(Award Winning Documentary) the Brutal Murder of John Scott | Real Crime

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is a story of two brothers two fourth-generation white Fiji Islanders for much of their lives they lived away from Fiji yet one brother always had a longing to return it was like a core but Fiji had changed and that longing was to lead to tragedy [Music] we'll eat tonight with a horrific double homicide who knows who his most prominent suburbs it's believed one of those Dead is a director for the Fiji Red Cross John Scott along with an unidentified European male the house belonged to John Scott the director of the Fiji Red Cross some police officials described the scene as a site of horrific violence police swooped on a neighborhood not far from the house with the bodies of the two men were found hacked with a cane knife the person is now in our custody is a residence and was also an associate of the two person the two deceased person [Music] the murders of my brother John and his partner Greg caused me to lead London where I'd been living and moved back to the Pacific I needed to make sense of the murders and I needed to make sense of my family's long history in the Fiji in fact I needed a better understanding of Fiji itself both as it was and how it is now a good starting point was a visit to the graves of my great-grandfather and father buried in a remote spot in the bush near the village of dark wood I had to seek permission for the visit in the traditional manner [Music] okay [Music] vomiting rebuking job was an item over take it easy no matter where machine Matagorda luebero john candeleria mati johnny control you have to excuse me I'm I'm a cavity in my heart but I'll have to speak like a Kaiulani I wish I could speak fijian like my brother and my father did I remember coming here as a child with my father a lot and my father he always instilled in my brother and me my family's links with the Fijian people and taught me to respect you very much [Music] the last time I was here and I standing on either side of my father's grave with John so that was 1977 [Music] my great-grandfather the Reverend William we are Lindsay arrived in Fiji in 1871 and he's buried on the site of the Missionary Training Institute he once headed eventually he became the chairman of all the Methodist missions in Fiji in those early colonial days this was a good Christian man in the midst of Buccaneers and pioneers and they would have known that River the Nickell or rare that we came up very well because that's how they used to get back into silver in punts road by oarsmen it's one thing to be buried here but my father decided to be buried here as well just to be difficult [Music] the house that John and I grew up in was built by my father in the 1950s with a large open veranda looking out over the whole of Suba harbor my earliest memories are of parties by the pool dogs parrots and large tropical gardens and the Fijian staff whom I was very close to I remember my father always saying to us this was the best view in the world [Music] so Owen did you always feel the Scots belong in Fiji oh very much so John and I were brought up to feel very responsible about our connection with Fiji the fact that we were born here and our father Morris put us under quite a lot of pressure to continue the so-called Scott legacy as far as a young fella like myself was concerned he had a kind of heroic image he had gone away to the Second World War and joined the RAF and had got a DFC so we held him on a little bit of a pedestal but we also knew that he was a real playboy he loved the girls and had a lot of time with the girls and we heard of a few illegitimate children that he had he wasn't disparage for that he was held as one of the lads and held in high esteem for his ability to do that and get away with it John and I were the children of the two marriages that my father had with my mother so my parents married divorced married again and divorced once more so John was a child of the first marriage and I was a child at the second marriage was he a bully Morris oh yes hmm were you frightened of Morris well we lived a very public life socially locally at home he would be very difficult when Senna came on the scene it was a bit difficult if we went out to party or anything it would be with Morris Scott and his two wives I knew I'd have to get away somehow yeah that was when I started yeah trying to get away yes my parents divorced for the second time in the 1960s my mother finally got away from my father and John and I ended up moving with her to New Zealand it was a change in circumstance as well as country life was quite tough by comparison to what we'd been used to but each summer there be a taste of the old life again when John and I would return to Fiji for the Christmas holidays my father was now married to the woman who had been his mistress Fanny Gotti the other wife as my mother used to call her she was glamorous and wealthy and we used to spend several weeks each year on her private island cut afar sun sea sand and fishing all the things that boys love those were pretty special times in spite of what we had to deal with in terms of our father's behavior [Music] my father was very hard on my brother he taunted him quite a lot and this was usually fuelled by alcohol so there would often be circumstances where we were out in the car and my father would be telling my brother to go faster faster you know don't be a queen this was the type of behaviour that my father in Dalston John left here in the 60s we were still British we were still colonial Suva was a European town it was a white place [Music] not only was it run by Europeans there were whole suburbs of Europeans running the government even bank tellers where Europeans