REGRET AND SORROW:
A life of crime led one man to witness the fatal police shooting of his best friend, and tragically to kill a teenage girl. He sits down with Tara Shaskey , breaking his silence on the highly publicised cases and his journey into an unlawful existence
Grabbing a fistful of lollies, Kevin Bishell stuffed them into his pocket and bolted from the dairy — his sticky fingered act going completely undetected.
That was the then 8-year-old’s first time breaking the law and as he chowed down on his ill-gotten sweets, he began to grow a taste for dishonesty.
The petty thefts continued and back then it could have been perceived as only a developmental stage in Bishell’s life. A child with poor impulse control who just really, really wanted lollies.
But that wasn’t the case. It was the beginning of a life of lawlessness and as Bishell grew, so too did the severity of his offending and his trail of devastation.
Now, his name is synonymous with death and crime.
But is he the career criminal he has been described as throughout the years? He claims no. A victim of circumstance and of his own bad luck, he says. Though, in many cases, the facts show the 41-year-old was the architect of his own undoing.
Currently, the Taranaki beneficiary looks a healthier version of the person he was when seen many times standing in a courtroom dock.
He is relaxed, reading through parole documents from under the peak of his cap. He slumps into the back of his seat, attentive and open to being asked anything.
His responses are polite but short and he returns a tight-lipped, almost mischievous, smile the few times he decides against answering.
“Yeah, I’m all good, eh,” he says from his brother’s multi-car garage in Waitara, north of central New Plymouth.
“Just been laying low, eh. Just keeping out of the spotlight.”
Bishell has spent much of his adult years collecting burglary, drug, and driving convictions. He’s served at least four prison sentences and has featured heavily in the media for his high-profile offending.
One of the most publicised cases he was involved in was a botched burglary culminating in a fatal shooting. Early on June 8, 2013, Bishell found himself in the snarly clutch of a police dog’s jaws after he and his best friend and co-offender, Adam Morehu, smashed their way into the New Plymouth Golf Club.
Armed police arrived and Morehu was shot dead on the fairway.
His death brought to an end a series of crimes committed by the pair, including the 2012 Christmas Day armed robbery of Treehouse Bar and Restaurant and the burglary of Chipmunks Playland, only hours before they broke into the golf club.
Bishell was jailed for four years and eight months for his involvement in the spree and when he was eventually released on parole, he reoffended. And again, the outcome was tragic.
On August 28, 2018, Bishell was travelling along State Highway 3, just south of Waitara, when he attempted a passing manoeuvre and crossed the centre line.
He collided head-on with a car being driven by 18-year-old Olivia Keightley-Trigg. She died at the scene and he was jailed for two years and six months for driving dangerously causing death and for refusing a request for a blood sample.
Bishell says the two events have changed his life forever.
Not a day passes where he doesn’t think of Morehu and Keightley-Trigg, he says. In those moments he feels both sorrow and regret.
“It’s something you never forget about.”
Though it has not been officially diagnosed, Bishell says he now suffers complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
He’s tried to get help for his mental health but says it’s been too hard — too hard to get an appointment with the “right people” and too hard to navigate the health system with his diagnosed dyslexia.
And when things get too hard for Bishell, he admits he gives up.
But it’s difficult to know how much of an inclination he actually has to engage with health professionals.
“They couldn’t help me,” he says of an alcohol and drug addiction programme he twice attended at the hospital after he was released from jail in September last year.
“It’s my mindset. I didn’t really want to do it because that’s not what I promised,” he says.
“The biggest thing was me, because there’s nothing in it for me.”
Promises were made to KeightleyTrigg’s family by Bishell to attend a programme, but he says there was a dispute about when and where that would take place.
He claims to have now held up his end of the bargain after having two