Photo: Ebony Lamb Photography
By Steven Price.
In the podcast Mr Lyttle meet Mr Big, I quote law professor Richard Sherwin saying story-telling is the art of leaving things out. And having sat through the nine-week trial into the murder of Brett Hall, there was a lot to leave out. Hall disappeared in 2011, and three years later in 2014 Halcombe builder David Lyttle – who was also Hall’s good mate – was arrested for his murder. Police had run a ‘Mr Big’ sting and Lyttle had confessed to the murder.
After a series of trials and mistrials – some tossed out because of “disgraceful” disclosure failing by police – Lyttle’s main trial was held in 2019.
Obviously, there was a lot of evidence put before the court, some of it pointing to David Lyttle’s guilt, some of it pointing the other way, and some of it, well, I honestly don’t know what it was for. I couldn’t get it all in the podcast.
I included evidence that made the most sense to me. If particular evidence cut both ways, I tended to leave it out. Some I included just because I found it interesting. Hey, it’s my story.
But you can disagree with my choices. You might think I’m biased for cutting some of this. Fair enough! And to help you do that, here’s a list of some of the things I left out, and a bit about why it didn’t make the cut.
Of course, even this list isn’t complete. But maybe it will shift the needle for you.
David did it!
David’s early Sunday morning driving
At first David told police he drove straight to Pitangi on the Sunday morning. He took Z-nails, and put some strap tensioners on the house frame. But he later said he tried to go fishing on the way. And it turns out there were already Z-nails in Brett’s caravan. And why didn’t David finish the house on the Thursday? More evidence that David’s story is falling apart? Well, maybe. But he didn’t end up going fishing, and his fishing attempts were a consistent thread in most of his statements to police. The Z-nails? Maybe David didn’t know they were there. And there are many reasons he may not have gotten around to finishing the job on Thursday.
Why did David know that a soap dispenser was missing?
David told police that a soap dispenser and two or three water bottles were missing from Brett’s campsite. Why did he focus on a soap dispenser? Maybe because he’d used that soap dispenser to wash blood from his hands! Was he cunningly trying to divert attention by reporting them missing himself? I’m going to say that’s a stretch.
David’s story about Brett’s blood
David told police that Brett hit his thumb with a hammer while working on the house and peeled the skin back. He said there was a lot of blood. Was he making up a story in case blood was found at the campsite? Or did Brett hit his thumb with a hammer? No trace of Brett’s blood was found at the campsite.
David shot then suffocated Brett
In the podcast, I don’t go into David’s full account to Mr Big of the killing. He says he shot Brett in the head, but then Brett didn’t die immediately. He was still breathing, so David suffocated him. Then he tried to move the body and found it too hard so he laid down a tarp and cut him in half and bagged the halves.
That bit about Brett not dying immediately: the experts said that’s entirely plausible. The Crown says, that’s an odd thing to thing to make up. Why not just say “I shot him”? It suggests David’s account was true, at least in this respect. Also, why make up the bit about chopping up Brett? He didn’t need to say that if he’s inventing a story. It’s not something the police told him they suspected.
Fair points, I think. But it doesn’t get around the problems with the claim that David quickly and relatively bloodlessly chopped up the body. The judge ended up finding (for the purposes of sentencing) that David didn’t chop the body in half.
David’s sore arm
Remember David had surgery on his shoulder early in 2011? The surgeon said he had full pain-free movement of his shoulder by 17 May 2011, about two weeks before David disappeared. But then, on May 31 – just after Brett disappears - David is back to his GP, complaining of a sore shoulder. Is that because he’s chopped up, moved, and buried a body, including digging two holes? Possibly. Or maybe it just got sore again.
The confession to Nick
The Crown admits there were incentives for David to confess to Scott – Mr Big. But it says there were no such incentives to confess to Nick. After he confessed to Scott, David went straight down and confessed to Nick. Aha! He didn’t need to do that. Scott had said it could remain just between them. It wasn’t the sting that made David confess to Nick – he was now already in the gang. It must have been the truth!
The Crown made quite a lot of this, but it has never convinced me. I don’t find it all surprising that David would confess again to Nick. He knew Scott and Nick were close. He knew that CJ’s secret about raping the 14-year-old hadn’t stayed secret. There was no downside to telling Nick. What’s more, he may well have felt he needed to come clean with Nick, because he’d talked about Brett to him before, telling him he thought Brett’s disappearance was related to drug dealing. And he could hardly keep quiet about it on the ride-along the next day, whose very purpose was to locate the burial sites. Besides, David’s confession to Nick was full of the same false information as his confession to Scott.
David didn’t do it!
The plastic bags
In his “confession” to Scott, David Lyttle said he wrapped Brett’s body in black plastic bags that he bought at the supermarket. He says, “I only bought one lot before I done it” (that is, killed Brett). He says police obtained CCTV footage from the supermarket of him buying them. CCTV footage does show David buying black plastic bags at New World on Saturday 28 May 2011. And David tells Scott those are the bags he used. But… that’s the day after the Crown says David killed (and bagged) Brett. So, is it more bullshit in his confession? Probably. But possibly not entirely – because he also tells Scott he had some bags lying around home that he used. And he did have bags lying around home. And maybe he used the Saturday bags to wrap the guns. So I’m not very persuaded that this adds much. But the confession is still full of bullshit.