Fijians were not allowed to come in freely until 1966 so you know it was a white place but of course the European families during the colonial days led a very privileged life they enjoyed privileges that the indigenous people Indians did not have they formed of course part of the commercial life of Fiji particularly in Suva and also the professional life and the lawyers such as the Scots [Music] my grandfather and my grandmother lived in a rather beautiful house and Suva caught hokum they used to entertain lavishly their parties and lunch parties on Sundays my grandmother was famous for her entertaining on a Sunday [Music] we were at the top of the pile the Fijian people were considered lazy buggers they really didn't have any prospects at all and the Indians were considered mere laborers after Fiji became a British colony in 1874 sugarcane was planted as a cash crop a workforce was needed so the colonial administration brought in indentured labour from one of Britain's other colonies India the Indian population rapidly grew and so to its voice before long Indians began to question the colonial rule indigenous Fijian is for the most part did not work on the plantations instead they continue to live a traditional community-based way of life centered on the village well I think in the corneal times the Europeans certainly align themselves with the Fijians and that was partly because Indians were agitating for democracy for equality and that was seen as a threat and seen as unacceptable to the European elite but they could deal with the Fijian majority [Music] indigenous Fijians generally were comfortable with colonial rule and unspoken alliance developed between Fijian Chiefs and the European elite there was a shared fear of what was perceived as the growing political and economic power of the Indian community my father became involved in the Fijian nationalist movements of the 1950s and 60s very much on the Fijian side of things then in 1970 Fiji became independent although most indigenous Fijians wanted the country to remain a colony the Fijian and Indian populations were by now roughly equal in number I think there's always been an implicit belief or understanding on the part of Fijians that while Indians can live and work in Fiji and prosper that Fijian litical control should always remain in their hands there was a great feeling of euphoria at the time and for the early years we progressed very very well and I think Fiji was one of the few countries in the world that had gained their independence without any any war any any revolution it was done in a very amicable way during this period of change in Fiji John and I were still living in New Zealand I was studying law and John was in business our father had died in Fiji seven years after independence and John and I probably saw ourselves as being settled in New Zealand John had married and he had had a son piers but then when piers was still quite young the marriage ended there was some surprise when John met Craig but their friendship soon developed into a long-standing relationship in Fiji tensions between Fijians and Indians began once more to escalate and in 1987 leftenant Colonel city veneer on bucha staged Fiji's first coup 37 was a turning point because an Indian backed party won government-run bucha believing that there was the risk that Fiji would be taken over by the Indian community because they had dominance in economic in the economic sector and now they had dominance in government and so rambu ko was able to form into that belief into the cool John Gregg were actually in Fiji when the 1987 coup occurred renovating the house that John and I had inherited from our father it was empty and had fallen into disrepair and John feared that it might be taken over by the military so John and Greg decided to sell up in New Zealand and begin a new life in Fiji this is where there are a lot of parties in my father's day a lot of drinks parties lots of fun very colonial white mischief days [Music] just out of the blue John and Greek tinda and I must admit when I saw Greg it was like oh okay alright John smell like that that's fine I knew Greg Oh God who didn't he was gorgeous gorgeous I remember when he first arrived in Fiji the women were like oh my god have you seen so I was like forget it my husband I both realized at the time that they came because they needed to speak to somebody that they could trust about them coming back home again because they were they were in a relationship they were going to live openly in Fiji and it was very new and it was something that really wasn't done at the time Greek had a lot of bravado about it oh it doesn't matter you wouldn't have known no but John was very concerned because he's I mean the Scott family were an old family so we just said to them look it is new but you're obviously not gonna go out there and be all you know in people's face about it just get on with your life like everybody else John saw himself as an insider I always got the feeling that he believed he'd come home but a lot had changed it was a completely different country all of the people who lived here had no memory of the Scots and so all the average person on the street saw were two white men no we are new [Music] since Rumble cos 1987 ku poverty had worsened in Fiji my brother had always had a humanitarian streak so when the opportunity to work in an aid organization arose he was happy to leave the corporate world behind I was president of the Red Cross and we were faced with finding a new director-general so we went on a hunt and advertised for the position and one of those who applied was John Scott there were some on the board of Red Cross at the time who didn't believe John would be the appropriate person because he was known to be gay at the time