Leigh Matthew Frederick Beer who has been on trial for murder for the last four weeks. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
A jury has decided that a New Plymouth man is a calculated killer rather than a bumbling wannabe hero who tried valiantly to save his girlfriend from a house fire in 2022.
After a four-week trial, 33-year-old Leigh Matthew Frederick Beer has been found guilty of murdering 21-year-old supermarket worker Emma Field.
Beer was also found guilty of arson and of assault with intent to injure - a charge relating to a fight with a man who stopped to help the blaze.
Emma Field Photo: NZME
Emma Field was most likely alive but unconscious when the flat the couple shared in a divided villa on Devon Street West was engulfed in flames.
Beer, who has sat impassively in the dock during the trial dressed in a dark suit and white basketball sneakers, betrayed little emotion as the verdicts were read out.
His mother, grandmother and sister, who had stationed themselves immediately behind the dock during the entire trial, held each other and sobbed.
Further back in the public gallery there were gasps and more tears from friends and family of Field - many of them wearing hoodies with Justice for Emma logos on them.
After the verdict they released purple balloons outside the courthouse in her memory.
Family and friends of Emma Field after the verdict. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Detective Senior Sergeant Gerard Bouterey acknowledged both the families involved saying "there were no winners" in such tragedies.
"We've got Leigh Beer's family obviously they're going to have a son brother, friend go away into jail for a while.
"And we've got Emma Field's family, who've obviously lost a loved one, and it's been two years since the offending and we've got another three months to wait until sentencing and they will still be grieving through that process. So there's no winners in a case like this."
Bouterey said it had been a difficult investigation.
"Every time a fire occurs, obviously the scene is damaged and it takes a whole lot of investigation. We have to speak to a whole lot of witnesses, view CCTV and that type of thing."
The fact the case was largely circumstantial also complicated matters.
"Yeah, that's always difficult. Again, what we need to do then is be thorough in our investigations, make sure we talk to everybody who's able to give us information, get all the evidence we can and put that before the court."
Detective Senior Sergeant Gerard Bouterey. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Nobody saw Beer set on fire the mattress that a forensic fire investigator had identified as the ignition point for the blaze on the night of 27 May, 2022.
The jury had to evaluate a largely circumstantial case to come to its verdict.
It accepted that fuelled by alcohol and angry at being left behind by friends, who had gone into town to carry on partying without him, Beer walked back into the flat at about 10.47pm. CCTV captured the group coming out onto the street and Beer returning alone.
His hand bleeding from earlier punching out the front door window, he had grabbed a faulty butane lighter from a kitchen drawer and turned his anger on Field, who had gone to bed early upset at Beer's antics.
He had then flipped the queen-sized bed she was last seen lying on and set the mattress and bedding on fire at about 10.50pm, according to the forensic fire investigator. He held a naked flame to it long enough that ignition was self-sustaining.
Beer then waited about 10 minutes for the fire to take hold before beginning the "charade" of fighting the fire with a hose.
This was significant because in those early minutes it would have been possible for Beer to change his mind and put the blaze out with the building's fire hose, fire extinguisher or even to have called 111.
Instead, he had broken windows adding oxygen to the fire before beginning an ineffectual attempt to fight the blaze with the hose while screaming Emma's name and eventually getting into a punch up with someone who stopped to help, and being generally obstructive to the firefighting team when they first arrived.
The Crown said a butane lighter covered with Beer's blood found hidden under a step and a similarly bloodied cigarette lighter recovered from his pockets meant he had been caught "red-handed" with the "murder weapons".
Meanwhile Field, crushed against the exterior wall of the master bedroom and partially trapped under the heavy mattress, was likely alive but unconscious when the fire engulfed her.
She had a maximum of three minutes to exit the bedroom before it would have been non-survivable.
The jury rejected Beer's defence that somebody else could have lit the fire.
In particular, it did not accept the supposition that Crown witness Edmond Cook, a former Mongrel Mob member who had climbed over a fence from a neighbouring social housing provider, could have started the fire.
Beer's defence team argued Cook had attempted to burgle the flat, been disturbed by Field and panicked knowing that he was easily identifiable.
Stuff has reported that Cook had more than 300 convictions including burglary, arsons and assaults on women.
The jury was not convinced.
Earlier offending revealed
At the conclusion of the trial, suppression orders on Beer's prior violent offending were lifted.
In 2013, he was jailed for two years for a spate of offending which included an assault on his then three-year-old son, smashing a glass into the face of a drinking buddy and punching a police officer twice in the face while being arrested.
Beer pleaded guilty to two charges of wounding with intent to injure and one each of assaulting a child, assaulting police and wilful damage.
In December 2012, he had been drinking with a friend when they began arguing over a trivial matter and Beer stepped over coffee table and punched him in the face while holding a glass.
The man required 25 stitches.
The following year, while waiting to be sentenced, Beer, who had been drinking, backhanded his son when he would not go to bed - splitting his lip. He then went back to drinking with mates.
When confronted by the child's mum, he flew into a rage and smashed two panels in a door.
He punched the police officer when being arrested on those matters.
When sentenced in 2013, the judge noted alcohol was a common denominator in Beer's offending, jailed him for two years and issued a strike warning against him.
Beer will be sentenced for Field's murder in September.