‘I’m not a monster’
Accusations haunt man who ran over his wife
“I felt like jumping off a cliff, to be honest. I didn’t know it was going to be so bad.”
Jon Winskill, on the coroner's inquest into his wife's death
It never leaves him. Now Jon Winskill has broken a decade-long silence to share how running over his wife Denise nearly broke him. Nadine Roberts reports.
The years have carved lines on Jon Winskill’s face and his steely gaze emanates his distrust of journalists. Handshake over, the hunched man sits uncomfortably across the table in a rural cafe on a gloomy autumn morning.
It’s taken many weeks and a number of tense conversations to get Winskill to speak for the first time about the night he lost not only his wife, but also any semblance of normality.
“I’m wondering if I should be here or not … but I am,” he says nervously. It’s followed by an awkward silence.
There’s a lot at stake for Winskill. He’s been advised not to talk, but, on the other hand, he maintains he has nothing to hide.
It’s been 10 years since Winskill backed over his wife, Denise Robinson-Winskill, 58, in the yard of the couple’s lifestyle property near Lincoln in Canterbury, and killed her.
It was not long before 8pm on October 23, 2013. Spring had brought with it new lambs and longer hours of daylight and the couple were outside after dinner.
At the time, Winskill told police that Denise liked to take photos of the lambs, and was in a sheep pen with an iPad, when he beckoned her over to help him prepare for a spraying job the following morning.
He had filled the spray tanks on the back of a 1980 Toyota Land Cruiser flatdeck truck, but needed a pyjama and gumboot-clad Denise to shut off the water-supply hose.
Winskill said he then reversed his ute into a nearby shed to park up for the night. While he was reversing he heard a bump and drove forward before getting out to check on the source of the noise, only to see his motionless wife on the ground. She had been run over twice and was declared dead a short time later.
A decade later, Winskill says he went over and over what led to her death, for months afterwards.
“Like what the hell was she doing there when I’m pretty sure I told her I was backing up the truck to put in the shed just a few metres away, and then boom – what the hell was that? ... and immediately I figured that’s what it was [Denise] because it couldn’t be anything else.”
After his wife’s death, Winskill endured a coroner’s inquest where his private life was laid bare in a public forum, and he was forced to face allegations that he had run her over deliberately.
The latter is something he has always vehemently denied. “I’m not a monster,” he emphasises, “and I’m certainly no wife killer.”
A soulmate and best friend
It was no surprise to those who knew Denise that 600 mourners came to her funeral at the rural property she and Winskill had owned for just over a year.
Even Cashmere High School, where she taught English, closed for the day – such was her standing in the community.
Described as an outstanding and passionate teacher and person, Denise was called a superwoman by her daughter on the day, while a tearful Winskill said she was his companion, soulmate and best friend. He had first met Denise when he was 14. Back then, at high school, his brother was friends with Dave Macrae, who would go on to be Denise’s first husband.
Denise and Dave had three children – Ben, Toby and Phoebe – before they separated. Winskill also married before getting together with Denise. His first wife died in 1997. “It’s not the first tragedy in my life,” he shrugs.
According to Winskill, Denise contacted him about three months after his wife’s death notice was published in the newspaper, to express her condolences. They began a relationship and after a few stop-starts, the couple were married in a “big wedding” which was “fantastic”, he says.
They moved around and built up a rental-property portfolio before moving to a lifestyle block. Eventually they settled at a picturesque Ellesmere Rd, Ladbrooks, property.
“She was an amazing person,” Winskill says when asked what Denise was like. “She was bright, she was intelligent, she was an amazing mother and grandmother.”
He pauses as his voice breaks, and tries to get out the next words ... “and we had a wonderful time together, you know”.
However, Coroner David Crerar’s inquest heard there had been tension in the couple’s relationship after Winskill had an affair earlier in 2013.
The liaison culminated in him being blackmailed after the woman threatened to tell Denise if he did not pay her $2000.
Winskill paid the money, but the woman then demanded a further $5000, forcing him to tell Denise, who then made him report it to the police.
At the inquest, Winskill said the saga had actually brought the couple closer together, and their relationship had been “very good” in the last months of Denise’s life.
Mistakes
Winskill acknowledges he did not do himself any favours when he decided to join an online dating site two weeks after Denise’s death, and met a woman he ended up having a short-term relationship with.
“It was a mistake,” he says now, shaking his head. “But you know I can’t turn back the clock.”
At his lowest, Winskill says he was lonely and looking for comfort. “It’s not good … obviously. My sister said I was mad at the time but I wasn’t thinking what lay down the track. I was still in shock really … grieving.”
Details of Winskill’s online dating were revealed during the inquest in 2015 and salacious headlines followed.