so we had a little bit of a tussle within the board over that issue but eventually how're you prevailed and John was duly appointed the director-general and he came in and he grasped the nettle and really did a fantastic job he was good at fundraising and he introduced a number of very effective fundraising Vincent such as the ball the fashion parade and really built up the image of Red Cross to a point has never been there and been before there were really like role models to most sort of gay gay men I remember once there was a game men sort of meeting at the back bar of traps and a lot of people turned up because they wanted to meet John and Greg because there were these sort of rich white people who had this big house up on the hill they went to all the fancy parties we'd see them to shake hands with sort of dick dignitaries in the newspaper so yeah they were huge there were real role models in the community and it's important for young people who saw them like I did to sort of kind of get to know them because that that's so true yeah if there were other times maybe it was just their personal choice I don't know but there were times when they attended functions together John and Greg but both of them took a female partner things were categorized but John agreed they had this category of friends here compartmental and there was the family ones the ones with kids and there were husbands and wives and in heterosexual relationships then there were these other compartments that we knew were there but I didn't want to know about it and I certainly didn't want them to share any of that with me but they never ever bought BIRT life into our life [Music] then in May 2000 there was another cool once again in the name of Fijian nationalism and once again arising out of the perceived threat of Indian political and economic power [Music] this cool was much more violent than the one in 1987 the one that had indirectly brought John and Greg to Fiji in the first place Hoover a city and crisis the country's Prime Minister is being held hostage by armed rebels desperate kidnappers in Fiji threatened to kill the elected Prime Minister the coup occurred because these this group of men were able to convince suspicious indigenous Fijians who feel disenfranchised economically politically etc and in a sense marginalized economically we were able to manipulate them to stir up unrest for their political and economic game moments earlier two gunshots were heard from the parliamentary complex the police are not able to tell us anything they are not able to go into the parliamentary complex themselves it seems reminisce of the 1997 cruise it's like nothing has changed since then I was in England when I first heard about the coup the 2000 coup and at first it was very difficult because we didn't we didn't have any contact with John and then I discovered that on the first day I think it was he had walked up alone to the gates of the parliamentary complex and I must confess that I arrived at the gates in nervous state to say the least the guards were standing there with machine guns I approached them and explained that I was from the Fiji Red Cross Society and that I needed to have access to the hostages no please don't the Indian Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhary was taken hostage along with members of his government work into a military / civilian coup with military personnel some of them holding guns and civilians would never had any training with guns in a mob mentality environment to be able to have the guts to walk in you'd be crazy you had a large group of people who had come down from the hills who persistently drunk either on alcohol or carville or their own adrenaline who were running around with submachine guns and pistols and goodness knows what anyone who went into that Parliament was at risk and and John was certainly at risk look I could easily have shot all these people okay don't forget the cause for which we acted and plus I'm talking Fijian to Fijian and I don't expect the Europeans amongst this international press corps to understand it I made an endeavor to to go to the hospital to pick up medicines that were required because you have to remember that Suva had been looted and burned that day driving around the streets was a nightmare to put it mildly the streets were full of drunken young people with supermarket trolleys full of liquor these people were irrational lying on the road trying to get him away trying to get rides from vehicles such as mine so it was very awkward [Music] because of him they got hope when I can't imagine what they must have been thinking they'd be killed and so on and so forth I remember that scene where you know George Spade took Chaudhary up into Parliament grounds he held a gun to his head and and threatened to shoot him I can't imagine that what that must have done to the members of parliament who were watching that and what John must have been thinking watching that thinking where's this gonna go the link that we have between the hostages and the families has become obviously increasingly important so we will maintain that and we will endeavour to keep this suffering to a minimum it was in this period that we went through the uncomfortable situation of receiving three death threats the words were used were tell him that if he puts his white face anywhere near this complex we will shoot and we will shoot to kill I remember having a phone conversation with him in London in which he said I can't do this anymore and I could hear his voice cracking up and it was very strange to be in London to say to him yes you can yes you can you can carry on John to be able to go through and be the link between the hostages and their families and to just come out and help to be able to do