Heartbreak continues for grandma
No one was ever held accountable for Hail-Sage McClutchie’s death, making it impossible for her grandmother, Delia Percy, to find solace. reports.
Leanne Perrin’s memories of her son are held in a faded light blue photo album. She saw the album in the airport after she came back from hospital, after doctors had turned off her son’s life support. ‘‘I thought ‘yes, this is right for Jayden’.’’
She flips through the few photographs in it.
The photo she treasures most shows Jayden smiling, having eaten his dinner, which is still on his tiny lips. He looks like a healthy boy.
On another page is an ink imprint of his foot. On another, a hand. Sealed in a plastic bag and taped onto one of the album’s final pages is a wisp of golden hair. Perrin wishes there were more memories. Jayden would have been 19 this year.
He was 10 months old when, on June 7, 1998, he was flown from Nelson by emergency helicopter to Starship Hospital in Auckland. His body was limp.
A pathologist would later say that Jayden had suffered blunt force to his head. It was consistent with a direct, severe blow to his temple that caused his skull to fracture. The bruising had a pattern. It looked like the impression of a sock, or a shoe.
The pathologist said the blows caused soft tissues in his scalp and forehead to swell, along with massive bleeding in his scalp, massive fracturing of the skull, and severe internal brain damage.
Nelson Hospital paediatrician Dr Nick Baker told a court that the injury was ‘‘non-accidental’’ and comparable to what a child might suffer if unrestrained in a car which rolled at high speed. Swelling and bruising indicated that substantial force had been used, with multiple blows from different directions.
Jayden died soon after arriving in Auckland.
On the evening of June 6, a party was held at Jayden’s home in Washington Valley, Nelson. He lived there with his older infant sister Juanita, his mother, and her de facto partner, Aaron Dale Vercoe, a 24-year-old fisherman from Mapua.
Perrin told a court that she went to bed after being sick from drinking a ‘‘blue shooter’’ that Vercoe had bought for her.
At one stage, after visitors had left, she said she woke to hear her son whimpering. She found him in the lounge with Vercoe bending over him, changing his nappy.
She said she took Jayden back to her bed and noticed a small bruise beside his right eye.
Perrin said she awoke again to her son’s whimpering, and noticed more injuries to his face and head.
‘‘He was covered in bruises and he had a swollen head,’’ she said.
‘‘I was screaming, ‘Who bashed my baby?’. He [Vercoe] said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know’.’’
In the days after Jayden was attacked, Vercoe was interviewed by police on video.
Vercoe told them that on the night of the party, he took Jayden, who was screaming, into the lounge to change his nappy. He said the boy kept trying get away from him and that he slapped Jayden twice fairly hard to the head.
Later, Vercoe said they could have been blows or might have been punches.
‘‘I just hit him because he would not stop crying,’’ Vercoe said. ’’I just lost it.’’
He said he then put Jayden back to bed.
Vercoe was charged with murder. However, he later claimed he made a false confession to protect Perrin, whom he thought was going to be charged. Vercoe said he did not hit Jayden.
His defence lawyer Nigel Hampton, QC, suggested that a confession was forced from his client.
Hampton claimed in court that a detective had threatened Vercoe during an interview with another detective.
‘‘F... you, Aaron,’’ the detective allegedly said. ‘‘If it wasn’t you, we’re going to charge her.’’
The detective denied saying this, but agreed that he did hear Vercoe say – as he was leaving the room with Perrin – ‘‘OK, I did it, I did it.’’
Defence witness Phil Brinded, a Christchurch-based forensic psychiatrist, told the court that, in his opinion, Vercoe would be vulnerable to giving unreliable testimony in that type of police interview situation.
He said that in his opinion the interview was aggressive, with psychological pressure, among other factors.
In his closing summary, Hampton said Vercoe’s false confession fell into the category of ‘‘coerced complaint’’, where a person felt they were under intense pressure in an interview.
To stop the pressure, they made an admission of guilt, even though they knew they were not responsible.
He said it was possible the injuries were caused by other people in the house, or someone who might have entered the house from outside.
Vercoe was acquitted of murdering Jayden, after the twoweek trial on February 27, 1999.
After the trial, Detective Senior Sergeant Wayne Stringer, of Nelson police, said there was no evidence to support a further investigation or charge anyone else, and Jayden’s killing would not be re-investigated unless new evidence was put forward by the Crown.
Now retired, Stringer says he wants to help ensure Jayden’s story is told.
Stringer had interviewed Vercoe for four to five hours, but got no admissions.
He said there was forensic evidence submitted that showed Jayden had what appeared to be the big ridge of a fisherman’s sock imprinted into his forehead.
Then police interviewed Vercoe again.
‘‘It was a hard interview, we virtually accused him of it,’’ Stringer says.
He says in the first trial, which was abandoned, this interview was not allowed.
During the second trial, he said Hampton offered a plea of manslaughter, but it was the Crown’s decision not to accept it.
‘‘[They] said no and pushed for murder. The guy walked.’’
