Kia ora, I'm Miriama Kamo. Tonight on Sunday ` The black widow cornered. Did you kill him? Did you kill him? No, I did not. Her final act of cruelty. I will never forgive her for what she did. And a voice in the darkness ` # It's the sweetest thing I know, # just spending time with you. That's a lovely story. But first ` it was a cold, calculated murder, and Helen Milner nearly got away with it. On her first attempt to kill Phil Nisbet, she didn't get enough poison into him; he went to hospital but survived. A few weeks later, she was successful. Not only did Helen Milner kill her husband, but she managed to convince the police his death was suicide. Phil Nisbet's family weren't convinced, though. And now, more than four years later ` now that Helen Milner has finally been convicted of murder ` her former sister-in-law wants an apology from the police and compensation. John Hudson's my name. I'm from the Sunday programme. 'Two years ago, Sunday caught up with the curious Helen Milner.' ...your former husband's death ` Phil's death. ...your former husband's death ` Phil's death. I'm not interested. What`? What...? Sorry. 'Back then, Helen Milner was apparently just an ordinary housewife.' We're doing a story about it for the television. We're doing a story about it for the television. I'm not interested. Why aren't you interested? Why aren't you interested? Because... Because I have been through the mill over all of this. 'But Helen Milner's facade was starting to crack, and worse was to come.' The police are trying to charge me with murder... for a suicide. The real Helen Milner was emerging. Don't touch my car, or I will have the cops on you. Now, <BLEEP> off. Did you kill him? Did you kill him? No, I did not. If I had, I would have been arrested by now, would I not? You may be arrested. I'm not sure. You may be arrested. I'm not sure. You're going to put this on TV, are you? Well, I may be. Well, I may be. Good, because you'll be in court for that! Are you sure you don't want to be on TV yourself? Are you sure you don't want to be on TV yourself? No, I do not. Mr Foreperson, please stand. > But last December, Helen Milner was on TV, charged with murdering her husband. Count three ` do you find the accused guilty or not guilty? Count three ` do you find the accused guilty or not guilty? < Guilty. I enter a conviction on the charge of murder. > More than four years after she poisoned Phil Nisbet, the law finally caught up with Helen Milner. So who is she? Why did she kill her husband? How did she fool the police for so long? She's evil. She knows what she does and she enjoys it. Ben Porter is Phil Nisbet's son from a previous relationship. Back in 2005, his father married Helen Milner, and Ben soon realised the smiling bride was a devious manipulator. She said that I was ruining her life by taking my dad's attention away from her. Ben says Helen Milner went to extremes to emotionally control him and his father. She tried to make it look like she was committing suicide by overdosing on her insulin right in front of me, telling me, 'Here, you want my life? Take it.' Uh, I think she did that twice. No, it's` it's not a mental case thing; she's just grown up with no consequences. Lee-Anne Cartier is Phillip Nisbet's sister. She says there are questions to be asked about Helen Milner's upbringing. You start a child from an early early age with no consequences; this is where it goes. She thinks that we're all stupid and that she can get away with her shit. When we first met Lee-Anne two years ago,... What gives someone the right to take someone's life? ...she was appalled that the police were treating her brother's death as suicide and had not arrested Helen Milner. She took my brother's life, and no one was doing anything about it. It's, like, where do you go? What do you do, you know, when there's no justice in the justice system? The way Lee-Anne saw it, there was no choice but to kick start an investigation herself ` without the police. They didn't do their job; I did their job. You know, they totally failed. Phil Nisbet had gone to bed at his Christchurch home one night in May 2009. His wife Helen Milner later told the police she had found her husband dead the next morning with an empty packet of Phenergan beside him. It's an allergy drug that is fatal if taken in high doses. HELEN: PHONE OPERATOR: All right. I'm talking to Helen. I'll look after you now. Just stay with me. Where is he now? But even though the police were at first suspicious, further investigation was cut short. They called their boss out, and he... he just looked at it quickly and went, 'No, treat it as a sudden death,' and, um, wouldn't call out the CIB. Phil's death was treated as suicide. But had officers gone just next door to speak to with the neighbours, the police might have been more suspicious. My wife actually asked Helen straight out, that day Phil died, why the lights were on at 4.20 in the morning, and she didn't answer. Did you express those concerns to the police? The police never came to see us. The police might not have been interested in interviewing Ray, but Lee-Anne Cartier