Mum, baby killed by arson
‘‘She was smiling again, she would dress nicely, she was happy.’’ Susan Bruce
As Susan Bruce was dragged from her bed, fire ravaged her home.
She saw Scott Millar’s body, lying in the hallway.
Her partner Anthony pulled Millar, 26, out through the front door of the farm house.
He went back in to find two other family members: Katie Bruce, 20, and her four-month-old son Ash Millar. But he couldn’t save them.
The bodies of Katie and Ash were found by firefighters, together in a chair in the lounge.
The cause of the fire has never been revealed by police, but a source close to the investigation says it was arson.
And Millar is the prime suspect.
Susan Bruce, 28, said she had been certain all along that he did it.
The fire destroyed Bruce’s home on the Napier-Taupo highway, about 40 kilometres east of Taupo, in the early hours of March 17.
They were left with nothing but old photos.
Bruce believes the fire started in her lounge.
‘‘When [Millar] got dragged outside, I asked him where Katie and Ash were and he said, ‘leave me, leave me, my son, my son’,’’ she said.
‘‘So I got angry and said, ‘where the f*** is my sister? What have you done?’’
A detective told Susan Bruce that two-stroke petrol from their lawnmower had been found and could have been used to start the fire.
Millar died in hospital later that night.
Katie and Millar had been together on-and-off for five years. She left him two weeks before she was killed and started to smile again, something Bruce says she hadn’t done for months.
It was an abusive relationship, with Katie often calling her sister and asking for help. She moved from Millar’s home in Whanganui, to her sister Susan Bruce’s just after Christmas last year.
The door was always open to her because it was her home as well, Bruce says.
‘‘Fritter’’ was a nickname that Bruce gave Katie because she loved potato fritters when she was younger. She was the youngest of 11. ‘‘She was a loving, doting aunty to my kids,’’ Bruce said.
‘‘When Boogy [Ash] came along, she lit up.
‘‘She was smiling again, she would dress nicely, she was happy.’’