Meticulously planned to kill
Guilty of murder: Officer sought cheap .22 rifle
WITHIN days of discovering his wife was leaving him, an Invercargill police officer was searching rifles for sale online.
When Constable Benjamin Peter McLean (48) pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder before the High Court at Invercargill yesterday, court documents were released which suggested he meticulously planned the shooting of the woman and her new partner.
On April 5, Verity McLean (40), known as ‘‘Bert’’, had told the she had begun a relationship with his close friend of 15 years, 47yearold Garry Duggan.
Seven days later he had searched online for .22 rifles for sale; ‘‘cheap’’.
On Anzac Day, after his wife had broken into the Scott St address they formerly shared to retrieve her belongings, he packed a bag and cycled to her new abode.
The rucksack he took contained a cutdown .22 rifle to which a silencer had been fixed with black insulation tape.
And there was further evidence of McLean’s preparation.
He packed blue disposable rubber gloves, a small bottle of hand sanitiser, plastic handcuffs (the same type the Armed Offenders Squad uses), strips of towel and a portable radio tuned to the Invercargill police channel.
Mrs McLean was found dead with a single bullet wound which had entered under her chin.
‘‘Some aspects suggest it may have been staged to resemble a suicide,’’ a police summary said.
But a postmortem ruled out any possibility the death was selfinflicted.
It revealed nearly 40 other injuries consistent with ‘‘a fight or fracas’’, the court heard yesterday.
Towel strips later found in
McLean’s bag were bloody and covered in saliva, a summary of facts said, and in a fireplace were burnt remains consistent with plastic handcuffs.
Mr Duggan arrived back at the Otepuni Ave property at 8pm, where McLean lay in wait.
He was faced with his former friend holding a rifle trained directly at him.
McLean shot the victim in the right upper chest and again in the forearm.
Despite the wounds, Mr Duggan grabbed the firearm from his former friend and smashed it over his head, causing the stock to break off.
A violent struggle ensued as the man fought for his life.
But the accused responded by pulling out a 50cm wooden baton from the backpack and hitting him in the head.
McLean put the victim in a ‘‘choke hold’’ but he continued to fight back, using the baton against his attacker.
Eventually the exhausted pair reached a physical stalemate and sat arguing.
When Mr Duggan quizzed him about Mrs McLean’s whereabouts, the claimed she was at a friend’s house and soon after fled on his bike.
Police arrived to find Mr Duggan bleeding profusely and Mrs McLean dead inside the house.
Later that evening, McLean called his children telling one of them: ‘‘I have f...ed everything. I’m f...ed. I went round and shot and killed Bert and shot Garry . . . I’m on the run . . . I’ve killed her. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea’’.
After he called his daughter, her boyfriend and his mother took McLean to the police station to hand himself in.
On the way there the told them his kids ‘‘would hate him forever and he would be inside for at least 20 years’’.
When Mrs McLean’s father visited his daughter’s killer at Invercargill prison on May 3, he explained his actions.
‘‘She wouldn’t talk to me or have anything to do with me and I snapped,’’ McLean said.
The pair had been married for 18 years, according to court documents, and they had three children together.
Mrs McLean and Mr Duggan had started seeing each other in late 2016 and it had taken her more than four months to deliver the news to the accused.
The families of the victims requested privacy after yesterday’s hearing.
‘‘This has been a very difficult year for us all and as Christmas approaches we are all going to find it a tough time but will get through it together with the support of those around us and community understanding,’’ they said in a statement.
Justice Rachel Dunningham remanded McLean in custody and he will be sentenced on Monday.