Compo bid as murder charge fails
The man let off a murder charge over the death of Zena Campbell wants compensation after spending a year accused of strangling her. Paddy Jonathan Woods was due to stand trial in the High Court at Wellington yesterday morning, but Justice David Collins instead dismissed the murder charge, saying a jury could not safely find him guilty.
Woods was accused of murdering 21-year-old Campbell after attending a party with her in February last year.
He and Campbell went to sleep in his car in the early hours of February 11, 2018, and he awoke later that day to find her draped across him, dead.
In a judgment released yesterday, Justice Collins said Woods had told police he put Campbell in a choke hold as part of their consensual sexual activity a couple of nights before the death.
She had been enthusiastic about the practice and encouraged him to do so, but he only had a “brief go”.
Woods’ murder charge was thrown out after new evidence revealed the death may have been caused by a lethal combination of drugs and alcohol, rather than strangulation.
Post-mortem findings showed Campbell had methadone, oxazepam, Ritalin, alcohol and cannabis in her blood.
Campbell, who was on the methadone programme, had been warned just a couple of weeks prior that the use of methadone with other substances created a higher risk of overdose.
Woods’ brother, who only wanted to be referred to as Tony, said Woods would now be looking into whether he could seek compensation from police for spending a year accused of murder.
“Paddy is not a violent person. I’ve known him all my life . . . he keeps to himself, he’s a very generous person, he’s not that violent type, he’s not capable of killing anyone.”
Now Woods will be contacting his former employer to see if he can get his job back, and will be meeting with his lawyer over the question of compensation.
Campbell was a transgender woman in the process of transitioning at the time of her death.
Her father, Chris Campbell, said outside court yesterday they could only hope she “passed quietly”.
“Even if [Woods] had been convicted or anything like that, it wouldn’t have brought her back.”