that only someone that was seen by God candidate John sport was the angel that brought the light every day to us I'm embarrassed because there are people out there who keep lifting up my t-shirt looking for the stubs of the wings [Music] without the backing of the army the coup failed and the hostages were released in a surreal scene George spate shook hands and posed with very people he had locked up and intimidated for 56 days reality was quite different the end game in the conflict was yet to be played out [Music] in the process of looking again at my family's past I decided to visit the Grand Pacific hotel partly because it was one of my father's watering holes but when we went to film there to our surprise we found the gph had been taken over by the military the tensions behind the crisis in 2000 had never been resolved and they erupted again in 2006 resulting in another coup this hotel once the epitome of colonial elegance was now a military camp in the early 20th century after the mid 20th century it was a very chic hotel and I mean you have royalty that came here the Queen stayed here in 1954 I think it was on her royal tour donation to some of the rich people in Fiji - that used to the plants have sailed always when they came into town and stayed here it was very chic and then when they used to have banquets there'd be these long refractory tables it was it was very grand I wanna have a look in one of the rooms look at that here's a stateroom there's a pup tent in there I mean it's just sort of bizarre Queen wound of SATA there's another button it's just incredible [Music] soldiers remained on the streets long after the 2006 coup had taken place unlike the crisis in 2000 which was more renegade this coup was planned and executed by the army headed by its commander Commodore Frank by nima Rama the military has taken over the government has executive authority and the running of this country Fiji's changed hugely since my father's day but it's not politics or nostalgia that's brought me back in trying to understand my brother's death I felt I needed to meet the family of a petty guys out the man who had committed the murders I wanted to hear what the family had to say I'm not entirely comfortable with it I have to say but I feel obliged to be there to meet them and hear what they have to say I mean for the purposes of this film I understand that's okay [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I'd only met the guys our family once before just briefly at the time of the trial time for you for me as a mum my training that I gave to petit was for him to be a independent and confident young man he achieved that in his early teens and he was a great rugby player right from primary school our to 40 is the families of deep religious convictions at what's tested in your time and you know we came through so you can imagine now everyone should be churches in our lives I can remember when I was a child that that's the thing that we do every day even if it means missing the school bus we made to sit down and do our prayers before we go to school yeah and you know bringing up so it's very important that was a driving force just tell me the congregation that you're here to film a documentary and I was telling them that this is the church that Betty was properly brought up in he's to attend Sunday school here and this is the church that attends every Sunday and what made him did what he did because he believed that's a god it's going to help him they say god it's close to his heart and they said he believes that God started what he did and he's going to end it for him so thank you for coming thank you for having a good heart to a film documentary on Petty's family it has God's family and the people that made it impact on Betty's life I don't really know how a pity first came to meet John and Greg his cousin sakurai lived at Tom ofwar village near to the house and villagers would often work at the house just as they had in my father's day maybe a petty helped out in the garden and over time some sort of relationship developed a bit ago so there's a very strong part of their household Greg and John's there was a lot of interruption and everything and weekends away and all sorts of things but he moved freely in and out of their houses and on the properties about everywhere he had full access to everything is a Fijian proverb Vanna banana boola which means you trying to to get to the moon he's trying to get things that in reality you are not able to and I believe petit was making expected a lot in life but to get to that expectation it was not there the white man and the local the younger local presenter dilemma for the the average person here because they immediately perceived that it's the power of the money and the material comforts that attracts the the local person to do something that they would not otherwise do a large number of fishermen think nothing of having sex with other men but they don't regard themselves as I mean you know that right I mean that's true a lot of places and they don't regard them self as poofters as they would say I don't go D they don't regard himself as go D the one receiving is the go read not not them okay macho in this country there's a lot of promiscuity so long as it's hidden so long as those in charge or those outside your circle don't know it's okay but you don't wear it on your sleeve and that was what John and Greg were doing you've got to put this in the context there has been a definitive move to right-wing Christian fundamentalism from the 87 cool Rambo ground his constituency was the Methodist Church the mythos Church has slowly and surely moved towards funding fundamentalist Christianity so even if there was a degree of Tolerance it was at one stage more like turning a