WHO DOESN’T love a good homegrown Hitchcock-style thriller?
Heroes, villains, intrigue, drama, the hint of murder and a plot twist no one saw coming.
Which is what we have here – a 2014 murder mystery set in suburban west Auckland back in 2014. Today eight years on we are no closer to the truth.
What made no sense then makes even less now.
For those like Marc Spring who were accused of orchestrating this attack, it’s frustrating.
The answers have been far too long in coming and he can’t understand why. For Spring answers equal vindication and that parlays into one ‘very big f*** you to a whole bunch of nimrods and naysayers.
“I am many things. A murdering bastard is not one of them, “said Spring who promised he would not give up the search for the final piece of this puzzle.
Some of those clues could possibly be in the 2019 book Whale Oil, authored by Margie Thomson. It’s Blomfield’s account of what happened during that period – or didn’t happen.
For Blomfield that night back in 2014 was and always will be terrifying.
Home was a place where he’d always felt safe. But not that night, the night Ned Paraha emerged from the darkness with murderous intent.
That night would become about survival.
Fortunately as it turned out the man sent to kill Blomfield – patched gang member, Ned Paraha – was either clueless or having a bad day at the office.
He spectacularly botched the job and Blomfield lived to tell the story, while bungling Ned got five years and 10 months inside for his trouble.
Blomfield has always had his theories about who might have been behind all this but they’re only theories – and not good ones at that.
So let’s hear the story as Blomfield tells it. And then we’ll hear from others like Mark Stephens and Spring who both think Blomfield is in fairyland and should come home soon because his family misses him.
“This man has no idea where imagination stops and reality begins. If he had clarity it would obscure the murky sunless view of life that he has”
So from the get-go we establish Blomfield’s character. He’s a victim.
It’s a role he enjoys and one he takes seriously.
In the book you see how he uses that status to victimise non-victims and create new ones as well.
While this is going on, the truth gets further and further away which may or may not be convenient for Blomfield.
So where do we start. 12 April 2014, good a place as any – the day of the attack.
It’s 11.30pm and the neighbours have noticed a commotion so go out to investigate. They find Blomfield – who is not yet a victim but soon will be – and another man fighting.
Neighbour Ann Barnes watches the drama go down as Blomfield tries to fight off his attacker who at this point is probably fighting blind given its dark and he’s wearing a Spiderman mask of all things.
He does, though, have a gun but clearly has no idea how to use it.
That night he fires only one shot at Blomfield. Which Blomfield survives. All that tells us is that Paraha is not a good shot.
Why no second shot then? Well Paraha can’t work the gun which says a lot about Paraha and the planning that went into this.
This is an interesting point.
From the moment Paraha can’t fire that weapon he no longer poses the same threat that he did earlier.
So why doesn’t Blomfield pounce.
Says Marc Spring. “Paraha has no gun, no Spiderman powers we know of and it’s late. What is he going to do?
What he does, according to Blomfield’s account is run.
But Blomfield has him in his sights, he says, which turns out to be not quite true. In the book Blomfield says after they fall on the ground together by the deck area somehow Paraha flees.
“So Spiderman becomes the Invisible Man at 11.30 at night in tiny little Greenhithe and that’s the last we see of him despite the fact he’s miles from home wearing a bloody Spiderman mask,“ said Spring.
“Maybe he got a lift from the neighbours or booked into a local motel to rest up for the night while he waited for a change of clothes. Ridiculous”
“It’s from this point that nothing is quite as it seems which is why we are going to keep asking questions.”
We went to Blomfield for answers but like Paraha that night we could not find them.
Spring says “I guess when the cops talked me back in 2014, they made 2 things clear in my view, and that one, I was not a suspect, and two, the cops did not think Blomfield was being completely honest in his account of what went on”, “so how on the book draws its conclusions I will never know”
IN PART THREE OF THS SPECIAL REPORT WE WILL LOOK AT THE EVENTS THAT UNFOLDED IN THE DAYS AFTER THE ATTACK TO SEPARATE THE FACT FROM THE FICTION AFTER AN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST SPRING HIRES GETS IN TOUCH WITH THE PARNELL PANTHER… WE WONDER WHY MARGIE THOMSON NEVER THOUGHT TO TALK WITH THE PANTHER TO VERIFY THESE DETAILS.