was. Yeah, after I saw you that time, like, I contacted the police and said about the lights and that, but they just... they just didn't take anything seriously, I don't think. You're saying the police didn't even do the basics? They never spoke to her boss ` the person that she worked with in the office every day. What would Helen Milner's boss have said? That she'd talked about killing Phil a year beforehand. And if the police had bothered to speak in depth to Kasey Woodstock, the mother of Helen Milner's grandson, they would have discovered something even more shocking. We've heard that Helen Milner actually asked for help to murder Phil Nisbet. Is that right? Yep, asked us if we could pay someone to do it, find someone to knock him off. So she actually asked you to find a hit man to murder him? Yeah. Specifically, in her words, was a hit man. Why do you think she wanted him gone? The money, it was always about the life insurance. What would she say? What would she say? Specifically that he had $250,000 life insurance, and she wanted it. Kasey believes not only did the police ignore what she was saying but also what her ex-partner Adam, Helen Milner's own son, was saying about his mother. He saw Helen Milner crushing Phenergan tablets and putting it in Panadol casings. There was this one occasion when she came in a couple of` a couple of nights before Phil actually died ` came in and asked where the closest 24-hour pharmacy was for Phenergan itself, like straight out for Phenergan. like straight out for Phenergan. And when Phil died, what did you think? Instantly knew that she'd killed him... straight away. We told the police straight out when they came and seen us. So you actually told them you didn't think it was suicide? We told them we knew it wasn't suicide, yep. 'So why didn't police investigate further what Kasey and Adam were saying? 'Well, that's what Lee-Anne wanted to know.' They weren't even taken seriously. It was easier to sign a` a statement for the coroner and say that they saw it as a suicide. What should they have done? What should they have done? A full investigation... and, you know, interviewed everyone. You know, treated it like a homicide. After the break ` the heat's on the police. The officers went to a murder and came back with a suicide. And Helen Milner's final act of cruelty. Well, I hate her. I would never forgive her for what she did. Do you want to be run over, mate? By 2011, it was becoming apparent Helen Milner was no ordinary housewife. I'll run you over. There's a suppression order. Get out! Can I run him over? She appeared in court charged with stealing from her employer and framing her own son for another crime. You come on my property,... You come on my property,... Take it easy. > You come on my property,... Take it easy. > ...and you've had it. But the true extent of Helen Milner's offending was only starting to emerge. When did you know for sure that she had murdered your brother? When she handed me the suicide note and the signature wasn't Phil's and it was typed. That suicide note would later become crucial in convicting Helen Milner. The fact that it was typed really threw me to start with, and it was just, like... I read through it, and it's, like, yeah, without a doubt, I` I knew 100% at that point she'd killed him. Lee-Anne had shown the signed suicide note to Phil's friend and neighbour Ray Carey. < Did you think that was Phil's signature? No. No. < Why not? Just something` I'd seen his signature before, and it just didn't, sort of, match up. But that's not all that didn't match up. Helen Milner handed the police a second suicide note with no signature on it at all. But even this didn't get the police digging further. Their official line remained the same ` Phil Nisbet committed suicide. I needed to know the truth. I needed the truth out there, and sometimes you've just got to go out and find it. In the end, the breakthrough came when Christchurch coroner Sue Johnson released her findings into Phil Nisbet's death. She couldn't force them to reopen the case, but as long as she ruled as not suicide, it was out there for us to fight the police to reopen. So Helen Milner could've got away with it? She probably could've got away with it really easily if she'd used her brain and stuck to one story and, obviously, not talked to everyone in Christchurch about killing him and poisons and everything else. But in Helen Milner's mind, she had got away with it. Just weeks after her husband's death, a new lover, Barry Hayton, moved in. He'd even bought her an engagement ring. Helen and Barry slept in the bed that my brother died in. She's... totally evil and horrible and... Prompted by the coroner's report, police launched a new investigation into Phil Nisbet's death. They soon discovered Helen Milner had withdrawn cash near the pharmacies where she'd used false names to buy the Phenergan used to poison Phil Nisbet. It just involves, um, detectives getting off their butt and going to the pharmacies and asking questions, um, getting all the bank statements. You know, it's not... it's not rocket science, you know. I think