‘Hitman’ foils murder plot

HE WAS asked to become a hitman – instead Daniel Ryder turned police informant and helped set up a sting operation that led to a double murder plot being foiled.

In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Star- Times, Ryder has described the dramatic events that led to the arrest and conviction last week of Tauranga man Alan Barlow for attempting to procure the murder of his elderly parents.

It began when Ryder, a Child, Youth and Family activist, got word Barlow had left him a message on a CYF accountability Facebook page, asking him to get in touch urgently.

Barlow was a distant relative and Ryder had met him once before while protesting outside CYF offices in Southland. Barlow, a security guard for CYF, had given him some inside information on CYF safe houses.

‘‘No-one trusted him, I don’t trust anyone who works for CYFs, we thought he might be an inside agent,’’ Ryder said.

After he got the Facebook message, Ryder rang Barlow, who told him he wanted him to kill his parents as they allegedly were mistreating children in their care. A figure of $150,000 was mentioned. Ryder played along. ‘‘I said ‘it’s a bit far for me to go to do someone in, I’ll find someone for you, I know those sort of people’. I was playing along, there’s no way I’d kill anyone. I knew if I didn’t take that approach, he was going to hire someone else.’’

Later, two messages arrived on Facebook with the full names of Barlow’s parents, Diana and Kevin Barlow of Invercargill, plus their phone numbers and a chilling note: ‘‘you know how’’.

Ryder, who owns a home handyman business in Auckland, rang Invercargill police. ‘‘They shrugged it off, they didn’t want to know – [they said] ‘oh no, he’s full of talk, don’t worry about him’.’’ That made him really start to worry.

‘‘For the first week I shit myself, thinking if it happened, I could have been top suspect.’’

So he rang Auckland

police, who Sting operation: Daniel Ryder’s distant relative Alan Barlow, bottom right, contacted him through Facebook, and offered him $150,000 to murder his parents. Instead Ryder, left, contacted the police. Top right: Facebook screen grab with the chilling message: ‘‘you know how’’. suggested Ryder arrange to meet Barlow at a McDonald’s in Tauranga – the idea being that if Barlow turned up, the plot would be real.

Ryder didn’t go to the meeting but Barlow did – and so did Tauranga police, watching from a distance.

Police then launched a sting, an undercover officer calling Barlow by phone, a conversation played to the jury last week.

‘‘My name is John and I understand you have a problem in Invercargill,’’ the officer said. ‘‘I fix those kinds of problems for people. Do you understand what I’m talking about?’’

In subsequent calls, Barlow said: ‘‘I need these two out of my life totally. Gone. I don’t want picious. Just bang.’’

The pair eventually met, Barlow providing ‘‘John’’ with a hand-drawn map of his parents’ home, marked with an X for their bedroom. He provided information on his parents’ movements, health and the lack of security at the property.

When asked whether the killings should be quick and painless, or slow and painful, Barlow said he wanted the murders to look ‘‘accidental’’.

Barlow’s lawyer, Craig Tuck said no money changed hands and the evidence failed to meet the threshold of reasonable doubt. The jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict

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sus- in under an hour. He will be sentenced next month. Barlow was a member of Destiny Church but has been ex-communicated.

The Crown said Barlow’s motive was that he wanted to get his hands on his parents’ house, and Ryder has no doubt he wanted them dead.

‘‘ Everyone said, ‘ Why did he approach you as a hitman, you’ve never been up on murder or anything like that?’ That’s what I couldn’t understand.

‘‘The only thing I could think was because we have a big family . . . we have a gang element on one side, he obviously thought we’d kill someone for him for money. It’s wrong, so I did something about it.’’