However on October 3 2024 when Elliot Cameron killed the 83 year old widow he did gardening for with an axe, an unfolding tragedy began to be exposed unravelling from a multitude of systemic failures.

Back up 50m years with a 27 year old who had been a good student and tennis player developed trauma from a Brain Tumor. Surgery was performed but some Brain tissue had to be removed to complete the tumor surgery and that resulted in Elliot Cameron being left with significant mood and behavioural problems.

In 1975 Elliot following a series of family dramas leading to his being asked to leave the Bishopdale Family home and his taking up residence in a University Hall, one morning Elliot went back to the family home, recovered a poorly stored .22 rifle and shot his 21 year old brother dead with four head shots while he slept in his bed.

After a one day hearing in court Elliot was found not guilty on an Insanity defense and publishing of his name and that of his dead brother and father were suppressed.

Roll on almost half a century and Elliot after many involvements with “Mental Health Services’ was apparently deemed safe to be allowed greater freedoms and he began Gardening for an elderly couple on the Port Hills. This led to further work for the couples daughter and all was well?
Perhaps not, as in total ignorance of the serious mental issues Elliot Cameron had endured over many years his at times erratic responses and behaviour were accepted as merely different until that fateful morning, after the elderly man had previously died, his widow was hacked to death with an axe from the property tool shed by Elliot Cameron who this week was sentenced to life for murder with ten years non parole.

Now I along with many, accept rehabilitation must be a goal for mental health patients but sh*t will happen and just accessing help can be problematical. I have a old school mate who was hospitalised sixty years ago with a Bipolar type affliction and in those benighted days it was very common for families to treat such incidents with a degree of covering up and denial. Evidently my going to visit my mate in Christchurch hospital was an almost isolated incident as my mate has relayed to me in later years. Some years ago now that still good mate began spiralling into another event and pleas from his wife went unanswered by everyone she tried to get help from on spurious grounds his behaviour did not reach a criteria that would lead to official intervention. Well eventually the poor sod went into a manic event involving damage to his property and a full on Armed Offenders deployment went into operation. This was additionally traumatising for all involved as it followed only days after another incident in the City had ended with a dead Mental health Patient who refused to obey police direction to stop advancing with an unidentified weapon.

So a suppression order fifty years duration led to an old woman dead in rather awful circumstances is one death too many in any situation so all is not “Right” in the State of New Zealand and with the propensity to grant name suppression far more freely exercised in these allegedly enlightened times will the potential for further failures get worse, I believe it will but solutions, I offer nothing, but experts aplenty are at the trough and my current feeling is not much is happening.
There remains the mystery as to exactly where all that money the little fat fudge packer handed out to mental health ended up, so far not a lot of evidence the nation is better off.