“Blackmailed husband dating two weeks after wife’s death” and “Man dating two weeks after wife’s death” soon became forever linked to Winskill’s name online and he read blogs that chastised and vilified him.
Hearing his mistakes dragged up at the inquest was excruciating, he says.
“I felt like jumping off a cliff, to be honest. I didn’t know it was going to be so bad.”
The headlines kept coming, along with allegations of strange behaviour at Denise’s funeral, including that Winskill made a pass at one of her sisters.
“That’s actually bullshit,” he says now. “I basically asked her for a phone number and to have a meeting with her about the grief she had given her sister [Denise] because their relationship was at rock bottom at the time.”
Winskill gets emotional as he recounts an alleged example of the deterioration of the sisters’ relationship.
“One day they walked right past each other in Christchurch on the footpath without speaking and Denise came home in tears. It’s totally incorrect. They [Denise’s family] all stacked up against me big time. Each and every one of them … I don’t think Denise would have appreciated it at all.”
Denise’s family declined to be interviewed.
Winskill believes people have the wrong perception of him and see his emotional reactions as a sign that he’s arrogant and aloof.
He cries easily, and says he did so every day after Denise died. At the inquest one of Denise’s friends said Winskill was “quite moody and difficult”, while his sister said he could be “quite grumpy and moody”.
At the cafe, he nods at those words but he doesn’t agree with them.
“Like give me a break,” he says. “It’s a freak accident that happened in two seconds and I have had to live with that forever. The main detective decided in five minutes it was an accident – it was.”
While Winskill has nothing to do with Denise’s children or her siblings these days, he still has strong support from his sister Linda and his two brothers – something he has been grateful for.
“One of my brothers said I don’t give a toss about what other people think about me.”
Unanswered questions
Although Winskill’s relationships with other women cast aspersions on his character, they did not come any closer to proving he had deliberately played a part in Denise’s death.
At the inquest, a report from Auckland University of Technology mechanical engineer professor John Raine into the physical circumstances of Denise’s death was unable to answer a number of questions.
Raine couldn’t explain how Denise did not hear the truck approach and avoid being hit – although both Winskill and a paramedic would later say it was a windy night, which could have drowned out the noise.
Nor could Raine find the origin of a bruise on the crown of Denise’s head, and said he believed it had not originated from a fall or being run over. Denise’s spectacles were found near her body but one lens was found “some distance away”, which Raine couldn’t find a reason for.
Raine also couldn’t explain why Winskill was not aware of bumping into his wife before she fell “unless she was already on the ground before being run over”.
Crerar criticised the initial police investigation, saying it lacked vigour, timeliness and diligence, and asked police to review their decision not to prosecute Winskill.
Canterbury district crime manager Detective Inspector Greg Murton told Stuff this week that the case would be reopened if new evidence came to light.
Aftermath
Whatever happened on that October night, Jon Winskill has had to live with the knowledge that his actions killed his wife – and he’s paid a heavy price.
“I’ve lost a lot of things … a lot of things.”
Five years ago he was forced to leave the property where he and Denise lived, and start again, because the house was in a family trust.
Once accused of having a financial motive to hurt Denise (the coroner found no basis for the allegations), he ended up in a negative financial position and, although he’s 67, he says he can’t afford to retire.
Since then he’s been building up a new agricultural spraying business and lives in a small Canterbury town.
He has a Siberian-born partner who has lived in New Zealand for 25 years, and has been in the relationship for 2½ years. They met online.
Winskill has tried to date women over the years and has always been open that he’s lost two wives, even though it’s meant that most women don’t want to meet him. He’s also lost many friendships.
“I can sometimes see that angle. I’ve got two dead wives. How do you live with that? How do you tell that story?”
But his new partner has provided a lot of support, he says. ‘‘She grew up in Siberia so she said what you did was nothing compared to what goes on in Russia … nothing … and she’s been amazing.”
He’s never considered moving away from Canterbury, because his sister lives in Christchurch and he’s close to Mt Hutt, where he can indulge his passion for skiing. “There’s no point in running. I’m not trying to hide from anyone. Where would I go?”
So what would Winskill change, in hindsight?
“It’s made me think more about the repercussions of acting on impulse and doing something without thinking about what other people are going to think,” he says.
Although he’s tried to move forward, the past often drives him back.
Initially he couldn’t reverse the truck that ran over Denise as it would cause him to “freak out”, and even today he’s paranoid when driving. It’s made him appreciate backing cameras and he believes all vehicles should have them.
It’s the end of an intense interview, but Winskill looks as harried as he did at the start.
“It’s got close to wrecking my life and I still have to live with it until the day I die,” he says as he gets up from the table. “It’s a lot to come to terms with.”