‘It would be a blessing if we could get you home’
A young woman at the centre of a homicide investigation was struggling with guilt and shame before her disappearance. As police close in on her killer Jennifer Eder investigates how a creative and beloved social butterfly met the wrong guy, survived a tra
For Jessica Boyce’s friends, reminders of the girl they lost linger in the patchwork alterations she made to their clothes, the stray cat that still visits for biscuits, the feathers and dream-catchers hanging in her bedroom.
But the woman they knew was lost long before she became a missing person, believed to have been killed, in March. Friends and family trawled forests, circulated missing posters and launched a website, but Boyce has never turned up, and police launched a homicide investigation in October.
In the two years before she disappeared, Boyce had stopped seeing her friends, started smoking meth, and her happy, bubbly nature had been replaced with the effects of severe mental health issues.
She was never the same after a crash in March 2017, which left her with a head injury, broken ribs, a fractured shoulder and a broken neck. Dylan Sutton, 24, died in the crash.
The driver was Boyce’s ex-boyfriend, Stewart Douglas Edward Holdem. He was found guilty of manslaughter at the High Court in Blenheim in May last year, and was sentenced to five years and six months in prison.
Boyce gave evidence in the jury trial, breaking down as she described Holdem’s ‘‘scary’’ driving.
‘‘We were going about 120kmh on the straight road... he might have let go of the steering wheel a couple times. He was definitely going over the lines and he was speeding,’’ she said.
They had travelled to Nelson to pick up Sutton and his girlfriend, and argued on the way. Boyce had quietly decided she would no longer hang out with her ex.
On the way back to Blenheim there was tension in Holdem’s four-wheel-drive and it was dark and raining, Boyce told the jury. ‘‘The meth came from Stu. We had two or three goes on the pipe each. I think he was getting a bit paranoid because we were talking among ourselves.’’
The two women in the back seat were whispering about Holdem’s driving, holding hands out of fear.
‘‘I was getting worked up as well and telling him to slow it down. It was too fast. It was just erratic and we could feel that he was grumpy, he wasn’t paying enough attention, he was drinking,’’ she said.
‘‘Dylan was trying to keep Stu calm by talking to him and joking and just trying to lighten the mood. I just kept quiet. At some stage he’d pull on the car steering wheel to scare us, and we were in a 4WD so we were afraid we would tip.
‘‘Stu travels that route every day so he was confident on that route. He knew we were going to leave when we got to Blenheim and he knew he wasn’t going to see us again. He was angry.’’
As the 4WD approached a bend north of the Wairau River bridge on State Highway 6, it rolled down a bank into a vineyard, landing upside down.
Boyce had leaned over her friend in the back seat to brace for impact, she told the court.
‘‘I don’t remember where I was, after that... Stu got out of the car and he was just pacing around yelling,’’ Boyce said, tears streaming down her face.
Ambulance staff described how the crash site smelled like cannabis. Debris was strewn across the vineyard: a trail of car parts, clothing and fishing gear. Sutton’s girlfriend called emergency services on her cellphone shortly before 11pm.
‘‘The helicopter couldn’t get to us because it was raining and it was too windy. The police and ambulance came. It was raining quite heavily by that stage,’’ Boyce said.
‘‘The ambulance and police took us to Wairau Hospital. I was there maybe like two weeks. I broke the top of my neck. They call it the hangman’s break.’’
Nina Hagan said the creative, caring ‘‘bright spark’’ she went to school with was different after that. ‘‘She blamed herself and I think that made it even worse. If it was just the crash, that wouldn’t have been that bad, but she blamed herself for the guy dying. She had that survivor’s guilt,’’ Hagan said.
‘‘Usually she’s the one texting everyone to say, ‘come round and have some drinks,’ and then all of a sudden – nothing.
‘‘I’d text her after the crash to see how she was doing, she didn’t want anyone to come to the trial or talk about it. She didn’t want to burden anyone with it.’’
The original Boyce was ‘‘a bit of a teenage rebel’’, who was capable of getting good grades in school, but did not turn up much.
‘‘She would jump in the sea in the middle of winter, and wander where no-one else wandered.’’
Boyce fancied herself a matchmaker – always trying to set up her single friends – and always ensured everyone felt included in a group.Hagan said she’d said she wanted to be a counsellor for a while.
Steph Stratton said Boyce liked Harry Potter and Disney movies, named her dog Alice after Alice in Wonderland and dismissed mainstream fashion. She didn’t care what others thought.
‘‘That was her inner child. She was such a free spirit.’’
And there were spontaneous camping trips. ‘‘There was a river she thought was her secret river. She would find a little off-road path and then it would be ‘her’ track. She found some amazing places... We did a lot of unprepared camping. As long as you have music, that’s the main thing.
‘‘She’d say, ‘I don’t care what you listen to – but I’ll hold the auxiliary cord’.’’
But when Holdem came on the scene, Boyce became distant, and started smoking methamphetamine.