blind eye than tolerance per se not like social tolerance in the water since the word they had become less and less tolerant because of Christianity the Methodist two different presidents of the Methodist Church said that once a week cause poverty God would look down upon Fiji and see this deviant behavior going on and would cause the country to become impoverished and the other one said that we would then bring like bad weather yeah and if they thought about it we probably caused us to lose the sevens title as well yeah there was the perception that John and Greg were not off here and in addition to the homophobia there's the kind of xenophobia and justified by a protective kind of impulse you know we must protect ourselves from these corrupt and corrupting outsiders I understand there came a point when John and Greg tried to put a bit of distance between themselves on a petty case out and it was around this time that a petty went to New Zealand to try and become a professional rugby player he went and that was part of our 21st birthday gift to him he turned 21 yeah and then we said okay why not let's give him a trip to go to New Zealand she started from number 7 then drifted to centre fullback in England they found out that he was literally in the fullback he could run the whole floor pick up the ball underneath the goal poles him on the other side of the trauma [Applause] very quiet but extremely polite lovely Coons looked after the key just like his horn sister's helped out and in the garden loved working around outside it's a really nice young man but very quiet they called him the white angel during the coup everything changed in dunya and he saw that in these face changed I'm embarrassed because there are people up there who keep lifting up my t-shirt looking for the stubs of the wings everything changed they were sort of like Saturday ah I don't want to go rugby now I'll just stay home hang on these people they're expecting you to be huh I don't ki so that's it you just go back house isn't closes doing it wasn't there was a lot of times he was spending downstairs in his room whereas before he used to come up and be part of the family and certain watch TV you'll talk but then he started to to be in his room and now I'm reading that's all right you know he'd have food and disappear again it was a totally different a pity from being in a loving person to and sort of angry to himself we did find a piece of paper and in a book which said an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth and it was printed out on a piece of paper he did suggest that hating gays these people should be dissolved on earth that's what it is like this they shouldn't be life I last saw John in 2001 January 2001 had gone down to Fiji for Christmas there was piers John's son and my mother and we went across and stayed with John and Greg we got on well and we used to get in John's boat and of course Pierce would be there and we were all quite a happy family [Music] john was he was more relaxed by that stage earlier and i saw him about four months after the coup and he was still shell-shocked he was traumatized really i think some would say that he had post-traumatic stress disorder ready but that last holiday was it was a good one at least we have good memories of how close we were that last time we were together [Music] in 2001 a petty suddenly left New Zealand and returned home to Fiji without warning one Sunday evening we came back home and they were sitting on the veranda he didn't say what has settled to him who he was just sitting there and he pity her like a mother greeting the son after two 3s away he was just sitting there low well I was really confused whether it was Betty or his ghost whatever now I went back inside and I was frightened but that was not the son that I knew he usually likes to walk I usually walk tonight at night at 2 3 o clock in the morning he likes to walk by himself I had a call from home they said our pet is here and I told them I'm working tell him to wait tomorrow morning and that's about 9 10 o clock that night he came down to I'm a Christian I'm committed Christian we were conversing and it's a bit of an argument and I was telling him in about the New Testament the New Testament involves Jesus Christ in his died on the cross and the Old Testament involves sacrifices of a flame of beasts for the cleansing of our of our sin he asked me a few questions about John and when I was sharing Bible verses to him a told me that same verses Bible verses you should go and share it to John Scott and Greg why is it because if you didn't do anything I will do I will do something that's what he said that night exactly what he said that night he already put the weapon there at our house there somewhere they hid the weapon somewhere deadly [Music] then he went down take that shortcut into John's house [Music] my brother was having a cup of tea here at about 6:30 on July the 1st 2001 and he saw the killer coming up the stairs there with a with a cane knife and he was chased back into the house he tried to lock the doors tried to get on the telephone but he wasn't quick enough and then after that there was a struggle which was violent and not only were John gray killed but they were effectively beheaded as well well in that moment your life changes forever it's it's like you've been branded it's like you have a mark on your skin in a secret place that very few people will ever see and then it was just an extraordinary time I just knew it was gonna be very difficult and a long time to get to Fiji it it was gonna take us three three days to get there my immediate response was fact that I was really torn in terms of responsibility because I had an elderly mother in New Zealand and I needed to make sure that somebody was