Double killer: ‘I pulled the wool over’ Parole Board
‘I misled them into thinking that I was good’ — Paul Wilson
Double killer Paul Wilson has told a coroner he “pulled the wool over” Corrections and the Parole Board, tricking them into thinking he was good.
He says he’s a “piece of scum that sh*t on everyone that trusted me”.
Wilson lay in wait for eight hours overnight, before Nicole Marie Tuxford, 27, arrived back in her Merivale home in April, 2018.
Wilson, also known as Paul Tainui, was sentenced in 2019 to life imprisonment for raping and killing Tuxford, with a minimum non-parole period of 28 years.
The shocking news that Wilson committed a second murder — 24 years after he murdered former girlfriend Kimberly Schroder in Hokitika — was too much for her father, Gary James Schroder, 67, who died in a suspected suicide hours after Wilson made his first court appearance.
A joint inquest is under way in Christchurch before Coroner Marcus Elliot. The central issues of the inquiry relate to the Department of Corrections’ identification and management of risk of reoffending.
The court yesterday heard a statement prepared by Wilson for the inquiry.
Wilson, who became friends with David Bain while they were both in prison and was a groomsman at Bain’s wedding, said that overall he thought Corrections “worked their backsides off to help me out”.
“I misled them into thinking that I was good, especially at the end of my parole.
“I do not think what happened is anyone’s fault but mine — not Corrections, Probations, or the Parole Board, or [the charitable group who found him a job].”
He said he would often “mislead or tell lies” to the probation staff, especially one who he named who he was seeing a lot before his recall. The probation officer would suggest or offer that he saw a department psychologist, “but I would persuade her that I was fine and didn’t need to”.
“I knew that if they knew or thought something was up, that I might get recalled.”
He recalled one probation staffer telling him that if he was drinking they would recall him.
In 2018 Wilson was “drinking heavily”, and lied about this.
“I was telling them the drinking had gone down, when it had actually gone up.”
A file note from March 2018 that his probation officer read to him talked about going to the pub in the weekend and having four drinks.
“In reality I was drinking at least that much every night of the week, and a lot more in the weekends on Friday and Saturday night.”
Wilson would often go to bars and gigs in town. He also tried some class A drugs, naming LSD, briefly, and exchanged some of them for sexual favours from a girl that wanted them, he claimed.
“That is not something I am proud of but I wanted to say it to demonstrate how out of control things were getting in the last few months of parole.”
Whenever a risk assessment was done he just said he was not drinking that much and “generally downplayed things”.
“Things were not going well for me but I pulled the wool over them.”
Probation staff would ask him about his relationships with women. One time, after he started seeing a woman, he told a staffer about it. The staffer wanted proof the woman knew about his past.
The staffer then made Wilson bring the woman in to meet her, and then in front of the staffer tell the woman about his history.
“There was no point in trying to keep it a secret from anyone, as after the David Bain thing in the media it was common knowledge.
“Nicole Tuxford knew my history and others at [his workplace] learned it as well.”
He ended his statement by saying “I think that everyone walked over broken glass to help me”.
“I am here because of me, me, me. I am the piece of scum that sh*t on everyone that trusted me.”
Senior Corrections psychologist Nick Wilson earlier said in crossexamination he believed Wilson was “successful in diverting the focus of his treatment away from his offending”.
On Tuesday it emerged that after his release from prison, Wilson was assisted by a charitable group which helped him find a job at a workplace in Christchurch in 2016.
The directors of the company decided to keep Wilson’s criminal history quiet to start with so they could get to know him.
About four months later one of the directors helped Wilson change his name. Wilson’s criminal history was still not disclosed.
It was not until a colleague saw a news article about Bain it became known that Wilson had a criminal past. The directors then decided they should make employees aware.