Shut off from nightmare

Father stabbed by son doesn’t know how family died.

The sole survivor of the Ross Bremner killings — his dad Keith — still doesn’t know how his son and wife died. Ross, a diagnosed schizophrenic, fatally stabbed his mother, Clare, 60, and left Keith, 64, with serious knife wounds after an attack at the family’s Otorohanga home more than four months ago.

Three days later Ross’ body was found alongside those of Maurice O’Donnell, 72, and his wife, Mona Tuwhangai, 82, at the couple’s property near Kawhia.

This week Keith’s youngest brother, Jim, told the Herald on

Sunday his sibling was recuperating slowly at an Auckland rehab centre. He can talk but still can’t walk. During the attack Keith had his jaw broken, and suffered cuts to his throat and chest.

As the farmer lay unconscious before help arrived he had a stroke and is paralysed on one side.

Jim says his brother can remember everything to the morning of the October 4 attack but is a blank after that. Jim visits his brother every two weeks and keeps the conversations light.

“Keith is very fragile — he is not letting on too much. I don’t think he’s ready to talk about what’s happened.

“The only time he has talked about Clare was about a cruise they went on. I think it’s too hard for him to go there yet. Maybe he’s blocking things out.”

Jim said he was “too chicken” to tell Keith his wife and son were dead.

That was done by his 90-year-old mother and sister. Two weeks ago Keith told him he misses his two cats and was ready to go back to his Otorohanga home.

“We are a bit concerned he’s not quite up to it yet.

“We are worried going home might trigger some horrible memories and be challenging — I mean, would you want to?”

Jim, a property manager from Matamata, was on holiday in the US with wife Mary when they discovered what Ross had done.

He is speaking publicly for the first time because he believes his family has been let down by the healthcare system. Ross had been an inpatient at Waikato Hospital’s Henry Rongomau Bennett Centre, which treats the mentally ill.

It has been reported that two weeks before the attacks, Clare Bremner asked the Waikato District Health Board for help as she became increasingly concerned about her son’s state of mind.

Jim said he and his wife were “numb” when they read about the attacks and learned the extent of Ross’ illness.

“The really hard part is Keith and Clare kept things close to their chest — schizophrenia is a touchy subject. We knew they had problems but we didn’t know how severe.”

Jim said Ross was the eldest of three siblings and a “big bloke — about 6 foot 4 [1.93m]”.

His illness made him introverted and unpredictable.

“He could lash out at people — he attacked a policeman a few years ago. One day I saw him and he asked me, ‘Do you believe in Martians?’ Another time he asked, ‘Do you think Armageddon is coming?’

“With the benefit of hindsight I think things happened in the past that should have been taken notice of and weren’t acted upon.”

The Waikato District Health Board

completed a review of its care of Ross before Christmas but is not ready to make it public.

In a statement, the executive director of its mental health and addictions service, Derek Wright, said: “I have not yet met all the families of Mr Bremner and Kawhia couple Maurice O’Donnell and Mona Tuwhangai, to share the findings of the review, and until that process is complete we will not be making the review report public. The review has now been passed to the Coroner and shared with the police.”

Jim doesn’t blame Ross for what happened — he didn’t know what he was doing.

He hopes the inquiry will reveal “what the health authorities did or didn’t do to prevent something like this happening again. I also hope the Henry Bennett Centre take notice that four people have died.”

In response to specific questions this week about Ross Bremner’s care, the board would not confirm whether he was seen by a mental health assessment team in the weeks before the killings.

Since the Bremner killings, mental health advocates and community members have voiced strong concerns at the ability of district health boards to cope with demand and called for a national inquiry, something Health Minister Jonathan Coleman has repeatedly denied the need for.

Tragedy hit the Bremner family for the second time last month when Jim’s sister Ann — the second youngest of six siblings — died from a brain aneurysm and renal failure.

Keith was in a coma at Waikato Hospital when his wife and son were farewelled together, but was determined to attend his sister’s funeral.

“Keith was able to travel to Whakatane with two staff members [from the rehabilitation centre] but the ambulance broke down so he missed the service,” said Jim.