Black Widow to body snatcher
Poisoner seeking new defence wants hair and blood from her victim, writes Martin van Beynen.
Black Widow Helen Milner has requested bodily samples from the man she poisoned with anti-allergy drug Phenergan, in a final attempt to overturn her murder conviction.
The bid by Milner, who is serving a 17–year jail sentence for killing her husband Philip Nisbet, 47, in 2009, is made under the royal prerogative of mercy procedure and aimed at securing a new trial.
The application has enraged Nisbet’s sister, Lee-Anne Cartier, who called it a ‘‘witch-hunt’’.
‘‘I hate that the New Zealand taxpayer is paying for this bulls...,’’ said Cartier, who led the charge to have her brother’s death reinvestigated after police initially decided he had committed suicide. Her detective work persuaded the police to reexamine the death.
‘‘It’ll be nine years in May since Phil’s death and she is still playing games,’’ she said from Australia, where she lives.
‘‘It’s just a wild goose chase and abuse of the process.’’
Cartier said Coroner Susan Johnson had asked her to comment on the release of samples of Nisbet’s blood, urine, liver and hair held by the Institute of Environmental Science and Research.
Cartier said she would oppose the release of the samples.
‘‘They want to see if Phil has one of 120 possible genetic markers that then predispose you to a heart thing. He might have one of those markers but that doesn’t mean you die of them.’’
Her brother did not smoke, was not overweight and not a big drinker. He had a physical job as a delivery driver which kept him fit.
Crown Law has opposed the application, saying Milner can’t be allowed to ‘‘shop around’’ for a new defence.
The royal prerogative application is based on a joint report from Australian and American pathologists suggesting Nisbet could have died from causes other than Phenergan poisoning.
Milner was convicted of murder and attempted murder, after a jury trial in 2014. The court heard she was motivated by Nisbet’s $250,000 insurance policy.
The Crown said she probably mixed Phenergan into her husband’s dinner and then may have suffocated him once he was sedated. She then fabricated suicide notes.
Her appeal to the Court of Appeal was rejected and the Supreme Court refused her leave to appeal.
Milner’s Christchurch lawyer, Rupert Glover, confirmed the application was paid for by legal aid and said the bid was justified. ‘‘After the appeal (2014) was turned down I was contacted by an expert in the United States completely out of the blue to say that he was not at all convinced Mr Nisbet had died from an excessive dose of [Phenergan] and sought my leave to become involved.’’
The forensic pathologist got two other pathologists involved and all three agreed insufficient evidence existed to show Phenergan was the cause of death.
Further examination of samples was needed to see if there was another explanation.