The Unexplained Death of a New Brighton Local: Nigel Bom's Last Supper
Episode 9 explores the story of a local couple Nigel dined with on the last night he was last seen alive and asks whether they were involved in his death.
On 24 March 2021, Nigel ate midweek dinner with a couple who lived in nearby flat in the Fred Price Courts. We will call them Rob and Lindsay. For the trio, having dinner with together was a normal thing to do on a Tuesday or Wednesday night. But the dinner that night would take on a significance that neither Nigel nor his family could have ever foreseen.
After dinner, a call was made to First Direct for a taxi that would take Nigel from Rob and Lindsay’s flat to the Bom family home. The trip was booked under the name “Rob”. Later, proving just who booked his final trip would be a mission but would prove itself a pivotal detail in the story of Nigel’s last movements that emerged amongst the lies and rumours that would whirl around the heads of the Bom family after Nigel’s funeral.
Nigel’s visit home that night was short and tense. After handing over his “last” $20 to his sister Hayley, he taxied to a destination near the complex at 76 Palmers Road. About a week later, Otautahi Community Housing Trust staff found him dead, face down in his bed.
Much like the long list of suspicious evidence that would surface in his flat, Nigel’s connection to Rob and Lindsay and proof of their final interactions with him would be an enigma to his sister Krystal worthy of a Hercule Poiret detective novel. Were they involved in his death or just unfortunate participants in the last days of his life? Were their memories of events simply fragile or were they hiding some deeper truth?
As the days rolled into weeks, they agony Krystal and her family of not knowing the truth about her brother Nigel’s death would become a prolonged battle.
Suspicion did not fall onto Rob and Lindsay until 7 April, the day after Nigel’s funeral. “I knew that they were friends,” said Krystal, “and I also knew Nigel use[d] to go their house for dinner. My main first contact with her was quite nice. I didn’t suspect her. I knew she was with Nigel at the time.”
Strangely neither Rob nor Lindsay attended Nigel’s funeral.
In the aftermath of her brother’s death Krystal was curious. Where had Nigel gone after he’d left Debbie’s house on New Brighton Road that night. And was he with somebody. “I thought she would lead me in the direction of getting some answers.” But as time elapsed, Lindsay’s story began to crack.
“It was more so she began to not make sense.”
Lindsay told her Nigel had left their flat “around 9:30, 10:00 at the latest.” But she denied again and again being the one who called for the taxi. First Direct said the booking was made someone called Rob. “It only makes sense that it could be that [Rob]” who had made the booking to order the taxi.”
“There was no other [Rob] in the complex that I know of”.
Stopping off: it was about here that Nigel’s taxi stopped on its way back to Fred Price Courts on the last night he was seen alive.
That was the first clue that made Krystal think she was being lied to.
The second clue were the reasons given for Rob and Lindsay not going to their deceased friend’s funeral.
On 10 April 2021, during her first contact with Lindsay, she explained their absence. Lindsay told her Rob couldn’t bring himself to go because they lost their 27-hour-old grand-daughter and they couldn’t do it. The baby’s death had broken them as “grandparents”.
Krystal took to Facebook and found that the baby had died a few years before Rob and Lindsay had become a couple. In her view, that showed Rob wasn’t the grandfather, didn’t know the baby and was not with Lindsay at the time the baby died because she was married to her former husband. Krystal believed he was the baby’s real grandfather.
The trip home: Nigel’s taxi drove along New Brighton Road until and stopped off on Palmers Road.
After arriving in New Zealand, Krystal and Lindsay were set to meet. But it was not to be.
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