Matt Vance: I have never knowingly met a murderer, I took it upon myself to get to know him
Bob's boat grew long stands of weed below the water, and algae and grass sprouted on the decks. Photo / Getty Images
The bay where our boat is moored lies miles from the nearest marina. It contains an assortment of modest cruising yachts, the odd retired fishing boat, and on a summer’s day, it has something wonderful you can’t quite put your finger on.
Like the boats that are moored there, the owners are modest and full of character. They are from a diverse range of vocations, from professors to posties. For the most part, they are good, honest folk who are joined together by having their unpretentious boats moored in a cheap, out-of-the-way bay time forgot. That was until Bob turned up in his dilapidated old ferro-cement yacht, named Te Taiao, and added “murderer” to the eclectic collection of professions.
I have never knowingly met a murderer, and as Bob was my closest neighbour in the mooring field, I took it upon myself to get to know him. I figured, murderer or not, it pays to know your neighbours. It seems I was alone in this attitude, as once his criminal past was known, everyone else avoided him.
I had known Bob a few weeks before I found out he was a murderer. At the annual mooring association meeting, an agenda item came up regarding the handful of mooring squatters who occasionally arrive in the bay. It turns out Bob was squatting on someone else’s mooring. There was a general murmur of discontent around the room before the chairman played his ace card. He thumped his fist on the table and yelled, “And I have it on good authority he is a convicted MURDERER!”
The room fell silent. The mooring group is known as a generous, likeable and non-judgmental society, but it seemed their goodwill had reached its limit at “murderer”. For better or worse, he became known as “Bob the murderer” around the bay.
Years ago, Listener columnist Steve Braunias and I became friends during his brief visit to Antarctica. Since then, he has written about and spent a lot of time with murderers, both accused and convicted. I contacted him and asked if anything stood out as unique to being a murderer. “For the most part, they are normal people who make a momentary bad choice,” he said. “It doesn’t take long to kill someone and then what are you left with? The rest of your life, doing the dishes and watching TV?”
The more I got to know Bob, the more this seemed to ring true. Despite his momentary bad choice and a spell in prison, he had gone back to his boring old life. He was a courteous neighbour, always stopping on his row out to Te Taiao, leaning on the oars of his dilapidated dinghy and talking about happenings in the bay. He spoke in a high-pitched soft voice and was well-mannered. He was generous, repeatedly offering both my wife and I bottles of his home-distilled moonshine.
As good neighbours do, Bob and I kept an eye on each other’s boats. I had noticed one afternoon that the tarp he had used to cover his leaking cabin top had come loose in the wind while he was away and was drifting behind his boat, hanging on by one snagged tiedown. I bundled it up and placed it in the cockpit for him. He seemed genuinely touched when I explained what had happened the next day, and kept saying, “Thank you, thank you,” in his whispery voice.
Te Taiao was covered in gear that Bob had found or foraged. Mussel buoys and fish bins were all stacked in an orderly mess on deck. The brief glimpses of the cabin through the cockpit hatch showed a similar arrangement below decks.
Bob would disappear for a few days and then return as if by magic. He had no car and seemed just to materialise from the bush as he launched his dinghy and slowly rowed out to his boat with a few bottles of moonshine.