The murderous rampage that changed a town forever

Sunday, 1 September 2024

Today marks 10 years since Russell Tully killed two Work and Income employees in Ashburton. As Nadine Roberts reports, time hasn’t lessened the impact on the tight-knit rural community.

It’s two seconds that haunt Geneva Bishop.

There’s no sound - just the grainy outline of a tall man with confrontational eyes wielding a pump action shotgun.

In front of him Peggy Noble is talking to a client at the reception of Work and Income New Zealand in Ashburton.

The balaclava clad man takes aim and fires, killing Noble instantly before she has time to react.

For Bishop, the final moments of her mother’s life, captured by a security camera, play on rewind even though there is 10 years distance from the horror of that day.

“I try and keep it to myself,” Bishop says in her first interview since homeless man Russell John Tully, 48, stormed the government agency building on September 1, 2014. Aggrieved at his homeless state, Tully shot and killed Noble before turning the gun on caseworker Kim Adams, who he narrowly missed. He then shot another employee, Lindy Curtis, who was cowering under her desk with a client, hitting her in the leg.

As the attack continued, Tully calmly moved to the back of the office and fatally shot Susan Cleveland three times before fleeing on a pushbike.

He was arrested eight hours later and in 2016 was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 27 years.

Tully’s trial proved harrowing and hurtful for Bishop who attended with daughter Krystal and Aunty Rose. His “disrespect” and apparent nonchalance, described by Justice Cameron Mander as “having no regard for the sanctity of human life” further traumatised Bishop and left her with one overriding question that doesn’t allow her to move on.

“Why can’t he get the same treatment he gave?”

The big bad world

In a town more associated with combine harvesters and dairy cows, the shootings have left an indelible mark.

“The big bad world came knocking on our door that day didn’t it,” former radio announcer and Ashburton District councillor Phil Hooper says sadly.

Like many in town, Hooper knew of Tully having attended the same school, and had become aware through Ashburton Guardian newspaper reports that he was living out of the back of his car.

But an encounter he had with Tully a month before the killings has stuck with him.

“I passed him in the street and he made eye contact and he gave me a look of pure anger. He was spaced out, it was difficult to describe but I remember thinking he was not a happy unit…so when I found out I thought, okay, this isn’t as big a surprise as it could possibly have been.”

On the morning of September 1, Hooper had been on air before going to a gym on the same street as the Work and Income offices. By the time he left, the street was flooded with police.

Back at the radio studio he learnt there had been a shooting. He cut into normal programming and stayed on air all day as a massive manhunt to find the gunman effectively forced the town into lockdown.

Hooper tried to reassure listeners, not knowing two of them, whom he personally knew, lay dead just one street away.

“It was just absolute horror and shock,” he recalls. “We couldn’t believe how in our wee town something like this had happened and the lovely people it happened to.”

‘A dangerous angry narcissist’

Two floors up from Phil Hooper, Ashburton Guardian editor Stu Oldham had been conducting a morning news gathering meeting at the newspaper when he was first alerted to the shootings.

As journalists frantically sought to find out what was happening, Oldham ducked down to the Work and Income office before cordons were put in place.

It was then that he recognised a bike helmet lying outside the building.

“I remember I swore out loud when I saw it and really started to understand what had happened.”

The helmet was identical to the one a homeless man had been holding in a photo the newspaper had recently published, alongside a story about his frustrations at being on a waiting list for a Housing New Zealand property.

The man was Russell John Tully and Oldham knew how aggressive he could be after having to evict him from his office.

Tully believed the Ashburton Guardian wasn’t doing enough to help him secure housing and was making unrealistic demands on staff, according to Oldham.

It was a similar pattern that agencies around Ashburton had also experienced, including Presbyterian Support, which he had engaged with to secure temporary emergency housing.

A month earlier he was trespassed from Work and Income after he became aggressive towards staff who’d said that money given to him by the agency would have to be paid back.

By the time Tully decided to kill, he had become a problem to a number of organisations but that information wasn’t shared.

“Hindsight can tell you that if everyone was talking to each other at that time then there may have been something said to the police but I don’t know,” Oldham says. “I think we could spend forever trying to rationalise the actions of a dangerous angry narcissist.”

The aftermath

The night before Peggy Noble died, she rang various members of her family, including Porirua daughter Geneva and granddaughter Krystal Bishop.

Although it wasn’t unusual for her to call, both mother and daughter believe her insistence that they talk that evening was strange.

When told the devastating news the next day, Krystal was in denial until she heard “Nana Peg’s” name on the radio.

Noble was the matriarch of her family, always ready to dispense tough love when it was needed according to whānau, but also a softie who would give away her last dollar.

“It’s been a hard 10 years for us,” Krystal admits. “It’s been devastating for everyone involved. We’ve had to move on unfortunately but we always keep Nana Peg in our hearts and minds. It’s had a major impact on all of us.”

None more so than Krystal’s mother, Geneva, who chose to watch the video of Noble’s last seconds.

“I was a nervous wreck and I just started shaking,” Geneva says.

She’s also haunted by the sight of her mother’s blood at the crime scene.

Half a street away from the Work and Income building, Noble’s partner Donald Campbell still lives in the small flat they once shared.

Campbell by his own admission would have drunk himself to death if he hadn’t received counselling.

“I still think about her every day,” he says.

Although Campbell has had a partner for a short time since then, he lives alone, still lost in the senseless death of the woman he loved.

“I still believe Tully’s sentence should have been a life for a life.”

Healing

Noble’s family take comfort that Tully’s rampage has led to better security in buildings occupied by government agencies, especially as she had expressed concern about threatening clients prior to her death.

But the changes have been little comfort in the town Tully grew up in.

Oldham recalls seeing public officials cry on several occasions in the months that followed.

“I think it’s one of the most affecting things I’ve been involved with, because I think people took it extraordinarily personally. This guy came in and did this in their town.”

In a town where everyone was “indelibly connected” many people knew Noble and Cleveland, Oldham says, including his reporters.

That connectedness proved a catalyst towards healing, according to both Oldham and Hooper.

“It was remarkable,” Oldam says of the community response to the tragedy.

“Ashburton is an awesome place,” Hooper says. “It looks after its own. When people need help and ask for it, the community response always has and always will wrap its arms around survivors. Family and friends acted as a cool wee town should.”

The 10th anniversary has caused Oldham to pause and reflect on the day a Mid Canterbury town changed forever.

“It lost its innocence,” he says. “But I think you can say when something like this happens a community really does come together and it did, and I don’t know of many places around the country where you can say that.”