their number was killed during a brutal home invasion. They talk to Tony Wall.

As Barbara Julian lay dead in her Kaitaia home, her killer stood in her bedroom holding the curtains closed while two friends who had arrived for regular Wednesday evening drinks desperately tried to prise them open from outside.

Worried about their friend, and perplexed as to why the curtains wouldn't budge, they went around the back and tried to remove the chain on the back door. While they were doing that, the intruder slipped out the front door and calmly walked away down busy Matthews Ave, which is also SH1 through Kaitaia.

A 27-year-old neighbour used a hacksaw to cut the chain, and Barbara's body was discovered. Police would later say it was a brutal home invasion, but are yet to say how she died or whether she was sexually assaulted.

Exactly a week later, at 4.30pm on November 11, members of the "Wednesday Nighters" as they call themselves, gathered at another neighbour's to drink wine and beer and talk current affairs, as they always had.

But it wasn't the same without Barbara, a 70-year-old retired school teacher whose passionate knowledge of many subjects led to some great debates.

Barbara's violent death devastated the tightknit group. No one really wanted to meet the following week, but they were determined to keep it going. "It was quite a hard time for us all, but I feared if we didn't do it, then it might disappear," says 77-year-old Marlene, who lives next door and helped break into Barbara's home.

Her husband, Rex, 82, stares down at his glass of beer, his eyes wet, and shakes his head at the senselessness of it all. "Every Wednesday it's looked forward to. With what's happened it's sort of flat – we've lost one of our regulars in a cruel way, by jove.

"It's shattered the whole outfit. It will take a while to get over it, if ever. We look across, there's the window, no poor Barbara, oh dear. Every day we'd see her and have a yarn. She was a great, great neighbour. It just shocked our little neighbourhood here. We were a great little group, it just changed like that."

Although the gathering was subdued, the friends are glad they went ahead with it. "We all forced ourselves to go and it was a really lovely time, it was laughing one minute and crying the next," Marlene says.

Rex: "I think we all had a little glass and said `here's to Barbara'."

There was also a guest of honour, neighbour Gareth, who Marlene describes as "our hero". It was Gareth who cut through the chain on Barbara's back door. He was first to discover Barbara's body, and ushered Marlene out before she could see too much.

The Wednesday Nighters have been described as a widows' group, but it wasn't always that way. When Marlene and Rex started it about 10 years ago, it was just them and another couple from a few doors down. The group grew, Barbara and her late husband Ted joining when they moved to Kaitaia from their farm at Mangamuka Bridge, 38km southeast of the town. One by one, the husbands started dying off, until today there is only Rex and one other man left in the group of about eight.

Even though there's a lack of male company, Rex is reluctant to stay away. "I make a point of going because if I don't, they'll talk about me," he says. "I tell you what, I drove some great discussions."

The gatherings would go quite late some nights, depending on the subjects under discussion, and, says Rex, "how the wine's working".

Barbara was a valued member because of her intelligence. "I don't think we ever got on a subject she couldn't discuss, her knowledge was terrific," says Marlene. Another member of the group, 76-year-old retired kindergarten teacher Lennie (short for Lenva), who also helped break in that day, says: "Barbara was great, she was brighter than the rest of us. She had definite views about things, as school teachers do, she always seemed to have the answers."

The night before she died, Barbara had prepared dinner for Margaret, a member of her quilting club who lives across the street. The pair would host each other for dinner once a week. That night Barbara cooked lamb shanks and chatted for hours about quilting and the idea of setting up an evening patchwork group for working women. Barbara's diary was fuller than most women half her age – she did relief teaching, was a volunteer at the Far North cancer hospice, belonged to Aged Concern and was part of the Mad Hatters, a group of women who would meet every six weeks for outings.

"I'm extremely angry," Margaret says, "that a person who had a lot to live for, enormous enthusiasm for life, to be taken away like that."

The following afternoon, Damian Reed, who lives a few doors down, was lying on a beanbag fiddling on his laptop when a stranger appeared at the door and asked for "Zoe". Damian says the person walked into his lounge and started asking for cigarettes. Damian shoved him and told him to leave, and regrets not calling the police, given what happened later. "It was like a series of events that happened – bang, bang, bang," Damian says.

Just before 4.30pm, Marlene was getting ready to go next door and noticed the curtains on the side of Barbara's house facing hers were drawn, the first time ever. "I just had this horrible, horrible feeling that something was wrong. I was determined to get in that house."

After Barbara's body was discovered, police began hunting for the killer. Members of Barbara's family arrived from rural areas, including great-nephews who sped in from Herekino. When word arrived that a person had been cornered in a property further down Matthews Ave, the brothers arrived just behind police and one had to be forcibly restrained by officers as he tried to attack the suspect.

That night, several elderly residents in the area stayed elsewhere, frightened that they would be next. Despite an arrest, they still feel unsettled. "You talk to a lot of the elderly people, they want to barricade themselves in their homes," says Damian Reed. "You tell them, hopefully it's a one in a million thing."

Gareth, who helped break into the home, says: "It could have been any house. It's the randomness of it that's scary."

For the Wednesday Nighters, the events of that evening are still raw. "I think about it all the time, it never goes out of your head," says Lennie.

Marlene: "I try not to think about it, it comes into your mind quite a lot."

Their numbers may be dwindling, but the group will keep meeting for as long as their health allows, and as long as there is beer and wine to drink, and topics to discuss.

Says Marlene: "The police tell me it's a wonderful thing to do, because we're keeping an eye at least once a week on people who live alone."

Jameel Job, 17, of no fixed abode, reappeared in the Kaitaia District Court last week charged with Barbara Julian's murder, and was remanded in custody to appear again this week.

- © Fairfax NZ News