Cricket-bat murder verdict welcomed
The grieving sister of a man killed by his friend with a cricket bat has welcomed a verdict of murder.
Jurors in the High Court at Dunedin yesterday unanimously convicted John Collins of murdering Brent Bacon, despite him claiming he killed the fatherof-three in self-defence.
Outside court, Bacon’s sister, Lia Bezett, paid tribute to her brother, saying ‘‘his blood which was spilled in an unjust death had cried out to be avenged ever since’’.
Collins’ actions were ‘‘callous, barbaric, and cruel . . . and have ripped our lives apart’’.
The family had given Collins and his wife, Aleisha Dawson, who both battled drug addiction, an opportunity to ‘‘turn a page’’. Both had betrayed this kindness.
At the start of the six-day trial, Collins, 39, pleaded guilty to improperly interfering with the body – a new charge – and unlawfully taking a motor vehicle, but maintained he killed 45-year-old Bacon to protect himself.
The Crown said Collins murdered Bacon with a cricket bat at his Dunedin home on the night of February 4, 2019. Collins later dumped Bacon’s body near a rural road north of the city.
He did not deny the killing, but argued that a paranoid and drugaddled Bacon came at him holding a pair of scissors.
The prosecution argued Collins’ account at the trial differed to his police statement.
The court heard Bacon’s badly decomposed body was found missing a large part of the skull, and 30 fragments were found inside his head. He had suffered repeated blows to the forehead, neck and to the right side of the skull.
Collins denied his wife, Aleisha Dawson, was present at the time of the killing. The pair had met Bacon in Christchurch in 2018, and they renewed their friendship when Bacon moved south.
But Dawson, who had been with Collins for 10 years and had four children with him, was an accessory in the killing and remained in prison.
The court heard the pair drove off in Bacon’s car and were arrested in Rotorua.
Bacon’s brother-in-law Sam Bezett, who had found a large pool of blood at Collins’ home, said yesterday’s verdict was ‘‘a real relief’’. It had been difficult telling his wife that her brother may have died.
Collins will be sentenced on May 7.