looking after her I was able to help him a little way in blocking the curious and encouraging our local newspaper not to spread it over the local press and to allow you a little privacy and also allow you support [Music] we received the news of absolute shock shock that somebody so close to us could be so brutally murdered shock that it was right next door to us more or less it just floored me really floored me I remember my mother breaking down in crying as well cause she was very close to Greg but for myself the first thing I thought of was this has got to do with his role in the Red Cross and and and something to do with the coup to be quite honest I thought it was a robbery gone wrong and because there were struggles with a lot of families after the coup of 2000 the most likely thing was that extreme disapproval by some bizarre person of their lifestyle I thought that it was a [ __ ] buddy gone wrong well I suppose I made an assumption was something to do with his sexuality that had led to this I mean we had heard rumors of all sorts of parties and functions up there that were risky and we I suppose we weren't all that surprised that something like this had eventually occurred but not a doctor the extreme brutality of it as we subsequently found out Fijians Don don't normally take a cane knife and just chop somebody up [Music] at least at this time okay cannibalism was there before Christianity came but that's gone but this is a new thing a new and terrible horror it's horrible in a repressive space that's the most extreme form of punishment for being gay here and so that I stated me for a long time in the possible I think you could be killed yes definitely you are losing sleep weren't you yeah it was scary for all of us um friends of mine will have been called John on the street well John Scott did call us so it was almost like a warning that's well that's where how we were feeling at the time but it's like well keep on behaving like that this is what happens to people like you that's the feeling that we're getting from from the community it was a premeditated murder that's what we're being told they went in busted the door down killed the two and then ran back out throwing the knife in in a nearby bush and I think a piece of cloth liver with some blood on it he told me there's a brick news breaking news at 12 o clock the John Scott and Greg Scrivener murdered what he touched me and he told me I did this he said I didn't believe him so that's Sunday and whole of that time he was asking me asking me cousin win in Fiji and we used to college start at a valley and he called me tahvalli do you believe and I said Terrell I didn't believe it when we're on the screen I was going man this could be him it was funny that when I get to think of it now why I love everything else that it dawned to me that it was Betty now and I when I talked about it and I said you know I believe it was God telling me that it was him and it never was wrong and a couple of days later the police came home when I saw the police truck I just wept I said this is it I was not wrong when I and it it struck me when I was watching there in use so when I came in there she asked me mom haven't you heard I said I heard what haven't you heard that they are looking for pity you know I wasn't ready for that and then she had to tell me what happened that the police were looking for him because he's a suspect [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] the person is now in our custody is the SU residence and was also an associate of the two person the two deceased persons we took him out to the the crime scene and what he told us in a she took us through step by step was very much consistent with what happened on the Sunday morning [Music] he was there with the group of police officers you know it just out of the brews I just started crying Emily when I saw him then he said mom don't cry mom don't cry he told me don't cry twice I just stopped when he was telling me not to cry and I was really pouring myself out and I just looked at him and that was it those were the tears that I shed after I met him when he was taken in as a suspected I had time to speak to him I think it was bold it was a very bold come up come out of it and he said you know what I did I was did it for the good of the nation I did it from the young generation because whatever they were doing was wrong Smyrna wrong I don't think he has any regrets or anatomies his is also forgiven for forgiveness ts [Music] [Music] [Music] Savoie he basically was the spin doctor that got the newspapers to behave in the way that they did because he said oh well apparently the killings took place certain he said the certain time and then he was quite for a while then he said well there was a lot of illegal activities happening at the house and then the question start applying what illegal activities and then he started with all the videotapes believed to be homemade pornography the white powder believed to be cocaine as well it's more of an unidentified white powder in a search of the main super home today people were focusing on the good side of mr. Scott and his partner great but then people tend to forget that he's a practicing homosexual I don't profess to understand everything about homosexuality these years that they tend to be more vicious than the normal heterosexual relationship yes scary I mean in his allegations what do you think his message was or what do you think he was saying they deserve sounding message they deserved what happened to them yeah my god this guy's justifying the death it's just to find the killing in a very subtle and not-so-subtle way sometimes I mean some [ __ ] might as well have been a pastor there was a white collar at his throat investigating in the end the