Coroner Garry Evans ruled that Dixon took his own life, and said: ‘Had Mr Dixon been moved to accommodation in the Mason Clinic or other mental-health unit, it’s unlikely he would have died.’
Before the suicide, Hart had talked of another appeal, of forcing a third trial. He probably would have lost that one as well. Moore was too good for him. Moore, the golden boy of his generation; Moore, who had survived the humiliation of the media discovering a photo of him wearing a red tinsel wig and a fake pair of women’s breasts on a boat coming back from the Pitcairn Islands, where he prosecuted the famous sex abuse case; Moore, with his superior grooming and his thrilling voice, told a more powerful story than Hart. He spoke slowly, carefully, and kept his eyes narrowed.
He told the jury, ‘Dixon is not normal. But he was a man in control and in charge. It was just an attack by angry man. This was the extreme end of domestic violence.’
And then he demonstrated the Samurai attack. He raised the imaginary sword above his head with both hands. He held it there. His waistcoat rode up, and revealed a plump tum straining against his white shirt. Farce, briefly; and then tragedy, enduringly, as Moore brought down the pretend lethal weapon fast, again and again, chopping, slicing, miming all that ‘screaming and blood and silver’, and said: ‘He hit them as hard as he could with the intention to kill. This isn’t a madman out of control. It’s all planned. It’s all precise. This is an execution. Nothing this man does is an accident . . . This case is all about understanding the human spirit.’
6
I was mooching around inside Courtroom 6 the day after the jury were sent out to deliberate when I heard two soft, really quite polite knocks on a door. It was the jury. They had reached their verdict. It was 11.03am. A junior lawyer was brushing her hair, a detective was reading the sports pages of The New Zealand Herald; otherwise, the court was quiet and deserted, as it had been since the jury was sent out at 12.17pm the previous day. And then came those taps on the door. Within 20 minutes, the courtroom was packed, at attention, silent, tense, wondering, waiting for the final word on the seven-week trial.
Seven weeks of beautiful weather, blue day after blue day, cicadas scratching up a racket in the courtyard magnolia. So many other cases came and went. Heavyweight boxer David Tua was there that first week to fight his ex-manager for money. He strummed his guitar in the shade on Parliament Street, and chowed down on $30 steaks at the nearby Hyatt for lunch. There were appearances by the Refugee Status Authority, and Pop ’n’ Good Popcorn. The First Samoan Pentecostal Church v The Door of Hope City Church was heard in chambers.
Mad, or bad? The pointless question was about to be answered. Two rows of journalists were there. Joyce was there. Thin and giddy, she was a veteran spectator of High Court trials, had seen a lot in her time, but the Dixon trial was something special. I talked to her that first week. She was genuinely excited. ‘It’s got everything!’ she said. ‘There’s drugs, there’s murder, there’s maiming, there’s kidnapping!’
Joyce’s companion, Helga, was there. Joyce was nimble, cheerful; Helga walked stiffly beneath a big black umbrella in the sun, and never smiled. ‘I know the boy,’ she said. She knew Dixon when he was a child. She was friends with his mother. They were both Jehovah’s Witnesses. She said in passing one day to me that evolutionists and psychiatrists were encouraged to practise sodomy.
Kathie Hills was there. She came every single day. She took swigs from a homeopathic remedy to steady her nerves. I don’t know whether it did her any good. She is Renee Gunbie’s mother.
Hart was there, Moore was there, Justice Judith Potter was there, a gracious lady who was in the ungracious habit of yawning with her mouth open. Dixon was there. His haircut had grown back, and resembled someone normal. But he plainly wasn’t well. He had vomited in the police van on the way to court earlier that week; he was given something light to eat to settle his stomach, but then he was rushed from the court, and threw up, loudly and heavily, on his way to the cells. He also had diarrhoea.
He was such a wretch, hopeless and demented, and horrible right to the bitter end. After he was found guilty, Justice Potter remanded him for sentencing, and he was bundled out of the courtroom. Kathie Hills sarcastically said to him on his way out: ‘See you later, Tony.’ Just before he disappeared, he got in his reply: ‘It won’t get you her hand back.’
A few minutes later, Courtroom 6 was once again quiet and deserted. A trolley was brought in to wheel out the great stack of court files; police discussed the removal of exhibits, including bullet fragments taken from James Te Aute, the gun, the Samurai sword.
I took away something else. A kind of souvenir, filched from the rubbish tin in Courtroom 6 — Dixon’s Styrofoam drinking cup, with his handwriting on the side. He’d given it to Barry Hart while they were waiting for the jury to come in. It was a thoughtful gesture, a kind of condolence. It read: If anyone’s fucked this case it’s me.
7
The last time I saw Dixon was a month later, at sentencing, on a Friday morning. That afternoon, I went to the offices of forensic psychiatrist Dr Ian Goodwin. He said, ‘I know Tony pretty well.’
He’d interviewed ‘Tony’ more times than anyone — 17 sessions, when Dixon was held at the Mason Clinic — and had declared him sane. His opinion
