Cox: ‘Yeah. Something’s got to happen.’
Middleton, in court: ‘He talked about that he might use a hammer.’
3
I visited Tony Williams’ closest friend, Maori entertainer Paul Thompson, at his home in the Brisbane suburb of Sunnybank. His stage name was listed on his website as: ‘The Wolfman’. I said, ‘Hello, Wolfman.’ He laughed, sheepishly. He was a softly spoken man, quite shy, and sad. ‘He’s heartbroken,’ said his wife, Anita. There was red bougainvillea in the front yard, and a screen door at the top of the stairs. A dog howled, and Paul advised against walking back to the local shops at night: ‘There was a shooting that way, another guy got shot over there . . .’
It was a happy household. Paul and Anita sat at the kitchen table and reminisced about Tony, and let their three children stay up in the lounge until the two girls fell asleep on couches, and their son dozed off on the floor. She’d made them mashed potato and sausages for dinner.
Paul had moved to the Gold Coast from Porirua in 1995. He’d sung in bands, and supported himself as a meatworker; Australia marked a new determination to live the dream and make a living from playing music. He met Tony a year later.
‘He was a cheeky Maori boy with a little glint in his eye,’ he said. ‘He had a glow about him. He was quite shy. He talked in a mumble sometimes because of his shyness. But when he talked, it was almost as if he was determined to get to know who you really are, and connect with you. That was Bones all over.
‘He had nothing to hide. He’d look you in the face when he talked to you. That’s what I loved about Bones,’ he said, using Williams’ nickname again. ‘If there’s a word for better than best friends . . . We were more than brothers.
‘I’d ring him, and say, “Bro, come over! I’ve got food.” Whenever he wanted to get away, or I wanted to get away, we’d be over at each other’s houses. We knew what we both wanted, and that was peace. A peace that we didn’t get anywhere else. Just knowing that he was there, my right-hand man . . .’
He wept, and then he said, ‘I’m all right.’
He talked about Tony’s love of surfing, of his board painted in Rasta colours with a koru pattern. ‘Surfing with his boys from Matapihi and Arataki. That’s what he loved. He was proud of where he came from. Proud of his whanau. Loved his mum. He stayed true to his nature; Tauranga boy. He was wearing shorts and a singlet as when I first met him to the last.
‘He loved the lifestyle here. Surf. Bikinis! I came over strictly for the music.’ Paul formed a band, which really was called Chur Bro, and Tony became the soundman. He formed another group with Tony on vocals (‘Bones had such a beautiful high falsetto’), and Kevin Keepa — three funky Maori guys who really did call their new band Sex and Chocolate.
They developed new moves, took on a new attitude, inspired by a movie based on the life and times of The Temptations. ‘The band was started in March 1998, and the movie came out in August,’ Paul said. ‘That’s when we started getting serious. It just connected to us. I got Tony over and we watched it every day for like a month. Every detail. We even learned word for word all the lines in the whole movie from start to finish. The dress, the hairstyle. Their mannerisms.’
It worked, and Sex and Chocolate became a smash live attraction at Surfers Paradise. ‘Things just took off,’ he said. ‘It was amazing how fast it grew. We had people packing out our gigs. We literally did every club on the strip. Shooters, The Penthouse, Avenue, Bird and Bar, all four clubs adjacent to each other, and we played all four, daily, constantly.’
They were the good times. They made good money, they had each other, they were on top of their game. Paul met Anita; Tony met everyone. ‘He was very honest about who he was,’ said Anita. ‘He didn’t lie to any of the girls about the way he lived his life. He was very upfront, he never deceived anyone.’
What about their husbands and boyfriends?
Paul said, ‘I did see his car damaged every now and then — a broken window, a FUCK YOU written on the windscreen. I’d say to him, “You crossed the wrong brother.” It was a joke. It was also a warning. I knew someone might step him out and give him a punch on the jaw, knock his lights out, break an arm, poke an eye out, at the very, very worst. But you’d always laugh it off.’
4
Williams was killed in his apartment on Sunshine Boulevard at around midday on 23 December 2011. Less than two hours later, Cox texted his girlfriend: I love you baby more than life itself and always will baby xoxo.
Sarah Davies heard the news of the murder on Christmas Day. She was asked in court, ‘Were you affected by Tony’s death?’
She said, ‘I was devastated.’
‘Did Matthew Cox say anything about that?’
She said, ‘After about a month it was frustrating him.’
‘What did he say?’
She said, ‘Basically, it was like, get over it.’
It took the police three months to make an arrest. Cox was careful; he hadn’t left any DNA, and he got his army buddy Middleton to dispose of the murder weapon — a claw hammer. But he did leave something behind. It remains a mystery how it ever got there. It was a receipt for three dresses one of Davies’ previous boyfriends had bought for her. She said in court, ‘I’d planned on breaking up with him that day that I got the dresses, but I didn’t have the heart to.’
Police tracked the receipt — a ‘foreign object’, as Detective Sergeant McBryde termed it