Did the Hilux move?
Brett kept a couple of utes at Pitangi. One was a red Hilux. It’s the one with blood on the door that came from some unidentified man. (That blood might be old and entirely unrelated to the killing, but it might also belong to the killer). More significant, maybe, is where the red ute was. It was found in an unusual spot. Brett didn’t usually park it there. John Thurlow and one other witness gave evidence that it was in its usual position on Friday/Saturday – different to how it was found on the following Wednesday. That is, it was moved after the Crown said David killed Brett. That means the campsite wasn’t entirely unchanged between Saturday and Wednesday, when the family and police arrived. It means someone – Brett? The killer? – drove it sometime after the Crown says Brett was already dead. That feels important, except that Brett’s son Damien, who was there on the Saturday and the Wednesday, says it was in the same place. So did David Lyttle. If Lyttle was guilty, you’d think he would have rushed to agree that the Hilux might have moved. So that felt murky to me. But you might think it helps David, on balance.
The laptop and camera
This is maybe the most contentious thing that I omitted. I’m not sure what to make of it, and it’s complicated. After a flurry of discussions about it behind the scenes during the trial, it was left hanging.
Here’s the guts of it. You might remember Brett had a trail camera up at Pitangi. It detects movement, which triggers it to take photos. On the Friday morning – that’s the Friday the Crown says David killed Brett – David and Brett went out to check Brett’s trail camera. It takes a picture of David.
David said Brett took the laptop with him that morning. He pulled out the camera’s memory card and used the laptop to look at the images.
When police look at the laptop after Brett disappears, they find the picture of David from the Friday morning. They calculate that the camera’s time-stamp is out by about an hour. But it was taken about 8:30am.
On the camera’s memory card, they find an image of a sheep’s bum (everyone in the trial calls it that). The timestamp is 4.50pm Friday. (Which probably means it was taken at 3.50pm).
A police expert prepares a report on what was on the laptop. And here’s the crucial bit: that report lists the sheep’s bum image. It lists activities on the laptop and says the camera card with the sheep’s bum photo was accessed. Did Brett check the camera again on the Friday afternoon and downloaded that image? If so, it must have been after 3:50pm. Brett’s still alive well after David has left. David didn’t kill him!
This seems like a very big deal. But then again… maybe not. The Crown’s evidence is that the laptop was powered up and checked on Friday morning, but then not powered up again until the following Wednesday night. That was when Brett’s brother Michael took a look, after Brett was reported missing. But that would mean that Brett didn’t put the card in the laptop in between. The laptop was never turned on in that time.
So where did the sheep bum image come from? The Crown says it was never on the laptop. It was only on the camera’s memory card.
What about that police expert report that referred to the sheep’s bum image? The Crown says it was just a timeline, a reconstruction. (And it did record that the laptop powered down at 8.55am Friday).
To make things even more complicated, the police expert who wrote that report, Mark Taylor, was looking at the original laptop in 2011. The police expert who gave evidence at the trial, Louise Zigliani, was looking at a clone of the laptop made in 2019.
What’s going on? Who knows? The defence says the sheep’s bum was on the laptop. The Crown says it wasn’t. The judge said: “Well it might have been, we just don’t know”. For some reason, Mark Taylor was never called to explain how he created this report.
In the end, the parties agreed the jury would simply be told that Ms Zigliani arranged for the laptop to be cloned in 2019 and didn’t find the sheep’s bum photo on that image.
There’s more complex detail that I haven’t gone into. But in the end, I wasn’t left with an impression that this evidence moved the needle much, because the defence didn’t really challenge the evidence that the laptop was turned off on Friday morning and not turned on again until Wednesday. But you might disagree, and all power to you.
David and Brett getting on well
The podcast describes evidence that Brett and David were getting on well in the days leading up to Brett’s disappearance. There’s more. Visitors to the Pitangi campsite a couple of weeks earlier said they were friendly. The texts between David and Brett reveal no real acrimony, and on the day Brett disappears, David texts, “You back mate”, and calls Levona and leaves two messages. You can read that whichever way you like.
Could David move Brett’s body?
Recovering from shoulder surgery. Ongoing shoulder pain. Physically unfit. Poor health. Congenital lung weakness. Repeated chest infections. David weighed 65 kg. Brett was probably 90kg. The doctor said David couldn’t lift more than 2kg without pain. Could David really move Brett? Could he dig holes?
The Crown’s case was that this was why David cut the body in half. And that, sure it might have hurt, but you can put up with that if you need to do something badly enough.
I refer to some of this in the series. And the medical evidence was a bit mixed. But even if David did cut Brett in half, there must be a real question about whether he could lift and bury the body parts.
