They met almost every day and cared for each other’s partners.
Davies was god-father to one of Mr Murphy’s children. Mr Murphy would drop Davies’ children to school.
Yet on November 22, 2015, their friendship seemed to count little as Davies brandished a baseball bat on a Puhoi hilltop, north of Auckland.
At his feet, Mr Murphy lay in a pool of blood, hogtied with handcuffs and cable ties and a hood over his head.
At one point, a desperate Mr Murphy begged for help and “tried to yell ‘save me’ to some c***s that weren’t there”, Davies would later confess.
Finally, Davies selected a heavy tree branch and delivered three powerful finishing blows that caved Mr Murphy’s skull in.
Yesterday, a jury at the High Court of Auckland took two and a half hours to find him guilty of Mr Murphy’s kidnapping and murder.
Today CCTV footage of missing man Lance Murphy has emerged.
Source: 1 NEWS
Outside the courtroom, Shannon Murphy, backed by hugging family members, said she had waited a long time for justice.
“Lance our brother was a loved husband, son, brother, grandfather and son, who should still be with us today,” she said.
The verdict ended three weeks of colourful and, at times, bizarre testimony.
Davies had claimed the killing was self defence.
Waiuku man Lance John Murphy, 56, was last seen at a petrol station in Warkworth on November 21.
Source: Supplied
He and other witnesses said Mr Murphy was a hitman, whose 10 murder victims included the cold case death of Jane Furlong, a man known as “Mad” Wayne Henderson and a steel worker called Jim Donnelly.
Mr Murphy even murdered his terminally ill wife because she stank and her cancer treatment had become too expensive, Davies said.
A police spokeswoman later told NZ Newswire, there was no evidence to support Davies’ claims.
Explaining he was a spiritual man, Davies further claimed Mr Murphy’s dead wife appeared to him as a spirit urging him to take revenge against her husband.
When he shared his belief Mr Murphy had murdered his wife to a friend, he claimed Mr Murphy began a campaign to kill him, threatening to use him “as a boat anchor”.
However, Crown prosecutor Gareth Kayes rubbished Davies’ claims, saying other witnesses described Mr Murphy and his wife as a devoted couple.
He asked Davies, why if he was scared of Mr Murphy, had he allowed him to visit every day and to even drop his children to school.
“You are letting your kids go to school with a serial killer?” he asked him.
Judge Anne Hinton agreed and, late in the trial, ruled self defence could not be considered by the jury as a valid reason for Davies’ actions.
Mr Kayes said no one, not even Davies, disputed he killed Mr Murphy, nor that he intended to kill him when he struck his head repeatedly.
While convinced Davies had not acted in self defence, he told the jury, Davies’ muddled testimony meant they were “never going to get to the truth” of why he killed his old friend Mr Murphy.
Davies’ co-accused, 38-year-old Steve Gunbie, was found not guilty of helping kidnap Mr Murphy and hiding his body.
Davies will be sentenced on April 12.
-TVNZ