it would be, um, CIB 101. Wasn't the first investigation into Phil Nisbet's death a total botch-up? I think that's being a little bit unfair. That's certainly your description. I accept that there's things that could have and should have been done better. Detective Inspector Tom Fitzgerald manages Canterbury's CIB. The officers went to a murder and came back with a suicide. You're talking about officers who attend, you know, in 2009, 755 sudden deaths. People make mistakes. People make mistakes. What are the lessons here for the police? Look, since I've been in the chair in 2011, the structures I've put in place... This couldn't happen again. The CIB attend all suicides. They're treated as suspicious until proven otherwise, so I'm confident that under my watch, this could never happen again. They should all be named and shamed. They were claiming wages for` for doing a half-arsed job. I want a public apology from the police involved to the family, um, admitting their failures. And I want compensation for my costs and the stress it's caused us all. Lee-Anne Cartier says she wants an apology from the first enquiry team. Is that fair to expect that? I think that's fair, and I... we have apologised. I think Lee-Anne wants an apology from the individual officers. I think Lee-Anne wants an apology from the individual officers. Would you like them to do that? Look, if that's... You know, there's important processes in there, but if that's what they would like to do, then... that would be something that could be done. Lee-Anne Cartier wants compensation. Do you think she should get it? There are certain things, possibly, that Lee-Anne needs to be compensated for, but, you know, I think those discussions are better had over a period of time and the realities of what things actually cost rather than in this type of environment. But no amount of compensation can repair the damage Helen Milner did to Phil Nisbet's son, Ben. She not only murdered his father, but in a final cruel twist, one of those fake suicide notes implied Phil had taken his life because he'd discovered Ben wasn't his biological son. After that, we had DNA tests and everything just to prove that I was my dad's son. What do you think was going on in her mind? What do you think was going on in her mind? Oh, money, money, money. 'I want more money; get him out of the will; get... make him have nothing so I get more.' So she thought if she could show that you weren't Phil's son, you wouldn't get any money from his will? you wouldn't get any money from his will? Yeah, she would get all of it. I don't really want to hear the name again ever. I wanna forget her. I hate her. I would never forgive her for what she did. Four years after Phil Nisbet's disturbing death,... I enter a conviction on the charge of murder. > Helen Milner was finally found guilty of murder. Lee-Anne Cartier and the rest of her family are in no mood for forgiveness. I will be at every parole board hearing, and I will fight to keep her in there until she dies of old age. No one on the streets will have to have to deal with that woman again, if I have anything to do with it. Helen Milner will be sentenced later this month. I promised you a lovely story. After the break - Dunedin singer Bevan Gardiner - he's blind, has his own band and brilliantly channels John Denver. # Aye, Calypso, the places you've been to. # The things that you've shown us; the stories... # Hello again. Bevan Gardiner was just 2 when his parents were told he'd be blind by his teens. They were shattered. What would his future hold? Well, now we know ` at 26, Bevan is a successful musician whose talent for singing John Denver songs has caught the eye of a country music legend. We caught up with Bevan on the road. COUNTRY GUITAR MUSIC PLAYS MAN: Ladies and gentleman, from Dunedin, our own hometown boy ` a big welcome for Bevan Gardiner. # It's good to be back home again. I've always just really loved music and being able` being able to, I think... just being able to play it and perform on any level to, um... to, um... for people and to be able to touch people and` and move them in such a way that the music moves me. You know, cos music's such a universal language that anybody can appreciate. # ...living with you brings me. # Oh,... # it's the sweetest thing I know. I think the first time he did his` the John Denver thing on his own, that was, um... I was just so so proud of him. I just couldn't believe that was my boy standing up there. # It's good to be back home again. # I said, 'Hey, it's so good 'to be back home again.' # APPLAUSE He was 2 when we took him to his first appointment at the eye clinic. It was absolutely shattering. Our whole, sort of, perception of Bevan's future changed in an instant, really, with the news that he was gonna lose his sight. We wanted him to be... as independent as possible. He was going to grow up in a visual world, so he needed to be able to cope in a visual world. So, um,... we wanted to teach him life skills so that he could cope on his own. There was this thought in the back of my mind that his eyesight was going to deteriorate, so