A father’s
Donovan Reidy was 23 when his life was snuffed out. He was on State Highway 1, north of
Nga¯ ruawa¯ hia, when he was hit by a vehicle early on October 7, 1995.
This is where Donny’s life ends, but it’s where the story of the unwavering perseverance of a loving father looking for justice begins.
Twenty-three years ago Donny’s dad, Merv Reidy, was watching television in his Perth home when the phone rang.
It was 9.20pm. That’s the time Merv remembers. It’s the time his life came crashing down.
‘‘It was Joyce, my sister. She never called me. What do you want? I asked. ‘It’s Donny, Merv. He’s dead.’
‘‘I thought she was lying and then I lost it.’’
Merv went to his former wife’s home a few streets over. She lost it too.
Merv and his ex-wife had moved to Australia when their children, Natalie and Donny, were kids.
Donny wanted to get to know his New Zealand family so he returned to his birth country in early 1995, planning to head back to Australia in December. That never happened.
‘‘We came home,’’ says Merv Reidy. ‘‘We got the earliest flight and came straight to him.’’
Merv went to Seddon Park Funeral Home in Hamilton where his son lay. He held him and whispered a solemn vow in his ear: ‘‘I will find your killer.’’
It was promise first made in revenge, Merv says. It’s now one he holds for justice.
No-one has been charged with Donny’s death. What began as a hit and run probe riddled with mistakes became a likely homicide in the minds of police. It was already murder in Merv’s mind long before, and remains so today.
Police did have one main suspect. He was the last person seen with Donny in the early hours of that morning.
CCTV footage from
Nga¯ ruawa¯ hia BP revealed the last image of Donny alive, sitting in a silver Holden Kingswood less than an hour before his broken body was discovered by motorists.
The car belonged to a
Nga¯ ruawa¯ hia man, who broke the news of Donny’s death to Peter Reidy, Donny’s uncle.
On October 7, 1995, Peter was at home on his only day off from his job at Mitre 10.
He read the headlines on his TV’s Teletext and saw someone had been killed in a hit and run near his Nga¯ ruawa¯ hia home.
Minutes later there was a knock at his door.
‘‘And there he was, a boy I recognised but I didn’t know him. He said, ‘I think it’s Donny that was killed,’’’ Peter says.
‘‘We went in his car down to the police station and he knew more of what Donovan was wearing than I knew. The police put us in their car and took us to the hospital.
‘‘I went in first and straight away I knew. Then he went in and came out and goes – yeah, that’s him. I will never forget those lips, he made that strange statement that stuck in my mind.
‘‘A few days later it struck me that it was strange that he had come to my house, because when he knocked on my door no-one at that point knew whether the dead person was a man or a woman. Not only did he know it was a man – he knew it was Donny.’’
In the early hours of October
7, 1995, Auckland resident Beryl Pokai was woken by a phone call from wha¯ nau in Whanganui. A family member had died. She needed to gather her siblings and head back to their marae as soon as possible.
‘‘We are travelling down Hopuhopu straight, it was about
4am and I just happen to see something out of the corner of my eye. So I back-back and as I’m backing back I look at my rear view mirror and I see a car has just turned into one of the driveways and I thought – oh, this car is coming to help and I see [Donny Reidy] on the side of the road."
Pokai, who was in her early 20s at the time, says Donny was lying on his stomach. He was off the road. He was alive, she says.
‘‘He had a brown jacket on like a Swanndri – he was lying head towards Auckland, feet towards Nga¯ rua¯ wahia.
‘‘I open the door, put my foot down on the ground and then everyone in the car starts yelling – ‘Don’t get out, it’s a trick, you’re going to get out and somebody’s going to jump you.’
‘‘It was happening because there were a few cases at that time and I sat there for five minutes just looking at him. So I said, ‘OK, he’s off the road, the only way something bad would happen to him is if somebody goes off the main road and collects him.’
‘‘So I leave and go to call the police.’’
Pokai stopped at the same BP station Donny had been just 20 minutes before. Her attempts to call police were fruitless, and on the attendant’s advice she went to the Nga¯ ruawa¯ hia police station.
While there another motorist arrived. He, too, had concerns about a man on State Highway 1.
‘‘At that stage, unbeknownst to me it had already happened. Donny was dead. I talk to police and then I go back. Then I see him. He wasn’t where I last saw him.
‘‘He was a long way from where I first saw him and he was covered with a blanket. I didn’t even register that it was the same person I’d seen earlier.
‘‘When they lifted the blanket, I saw his jacket and I knew. We decided we needed to get him off the road so we all took a part of him. It was awful. I knew as soon as I lifted him that he was not gonna come back. He was gone. ‘‘We laid him on the side of the road and waited for police.’’
The first police investigation into Donny’s death, in 1995, was fatally flawed – investigators missed key evidence and didn’t test key DNA, a later