He was arrested in March 2012. Middleton admitted his involvement later that day. The two men had once fantasised about working as mercenaries, in Thailand, where they would shut down illegal brothels and liberate girls forced to work as sex slaves. Heroes, men following a moral code, etc. In dismal reality, Cox gave Middleton his bloodstained clothes, Williams’ brown wallet, and the hammer, and Middleton burned them with diesel in an army ration tin.
Cox never told police what happened or why it happened. He told a friend, ‘I went there to fucking hit the bloke that knocked up my missus.’ But he’d planned it very, very carefully, and the lengths he went to — the six-hour drive, casing the joint, posing as a postman — pointed towards something a lot more than a punch.
Detective Sergeant McBryde doesn’t know for sure whether Cox took his own hammer to Williams’ place and lay in wait, or whether he knocked on the door and used a hammer belonging to Williams. Before his arrest, Cox told Davies a version of what happened. She didn’t go to the police. Why wasn’t she charged?
‘That’s what Tony’s family asked,’ McBryde said.
‘It’s a good question,’ I said.
‘It is a good question,’ he agreed. ‘She did lie to the police. She did not disclose what Cox told her. But she only found out after Tony had been killed. She wasn’t involved in the planning.’
According to Davies in court, this is Cox’s version of the attack: ‘He told me that Tony opened the door to him, and they shook hands, and then Matthew headbutted him. Tony threw a hammer at him and it missed and somewhere a screwdriver came into it. Tony had a screwdriver, and they ended up on the floor. Matthew was on his back, and he had Tony on top of him, and was fighting for his own life to stop the screwdriver stabbing him, and he remembered the hammer was behind him and reached for it, and swung up once, maybe twice.’
The prosecution told the jury that pretty much everything Cox had said was a lie. Williams was struck on the head and neck 27 times. There were a further 30 blows to the body. But some of what he said sounded accurate.
Davies was asked in court, ‘How did he know that Tony had died?’
She said, ‘Because he put a hammer through his skull.’
5
I asked ‘Wolfman’ Paul more about the glory days of Sex and Chocolate, and whether they had even bigger dreams. He said, ‘Yeah! We were never satisfied. We wanted to reach higher and higher. We wanted to be in the movies and make the albums. We never reached that pinnacle; we were just under the bar. Just riding along under that bar for the whole journey. I think we possibly could have done it.’
The great ride eventually slowed down, and the band became part-time. Tony found work as an orderly at the Gold Coast Hospital. He made up a room in his Mermaid Waters unit for his two kids. ‘They were his heart,’ said Paul.
The bachelor pad with the guitars and the surfing pictures, and the kids’ bedroom empty most of the week . . . This wasn’t a cautionary tale of what happens when you chase a dream and the dream dies. The yellow brick road had nothing to do with it. This was just the road a man’s life can take when none of his relationships work out. He had a raging argument on the morning of his death. The mother of one of his children dropped him home after they’d been Christmas shopping, and neighbours saw him jump on the car when it reversed down the driveway. He threw a stone at the car. It missed, and hit the neighbour’s fence. ‘You’re not taking the presents!’ he screamed. And then that term of abuse straight out of Aotearoa, the insult reaching back to his childhood and adolescence in Matapihi, the rallying cry of frustrated men the length of New Zealand: ‘You can’t do this to me, you fucken mole!’
Cox paid his visit not long after. That night, Paul Thompson went to the apartment. He was furious that Bones had missed their gig at a club.
‘It was the first time that’d ever happened. So I went over and looked in the window. Pressed my nose against it. Couldn’t see anything. I said, “Bones! Wake up! You in there?” I went to the front door. It was unlocked. All I had to do was turn the front door knob. I actually had my hand on the handle. I could have gone in . . .’
The body was found the next day by Kevin Keepa from Sex and Chocolate. A neighbour saw him approach the apartment. They were asked in court, ‘What did he look like?’
‘A New Zealand type of guy.’
‘Do you mean Maori?’
‘Like Maori, yeah.’
Keepa started screaming to his wife, ‘Don’t come in! Don’t come in!’ Emergency services were called, and then he phoned Paul. ‘He was just screaming,’ Paul said. ‘He couldn’t talk properly. You couldn’t understand what he was saying. I was saying, “What? Did someone hurt Tony?”’
Rigor mortis had set in. There was blood, and vomit. A tap was running. Tony’s guitars were still on their stands, but a Christmas tree had fallen over. There was a bubble-blowing toy on the floor, bought that day at Kmart. He’d also got bread and onions, probably to make stuffing for Christmas Day.
Keepa told the court that he knelt beside Tony, and prayed for him. He quit the band not long afterwards.
Paul said, ‘I wish it’d been me who found Tony. I wish I’d just turned