whatever we had today, we had to make the most of it that day. So the opportunity for him to try new experiences at an early age, uh, we tried to grab that so that he could say, when he could no longer ride a bike on his own, 'Well, I used to ride a bike on my own, and I can do it. I can ski,' and so on. So give him those life experiences to enjoy them, and he's still got memories of those things, and he's got a visual perception, I think, because of that, of` of the world. They... weren't the type to, um, wrap me up in cotton wool and, um, say 'oh, you can't do this' or 'you can't do that', you know? I shouldn't be shoved in some bubble of blind people, cos the world's not made up of blind people, so we've gotta live in the real world, not just the community of` of blind people, you know? # You fill up my senses... # like a night in the forest. # He started guitar lessons at the age of 6 with a very patient guitar teacher. He taught me by ear. So again, you know,... just he'd have a guitar, and I'd have my guitar, and he'd play things, and he would even to take my fingers and` and place them where` where they needed to be on the fretboard to, um... to form that certain chord or that sound, and, uh, so I learnt like that. # And write it on the sides of the great whaling-ships or on ice floes where conscience is tossed. 'Um, it was something I could really really excel at, and` and it was... Um, I thought, '"Right, this is the thing that I can do. I've found my little niche here that I can, um, work with."' # ...and mothers don't weep, or it's not in the papers, at least. He first heard John Denver when we were coming back from a skiing holiday, and for some reason, it just clicked. # Take me home... # to the place... # I just loved his voice and, I suppose, what he was singing about and` and the instrumentation. Something just resonated with me there. # You've got to... # ...kiss an angel good morning. I was asked to, uh` to go` to open for the Charley Pride Tour. # Kiss an angel good morning. # Yeah, it was` it was a fantastic experience, so I was really, um, grateful and honoured to be able to` to be accepted to... to go on that` on that tour. INTROSPECTIVE MUSIC You know, I'm independent at home, but when it comes to being on the road, I'm in a different environment ` different towns, different hotels ` so I've always gotta have someone to, sort of, show me around. OK, so what we've got is a little table toward here, yeah? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that can be your computer table. Mm-hmm. And that can be your computer table. OK. This guy has it so dialled in. He knows exactly where he is every night ` new hotel room; new environment; new position of the` the night stand. He's seamless. He's brilliant. BAND PLAYS BLUESY SONG Yeah, Derek, he's the drummer for Charley and has been for some 13 years or so. Step up here. Step up here. We'll have some fun. Empty theatre, yeah? Empty theatre, yeah? Yeah, empty theatre, man. Empty theatre, yeah? Yeah, empty theatre, man. Sure we'll take advantage, I think. When I found out that he plays drums, then we had this further connection, so... And he says, 'Hey, man, I'd like you to teach me a little bit of drums.' I said, 'Sure, I'll be happy to.' Take that whole thing and put more space between the first note and that` that double that comes in, and that'll make it dance. I'll show him one of my great little tricks, and he's got it in three seconds. (CHUCKLES) (PLAYS ROCK FILL) When other people` You know, if I say, 'Bevan's touring with Charley Pride,' people, sort of, go, 'Wow!' I think when you hear other people's reaction as well, it sort of makes you realise just... how great it is ` yeah, that he's doing these things. # To sail on a dream # on a crystal-clear ocean... Now, this has been pretty near a full month we've been together, and I just continually... each` each night he goes on stage, I just` I marvel at how... he's got John Denver down so well. I mean, he's just... Just close your eyes, and it sounds like listening to John. # Hi-dee-ay, # ee-oo-oo-oo. # Hi-dee-do, ooh, # do, do, doodle-do. # Uh, he's got a nice voice. I think that, uh, he's got a fine career going there, and, uh, he cannot` he can't do nothing but get better. 'You know, Charley was... was such a,... 'um, really great guy and just would watch the` the opening act every night, you know?' You know, and I suppose a lot of... stars wouldn't do that, you know? (CHUCKLES) They wouldn't bother with the opening act, but he would watch it every night, and, um... and, uh, give` give support. I've been working... uh, had a lot of opening acts, but this is probably one of the finest I've ever worked with. but this is probably one of the finest I've ever worked with. CHEERING, APPLAUSE # I hear them singing... # a song for all lovers. # A song for the two hearts... # beating only as one. # A song for the two hearts... # beating only as one. # And it gets better for Bevan. He's just got engaged, and he'll be touring NZ and Australia later this year. Kua mutu te mahi naianei. That's us for tonight. Join us on Facebook ` Sunday TVNZ.