After a relentless investigation that traversed six years, David Benbow has been found guilty of the murder of Michael McGrath.
The 55-year-old Christchurch man has always denied killing his friend and hiding the body but today, that charade came crumbling down.
It ends a long legal saga: Benbow’s first trial ended without a decision earlier this year, the jury unable to agree over his guilt.
The evidence was heard again in a retrial held over the last seven weeks, and the second jury had no doubt, finding him guilty of murder.
The charge was proven with no body, no murder weapon and no forensic evidence of any kind. Not a single speck of blood was ever uncovered by police.
Six years after McGrath disappeared, a jury has found his friend, Benbow, guilty of his murder. (Source: 1News)
McGrath, a builder aged 49, disappeared suddenly and without a trace in May 2017, shortly after starting a romance with Benbow’s ex-partner. He has never been heard from again.
Sophisticated cover-up
Investigators have always insisted they were up against a sophisticated cover-up, and dedicated thousands of hours to cracking the case.
Benbow, a former prison guard, was a “careful” and “calculated” man – to quote Crown prosecutor Barnaby Hawes – but “everyone makes mistakes”.
“He's hidden the body well and utilised an outdoor scene to his advantage, kept things very simple and spoken to nobody about it,” Hawes told the court when the evidence came to an end last week.
The prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence to catch the former prison guard following a trail of clues that showed his behaviour was so suspicious it could not be ignored.
While they had no forensic evidence, they found several pieces of suspicious behaviour that pointed to Benbow’s guilt.
At his second trial, David Benbow has been found guilty of murdering Michael McGrath. (Source: 1News)
They argued Benbow had soured on his old school friend because McGrath started dating his ex-partner. At one point, just 20 days before the murder, he said he wanted to “annihilate” him.
Police provided what they felt was evidence McGrath had visited Benbow’s property on the day he disappeared, pointing out Benbow had shut off the CCTV cameras at his home.
In police interviews, Benbow struggled to remember much from that day, despite being filmed visiting different petrol stations and changing his outfit a number of times.
A gun he owned was found to be missing, along with the ammunition and a key needed to access it.
Benbow couldn’t explain why – the Crown argued it was because he had disposed of it.
The prosecution also played a video showing Benbow visiting a dump a day after the murder, arguing he disposed of clothing, shoes and what was described as a lining material.
'Confirmation bias'
Despite this, the defence team implored the jury to acquit Benbow, warning he was victim of police “confirmation bias”.
Benbow’s lawyer Kirsten Grey suggested police had tunnel vision from the start and failed to investigate other plausible scenarios, creating “fertile ground for a miscarriage of justice”.
Key to this argument was the fact that not a single speck of forensic evidence was found at Benbow’s property or car, despite an exhaustive search.
Searching at Kate Valley Landfill for potentially dumped items took 8000 hours of police time and was fruitless, she said.
Further, Benbow’s memory gaps were easily explainable, she argued, as he was depressed about the break-up and may have misplaced his gun when moving between homes.
But in the end, the jury found there was no need for a body or forensic evidence.
There were simply too many strands of evidence pointing to Benbow for his innocence to be believed.
The jury foreman delivered the one word police had been working towards for more than six years: “Guilty.”
So while many questions remain about exactly what happened to McGrath, one has finally been answered.
David Benbow killed him.
He will be sentenced on March 5.
SHARE ME