white powder was baking soda that was used to clean silver and also the police said that they'd found pornography at the house which included some incredibly boring holiday videos of mine and they a month later they publicly stated that they had not found any pornography advanced the opportunity to paint John and his partner as sexual predators was one that the media up you know sexual predators preying on on vulnerable youth in the 10 another area that sort of thing that'll lap it up and it deflected attention away from as a crime being committed collect the evidence prosecute the offender get a conviction once again it comes back to the acceptance of homosexuality if there is an acceptance of homosexuality in the country the the the police would have presented a more understanding picture to the media and the media would then be the mouthpiece to the general public University trust intimacy companionship too often people concentrate on differences when they should be looking instead at similarity major memory be a unifying one for all people in Fiji particularly at this time [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] after John's funeral I returned to England and from there tried to keep in touch with various officials in Fiji who was supposedly handling the case but I couldn't get any information and it was incredibly frustrating then finally I managed to make contact with a new prosecutor on the case and from then on he kept me up to date with what was turning out to be a very complicated and difficult trial the prosecution strategy at the outset was quite straightforward here we have a very horrible crime but we have a confession so really quite a simple contact albeit traumatic trial to prosecute they gave himself up on Saturday and Sunday Sunday afternoon I received a phone call from all the way from New Zealand and someone whom I don't know happens to be a Queen's Counsel he said Joe just agreed that we'll have come and fight at Betty's case I became involved because a friend of mine was very friendly with a petty and so that's how the connection began a period actually who worked at the local stool in fact I mean he was supplied you know my people from the farm here in fact he he knew them all well me a very nice guy everyone liked him there was a person who was always going out of his way to you know feed stray animals was very very compassionate good sense of humor comes as were you so shocked at the end of the day when when there's an allegation like that for someone who would appear to place it wouldn't hurt a fly when I first heard that that this murder had happened at Kenneth's er my first thought was oh God don't let the cops [ __ ] it up the possibility of the investigation being botched was very real and as it turned out it was almost realized for example the Commissioner of Police the then Commissioner of Police who had no police training he was ex-military he lept after television and I used the word let deliberately he couldn't wait to get on television to announce that we will have a suspect arrested within an hour and then he was required to come back an hour later and say well we'll have somebody by tonight and I know for a fact at that stage the investigation had nothing to go on that was was a embryonic investigation so it was an outlandish thing to have suggested in the meantime he had God of the scene himself and when his own officers his scenes of crime officers went in to take fingerprints at the scene the only prints that they could find that were not those of Jones cotton and Scrivener were the Commissioner of Police his own fingerprints so the Commissioner had gone in and completely violated all the rules of crime-scene integrity and put his own great thumb prints all over the thing some of the police officers who had been assigned as a scene guards at the Scott house ended up stealing from the house they ended up being prosecuted by my office if you can't maintain integrity of you seen what kind of forensic case can you actually amount I think it was bumbling but I think it was bumbling because of certain beliefs well I think it was a combination of of lack of training maybe not that keen on on on you know seeing someone like like a pity you know face these charges and some of the police officers and clearly knew the family though very well known I mean there was there was there probably sitting I'm you're not being very popular being part of an investigative team try to actually you know Vick somewhat of a serious allegation like that and they knowing what the background was and is no two ways about it the the senior police officers weren't enthusiastic the police had identified a suspect prior to arresting a petty case our nandi they secured a confession from this second suspect a confession that was corroborated by the scene effectively the prosecution's task doubled and that I not only had to prove a Petty's case beyond reasonable doubt I had to disprove this other case this other confession beyond reasonable doubt we had to consider whether we had enough evidence to even continue a clever defense counsel can effectively say that there's so much confusion around the case and point out incompetence that it was possible that a petty case how could have walked from the trial so the strategy post depositions really was a second wave of retreat to wonder whether we can go forward with this prosecution at all in a in a realistic way but our our tortuous cogitating overall that was sort of swept away when when insanity came on the horizon as an option for some time prior to to the event he was known to have been absorbed and and almost obsessed with with his religious convictions his Bible had been read and reread and material passages had been marked extracts from you know