In July 2011 Bruce Mouat came home drunk from a work function at 1am. Workmates walked him to his own front door. Minutes later he went backwards down the concrete steps outside it. He was 48, worked at the local dairy factory, and led the Taranaki Alpine and Cliff Rescue team. He died in Wellington Hospital eleven days later. Police considered homicide and ruled it out. A coroner found no foul play. At the tangi, his sister told police, his wife had hugged her and asked how it felt to hug a murderer — and the finding was accidental death regardless. It took five more years, and her own friends going to police about what she had been telling them, before Susan Mouat admitted she had pushed him. No new evidence was ever found.
IN MEMORY
Bruce Mouat led the Taranaki Alpine and Cliff Rescue team, volunteers who turn out for people in trouble on a mountain that has killed more than eighty people since the 1890s. If this episode stays with you, the volunteer search and rescue teams in your region are worth a thought.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Susan Mouat pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was convicted. She was never charged with murder, and the Crown accepted she did not intend to kill her husband. All proceedings, including her sentence appeal, concluded in December 2017.
Because she pleaded guilty, there was no trial. Her account that she pushed him in self-defence has never been tested by cross-examination, and no court has made findings of fact about what happened at that door. Between 2011 and 2016 she gave police three statements denying involvement before admitting it. Only the final version has ever been accepted, and it was accepted unchallenged. In that account she alleges Bruce was behaving abusively that night. That allegation has never been tested, he cannot answer it, and his family have never accepted it.
Her confession is quoted from a transcript released to the Weekend Herald and reported by Kelly Dennett. The remark at the tangi is a witness's recollection recorded in a coronial finding, not a recording. Susan Mouat told the coroner she could not remember saying it, and that if she did, it was black humour.
Much of the direct quotation in this episode comes from journalists reporting from court, some of it from a single outlet. Bruce and Susan Mouat's daughter is named in a public judgment; she is not named here, and will not be.
No detailed post-mortem or scene evidence in this case has ever been made public.
SOURCES
Exclusive: What Susan Mouat told police about husband's death / Son of Bruce Mouat breaks his silence — NZ Herald and Herald on Sunday, Kelly Dennett, 2017
Couple had rocky past before fatal fall — RNZ, 13 October 2017
rnz.co.nz/news/national/341480
Wife's guilty plea six years after death — Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 2017, reporting by David Burroughs
pressreader.com/new-zealand/taranaki-daily-news/20170905/281479276561336
Fall death ruled accidental — despite wife's quip — NZ Herald, February 2012
Home detention for Susan Mouat / Appeal denied — NZ Herald, 2017
Son of Taranaki manslaughter victim awarded thousands by court — Stuff, 2018
Estate: Kawana-Mouat v Mouat, High Court, 17 July 2018 — summarised at nzbloglex.blogspot.com
Sentencing Act 2002, s 15A (home detention) — legislation.govt.nz
SUPPORT
This episode deals with family violence, alcohol dependence and a death in the home.
New Zealand — Family violence: 0800 456 450. Women's Refuge: 0800 REFUGE. Alcohol Drug Helpline: 0800 787 797. Need to talk? Free call or text 1737.
Australia — 1800RESPECT: 1800 737 732. Lifeline: 13 11 14.
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