Guilty of murdering friend, despite no body
Eight years after he disappeared, Brett Hall’s body is still missing but his friend has been found guilty of murdering him.
Hall, 47, disappeared from his remote rural property above the Whanganui River Rd in late May 2011 and his body is yet to be found.
More than eight years later, after many court hearings, and a trial last year that had to be abandoned, a jury at the High Court in Wellington yesterday found David Owen Lyttle guilty of Hall’s murder.
Hall’s mother and Lyttle’s wife were in court for the verdict. Neither wanted to comment afterwards.
Lyttle, 54, was in custody for more than two years after his arrest but was then given bail. He was remanded in custody again after the jury’s verdict.
Sentencing is set for December 19. The court was told Lyttle had no previous convictions for violence but he was alleged to have shot his friend in the forehead, suffocated him with a plastic bag when he did not die quickly enough, dismembered the body and disposed of it.
Speaking after the verdict, prosecutor Michele Wilkinson-Smith said she had spoken to Hall’s family and they remained focused on getting his body back.
Hall’s family had been at his campsite from the start of the search for him in late May 2011 and they had a clear view about where justice lay, Wilkinson-Smith said.
Lyttle’s confession from the ‘‘Mr Big’’ police undercover operation was a high-profile part of the evidence against him but it was just one part of a case that was already quite strong without it, she said.
It was a unique case for the complexities of the trial and the many steps on the path to get it to trial. She expected Lyttle would appeal but one of Lyttle’s lawyers, Christopher Stevenson, would not comment after the verdict.
Wilkinson-Smith agreed with the judge’s direction that the confession by itself was not enough to convict Lyttle. But it led to Lyttle making comments after his arrest that supported the confession.
The police officer in charge of bringing the case to trial, Detective Inspector Paul Baskett, acknowledged the contribution of the jury over nine weeks.
Even though Hall’s body was still missing, the conviction of Lyttle was an important step for his family, Baskett said.
At first it was thought Hall was lost or injured in the bush that surrounded his property but an extensive search failed to find any sign of him and police began treating his disappearance as a possible homicide.
Lyttle, a builder from Halcombe in the Manawatu¯ -Whanganui region, was arrested in 2014 after the three-month-long ‘‘Mr Big’’ undercover police operation. The defence said the confession Lyttle made at the end of that operation was false and obtained by inducements. But the prosecution said other evidence, and statements Lyttle made after he found out he had been the target of an undercover operation, confirmed the confession.
Lyttle was building a house for Hall and the prosecution alleged the two men fell out over money Hall gave Lyttle for materials but believed he had spent on day-today living expenses.
But the defence said progress on the house was on track and there was nothing untoward about money. The defence said Hall must have been the victim of drug associates, one of whom owed him money.
Hall was still on parole from a previous prison sentence when he went missing.
Police found $14,000 and a bucket of cannabis at his property.
The defence said police had ‘‘tunnel vision’’ and focused on Lyttle as a suspect without properly investigating other possibilities.
But the Crown said police suspected Lyttle because what he was saying did not add up. The jury heard evidence that Hall was particular about bringing out and putting away chairs for visitors at his camp site.
Hall’s son’s visits to the site confirmed the chairs had been left out for days, although Lyttle said he saw Hall over that period.
A neighbour said a possum was still alive in one of Hall’s traps and Hall would not have left the animal like that if he had been around.
Hall and Lyttle had been friends for years. Lyttle was portrayed as not having many close friends and had been short of money.
The ‘‘Mr Big’’ operation played on his vulnerabilities, the defence said.
The judge gave the jury a special caution that the ‘‘Mr Big’’ confession was not grounds enough by itself to reach a guilty verdict, because the circumstances gave rise to too great a risk of unreliability.