about Sodom and Gomorrah and the immorality of homosexuality and there was a huge focus and apparently there was even one Bible he underlined a passage thou shalt not worship false idols and that the association with John becoming famous drink the annotations that had been handwritten in that that Bible were I thought disturbed ramblings of a disturbed mind it was then that I put aside finally any reservations I had about Kaiser state [Music] [Music] a very common theme in cases like this is preoccupation with religious imagery and religious message and a note that he penned I can only assume shortly after the murders he talks of doing God's work he he says I hope I have done write unto you or words to that effect father he said it was the voice of God but they are voices talking to us every day Betty was not able to discern which voice and then he took that their logical aspect of from the Old Testament and if somebody was behaving this way he need to be done away with but that's not what Christ came to to do it wasn't like a one-night thing they picked this guy up and then he turned on them no they had a relationship some at some form of a relationship well I don't know where there was a recognised threesome but it was he was definitely a big part of your lives for a little while we believe he had an intense hatred for the way they exploited not only him but after use of VG to fulfill of their desires maybe he did have some gay tendencies or felt that he could be gay and needed to experiment and didn't like the answers he got relationships with different power different economic status different even raised in Fiji knowing how all of those mixed and male together and how that has translated before there are always issues around risk and ethics it's hard to put ethics in just because it was just such a way of life and it still is such a way of life for not the whole gay community but certainly a portion of it and that behavior still happens yes there's still epochs involved in it but I certainly can't say whether it was right or wrong there's also a tradition of same-sex experimentation for younger men here it's similar to what happens in the Somme war but not as institutionalized not everybody does it and if you're willing to do it I think that there's more than just the the material part of it there must be some other desire or motive a motivating factor in it Godwin's thank you symbolically with myself not guilty of murder by reason of insanity I thought the outcome of the trial was overwhelmingly satisfactory we got the right man the right man ostensibly wasn't sentenced as a convict but sent to a psychiatric institution where he could receive appropriate care and treatment the insanity pleas sometimes you know not an easy one for the victim's family to deal with you know because it doesn't seem to really lead to justice in the end [Music] I thought that he had the rational capacity to make the decision I think that that was wrong I thought he should have been found guilty convicted found guilty and convicted for murder [Music] Oh if you are mentally ill and you mix it with a bit of Christianity or fundamental any kind of fundamentalism and if you've been involved in in licentiousness particularly homosexual licentiousness that's a volatile cocktail you know your guilt can drive you into becoming the avenging angel for yourself and society and you it see I can see how easy it is to place yourself as a victim and then take power and protect everybody else by ending the source of your your shame or your guilt I don't think justice was served in the end it's created this lasting feeling that what he did was justifiable in a kind of bizarre way you know that people have the right to take into their own hands the moral judgment of this society and decide for themselves without a court of law that so-and-so is wrong and Sun says right yeah the same thing that the command is doing he's decided that he knows what's best for us same thing would case sodded and society condone certain accepts it because the victims were gay came in living together openly so it's that kind of mentality that is appalling and that's the legacy this case has lived us with I don't feel great anger or animosity towards a petty case out in comprehension and sadness perhaps I've always thought that he was mentally unwell I don't think he could have done what he did if he hadn't been unwell [Music] four generations of my family now lie buried in Fiji in some way they've all left their mark I can't help but be struck by something very circular in this story they are in the beginning was the Reverend William we're Lindsay encouraging Fijians to be good Christians and live according to the Bible then just over a century later his great-grandson is murdered by a man quoting the same Bible to justify what he had done bleeding he was following God's command Fiji is very much in my blood like John I'll always be drawn back but it has to be to a place for the present and not the past [Music] [Music] wrong-o wrong-o everything I am on the wall support echidna but the arrows are [Music] [Music] so cost prohibitive [Music] so pyro [Music]

Channel: Real Crime

Views: 160,732

Rating: 4.7353415 out of 5

Keywords: real crime, crime documentary, true crime, an island calling documentary, an island calling documentary, documentary, fiji, travel, culture, history, island, documentaries, gay, murder, wild, full length documentaries, tv shows - topic, documentary movies - topic, full documentary, film, adventure, bbc documentary, channel 4 documentary, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice presents, vice news, vbs.tv, vice.com, vice, vice magazine

Id: WWWsujDPRAI

Length: 75min 5sec (4505 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020