Killed Over $300 Debt

Newcastle Herald

Thursday October 25, 2007

By JOANNE McCARTHY

DRUG addict Shandele Macey was killed in her Rutherford home last year for a $300 drug debt because she wouldn't have sex with her supplier and because her teenage killer was a lousy shot.

The bizarre details of a revenge campaign that left the mother of two dead and members of a Hunter drug network facing long jail terms emerged in the NSW Supreme Court yesterday after four people pleaded guilty to their parts in her killing.

It included phone taps showing the two men convicted of her manslaughter talked about "rattling the cage" of a person who was "causing trouble" only three days after Ms Macey's death.

For the first time, details of truck driver Brian Kaiser's largely unrequited two-year pursuit of Ms Macey was revealed, including the text messages he sent in the hours before her death, one of which used the words: "Either f--- for points [drugs]

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$300 drug debt led to mother's death

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junkie slut or be f---ed up for points. Deadly serious. Home alone tonight are we slut?"

A short time later he asked teenager and friend Jeremy Michael Hunt, 19, to "take revenge and sort out" Ms Macey. He was angry because she owed him $300 for drugs, wouldn't have sex with him and caused him to be jailed for breaching domestic violence orders taken out against him.

Kaiser, 35, of Shortland, was aware Hunt would be using a .22 rifle to take revenge on March 20 last year, Supreme Court Justice Graham Barr was told.

Hunt phoned Michelle Rowena Rocco, 33, of Limeburners Creek, an addict who acted as driver for the group in return for drugs.

The two drove to Vindin Street, Rutherford, where Hunt asked Rocco to stop the car before stepping out, pulling a rifle from a bag in the back seat, and firing three bullets into Ms Macey's home.

Ms Macey collapsed and died almost immediately after walking to a window of the house when she heard the car slow down in the street.

Rocco received $50 for her services.

An hour after the shooting Rocco took Hunt to the home of a friend at Hexham. It was there on the previous day, only hours before her death, that Ms Macey had run over Hunt's friend's parrot.

The court was told that a short time after firing the shots and before he realised Ms Macey was dead, Hunt asked the friend, "what he wanted done to the bitch about the bird".

"He [Hunt] added 'a life for a life', and stated he was going to get her and it would make the front pages," the court was told.

The friend said he did not want anything done to avenge the parrot's death.

A few hours later, after publicity about Ms Macey's death, Kaiser told the parrot owner that he was "in mourning and that he had loved the girl" who was his "soul mate".

"She wasn't meant to die. It was only meant to scare her."

Three days after the shooting and while he was on the run from police, Hunt phoned Kaiser and asked if he wanted him to "rattle the cage" of a person "causing trouble".

"If you want. If you feel like you would for me," police phone taps revealed Kaiser replied.

The two discussed a Herald photograph showing where the three bullets hit the Rutherford house. Hunt expressed concern the bullets had not hit where he intended and said his "sights couldn't have been that far out".

He left the region, telling Kaiser: "I can't cop this. I'm not going for f---ing 25 years. It was a f---ing accident."

He was caught and arrested two weeks later.

A phone tap revealed the ring of people who knew Hunt was the killer and led to charges of accessory after the fact against Rocco and Ronald Rex Edward Garland, 35, of Mayfield.

A tap also recorded Hunt saying Ms Macey was "on the downhill run anyway, it's probably a godsend [that she died]".

He recounted how she had offered her baby daughter's bracelet as security for a drug deal then refused to pay.

Garland will be sentenced on November 1, Hunt on November 9 and Kaiser and Rocco on November 24.

© 2007 Newcastle Herald

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