He got away with murder
Leon Fallow spent nearly eight years behind bars for stabbing an Invercargill man to death in a jealous rage. Rob Kidd reports on how moving to Dunedin this year has seen him jailed for another violent attack, but his family believe he is not beyond redem
AS she was forced her against the bed with hands around her throat, a Dunedin woman thought she was going to die.
Leon David Fallow had killed before.
He was released from prison after serving most of an eightyear sentence for manslaughter, committed in Invercargill in 2008.
The judge who sentenced him then said: ‘‘I do not think the community needs protection from you.’’
If Fallow addressed his alcohol and drug problems his risk of reoffending would be low, he said.
But the 35yearold proved him wrong.
On his release in April last year, barred from entering his hometown, he settled in Dunedin, where he soon met a woman.
But by November that relationship soured and after a boozy night out, the pair found themselves at the woman’s South Dunedin home, arguing.
The victim, who was granted permanent name suppression, told the Dunedin District Court at trial that something in Fallow snapped.
‘‘His demeanour had changed from being quite passive to being more confrontational,’’ she said.
The woman retreated to the bedroom and tried to call police, but she could not get through.
When Fallow entered the room, she said it felt as though he could sense her weakness.
Then he was on top of her, hands around her neck, while she lashed out with her left arm.
After 10 seconds, he released her and the victim again tried to call for help.
When Fallow sprang on top of her again, the woman said she became resigned to the fact her fate was in his hands.
‘‘He got on top of me again and he strangled me again and that was with a lot more force,’’ she tearfully told the court.
‘‘My arms fell to the side of me and I started to lose consciousness . . . I felt overpowered. I’d given up and whatever was going to happen to me was going to happen to me.’’
Fallow let her go before she passed out and left the address in her car.
The woman’s hysterical 111 call that followed was played in court.
‘‘He’s all muscle,’’ she said. ‘‘He’s spent eight years in prison. He knows prison . . . I’m petrified.’’
Fallow was found by police shortly afterwards and his video interview was also played at trial, in which he claimed his then girlfriend had been the aggressor.
He was simply defending himself, he said, and she had punched him in the nose ‘‘about 50 times’’.
‘‘I never touched the bitch . . . and she threatened me because she knows I’m on parole,’’ Fallow told interviewers.
‘‘She’s a lying, alcoholic addict.’’
He denied throttling her at any point.
Judge Michael Crosbie asked him why the victim had bruises around her throat.
‘‘Those marks indicate a form of pressure,’’ the judge said.
Fallow told him one of his pushes may have slipped up from her chest.
His explanation did not wash and Judge Crosbie immediately found him guilty of injuring with intent to injure.
At sentencing last week, he said he regarded the incident as ‘‘highlevel violence on the cusp of being extreme’’.
Fallow was jailed for two years and three months, back behind bars after tasting freedom for less than seven months.
Manslaughter
If it were up to the mother of Fallow’s two children, he would not have been released in the first place.
‘‘He got away with murder,’’ she said.
And it was not only she who held that opinion.
Justice Forrest Miller said there was ‘‘compelling evidence [Fallow] acted with murderous intent’’.
‘‘This manslaughter was very close indeed to murder,’’ he said at the December 2009 sentencing in the High Court at Invercargill.
The first fatal step was taken on August 9, 2008.
With one of their children repeatedly attending hospital for heart surgery, the strain on the relationship weighed heavy.
The defendant was ‘‘unable to cope’’ with the situation.
He regularly used cannabis to dull the pain and she was his emotional crutch, singlehandedly trying to hold the family together.
But she could not.
The woman found solace in the company of one of Fallow’s workmates, 31yearold Darnell Glen Leslie.
The colleagues did not see eye to eye and when Fallow found out about the burgeoning relationship, his world collapsed.
On September 25, Mr Leslie turned up at the woman’s address while the defendant, now parted from her, was visiting the children.
‘‘By that time you were extremely distressed,’’ said Justice Miller.
The next day, Fallow found the man moving in and the pair acknowledged their relationship had become sexual.
Fallow punched the victim a couple of times and left.
‘‘There matters should have ended,’’ the judge observed. But they did not.
Fallow, in a haze of cannabis, alcohol and antidepressants, drank at a local bar, fought with a patron and went home, but only briefly.
Armed with two steak knives, he walked the 800m to the house where he knew his ex would be with her new man.
The woman called 111 as soon as she heard Fallow’s footsteps and as the call connected, he burst through the glass windows of the back door, seriously gashing his arm in the process.
Mr Leslie, ‘‘naked and unarmed’’, tried to hold the bedroom door closed but the defendant overpowered him.
Fallow immediately launched his frenzied attack.
A postmortem showed the victim suffered 10 stab wounds, three of which pierced vital organs.
He collapsed on the street and died from blood loss in an ambulance on the way to hospital.
The armed offenders squad found Fallow lying on the floor of the house, bleeding heavily, with the knives beside him.
Justice Miller rejected the argument at trial that he had been acting in selfdefence.
The only reason the jury could have acquitted him of murder was because of the element of ‘‘provocation’’, which the judge said was ‘‘barely available’’.
‘‘Provocation was not sudden
. . . It had been more than 12 hours since you learned that Mr Leslie was moving in,’’ he said.
Fallow’s expartner told the Otago Daily Times she had never received an apology for what happened that night.
It was difficult to express, she said, how completely the ordeal had affected her.
‘‘It’s changed every single aspect of everything — how you parent, how you feel.’’
Hearing of Fallow’s most recent episode in court, her frustrations spilled over.
While she did not want him to see the children, she wanted him to care enough about them to reform.
‘‘He can’t just be a guy that made a mistake and bettered himself when he got out,’’ she said. ‘‘It comes down to him not being able to drink and not being able to do drugs.’’
While Fallow’s imprisonment was a reprieve, it was only temporary.
‘‘I just want him to go away — to fall off the edge of the world.’’
‘Good kid’
Despite his woes, his stepmother, Lee Fallow, was adamant the 35yearold was not a lost cause.
Speaking to the ODT from her home in Invercargill, she too said the man’s problems came directly from substance abuse at an early age.
‘‘If he was out of the drugs and alcohol — that he knows he can’t handle — he’s a good kid; he really is,’’ Mrs Fallow said.
‘‘He’s an awesome kid, looked after everybody. But once he got on the drugs he was a different person. That was his choice.’’
Court documents described how Fallow was the subject of a custody dispute as a young child when his parents separated.
Several marriages later, he had 10 siblings or stepsiblings.
Mrs Fallow said he ended up under her roof while he was attending high school in 1995. He lived there for five years, but she said the damage had been done earlier when noone had stepped in to quell his wild ways.
He could not shake his drug addiction, a problem that plagued him throughout his life.
‘‘We tried so many times to get him off it,’’ Mrs Fallow said.
The Dunedin relationship was probably doomed from the start, she said.
The woman was an alcoholic and Fallow thought he could help her.
‘‘It was rosecoloured glasses,’’ his stepmum said.
‘‘The good in him wanted to help her but . . . it didn’t go that way.’’
She had heard about the violence that ensued only through Fallow’s probation officer.
Mrs Fallow believed he had been too ashamed to call the family about his latest travesty.
If he ever came back to Invercargill she would be there for him, she said. There would be some ‘‘rules and regulations’’, but she would welcome him with open arms.
Though she believed Fallow could still turn his life around, it was he who had to do it.
‘‘You can only look after your children for so long. He’s a grown man now and it’s his choice. There’s nothing really we can do or say about it.’’
rob.kidd@odt.co.nz
❛ He can’t just be a guy that made a mistake and bettered himself when he got out❜