The Solicitor General’s office confirmed a manslaughter plea bargain was offered by defence but declined.
A spokeswoman said the offer was conditional on the defendant retaining the right to appeal. She said that meant the defence intended to appeal against the conviction despite pleading guilty.
They would be able to challenge legal rulings made during the trial.
The proposal was not accepted by the Solicitor-General of the time because there was ‘‘no finality in the plea’’, the spokeswoman said.
Hampton said he could not comment on the case other than he had no recollection of such an offer being made.
‘‘It was always a case of [Vercoe] denying he had any involvement.’’
Stringer said as a result of Vercoe being acquitted, another policeman who worked on the case left the police force after more than 25 years of service.
That officer, former Detective Rick Lowe, believes if a manslaughter plea bargain was taken, there might have been a conviction.
‘‘It could have summed up the situation better than it was.’’
Lowe says he had put the case into a ‘‘compartment’’ but the recent coverage of Moko Rangitoheriri’s killing had brought it back up.
‘‘Not everything is black and white in these decisions … You have a decision in Auckland that goes one way and a case in Nelson 16 years ago that goes the other way.’’
Lowe did not think the general public realised how difficult it was to find real answers when two or three people were in a room when someone dies.
‘‘You can’t just throw a blanket over it and say ‘you’re all charged’.’’
Lowe, who left the force a few years after the case, says it contributed to him wanting to move on from policing.
‘‘It has a cumulative effect. You wonder where it’s going.’’
In the months after the acquittal, Jayden’s death came before a coroner. Coroner Ian Smith ruled that Jayden died from ‘‘sustaining severe blows to the head from persons unknown’’.
Perrin believes she knows who that person is.
After Jayden’s killing, Perrin would visit his grave in Marsden Valley Cemetery several times a day. Now, it is harder.
‘‘There’s not a day I don’t think about it … I haven’t gotten past it. I haven’t moved on.’’
Her eldest daughter Juanita was close to Jayden, and his death still profoundly affected her. Perrin says Jayden was delivered six weeks premature by emergency caesarean section, and weighed 6lb 1oz. She recalls that at the time he died, he only had two or three teeth.
‘‘He wasn’t on solids properly. He was mainly on formula. I was worried he would choke, so he only had moulied food,’’ she says.
She said a conviction would not help her son, but it would at least give him justice.
‘‘It shouldn’t happen to anyone’s kids … I see stories all the time of people’s kids being murdered. It’s sick.’’
Vercoe did not to respond to requests, via his father, for comment. However, his father said he believed his son was innocent, and did not know why he initially confessed. He said it would be better just to leave the case alone. Delia Percy has little left to remember her granddaughter by.
Her cellphone was once filled with images of a smiling Hail-Sage McClutchie. But the phone was stolen soon after the toddler’s slow death from a head injury in 2009.
So instead she clings to a sole image taken of the 22-month-old, taken by a professional photographer shortly before the tot’s death.
It’s a photo that’s been plastered across media reports on Sage’s death for years. But it’s also a photo that captures what Percy says sums up her beloved granddaughter. ‘‘She was just a beautiful little child,’’ she says, sobbing. ’’She was a beautiful child.’’
It’s been a little over four years since a coroner ruled that Sage’s death could have been prevented, had her mother Kelly Percy and her then-partner Adrian WilsonMinimita sought medical help for Sage, instead of going out to drink and play pokies.
And it’s been more than five years since the police revealed they did not have enough evidence to charge the couple over the toddler’s death.
But time has not made it any easier for Sage’s maternal grandmother to deal with what happened to her granddaughter.
She said the pain is just too much.
‘‘Even remembering the good things is hard.’’
What she does know is that if Sage were still alive, she’d have been a good student and would have loved school.
Sage normally lived with her grandmother in Hamilton, but spent just over a week in Morrinsville with her mother in the lead-up to her death.
Percy used to take Sage on long walks in her stroller, and they were well known around the Hamilton suburb of Hillcrest, where they lived.
‘‘[Sage] loved going to the park.’’
And she loved playing with her 10 cousins, children of aunt - and another of Percy’s daughters - Desi Walker.
Walker’s youngest children, identical twin girls, were born just three months after Sage.
They turned eight in January and remain a constant reminder of the child Sage could have grown up to become.
‘‘So whenever it’s [the twins’] birthday ... it brings it back,’’ Walker says.
‘‘They turned 8 in January. So, yeah, Sage would have been eight last November.’’
Instead, Sage now rests at Hamilton’s Newstead Cemetery under the shadow of an apple tree.
Walker says Sage’s death took a huge toll on Percy, who now lives with her.
Percy barely talks to her daughter Kelly anymore, and only sees her if she randomly drops over to their Hamilton home.
‘‘We don’t see [Kelly] much at all. But Kelly will always be mum’s daughter and mum will always be her mum.’’
Walker says Sage was ‘‘just bright and bubbly – inquisitive’’.
‘‘Not tutu mischief, but inquisitive mischief. But if you told her ‘leave something alone’, she would.
‘‘She was just a good kid.’’