Sitting at his computer, Elliot Cameron feared he might kill again.
It was 2010, more than three decades after he’d been found not guilty by reason of insanity for killing his brother while he slept.
Now in his 60s, having spent most of his life as a mental health in-patient, he emailed his cousin Alan about why he needed to remain in hospital.
“The probability of me repeating the offence outside hospital is greater than the probability of me repeating the offence where I am and so disrupting society is less when I remain in hospital,” he wrote.
“I am correctly placed in a mental hospital. I should remain where I am.”
He repeated his worries to Alan in 2016, and again in 2022.
And then, last year, Elliot’s fears became reality.
During a regular visit to Faye Phelps’ home, where he did some gardening work, he murdered the 83-year-old with an axe.
Faye – and others who had employed the now 76-year-old as their gardener – had no idea he had killed before, or that he was a mental health patient.
On Monday, a suppression order was lifted, allowing RNZ to tell the full story of Elliot’s life – and how both his and Faye’s families believe the mental health system let everyone down.
The brain tumour
Elliot Cameron was born in Christchurch in August 1948.
For most of his childhood, he had a “normal school life”, his father Ronald Cameron said, in a statement taken after the first murder – included in a 1975 court file RNZ was granted access to.
But one day, during his fifth form year, Elliot came into his father’s bedroom “very white”.
He told his father he’d been playing a game of rugby when something “exploded in his head”, Ronald Cameron stated.
“He thought it was a kick. From that time, he suffered headaches all his life.”
Elliot’s parents consulted a neurosurgeon, who diagnosed him with a brain tumour, and Elliot had urgent surgery to remove significant parts of his brain.
After the operation, Elliot was a completely different person. He developed an intolerance for noise and was a loner, finding it impossible to make friends.
In 1969, he became a voluntary patient at Sunnyside Hospital, and was committed the following year after a violent episode at home.
Elliot returned to school in 1972 and earned university entrance, before enrolling at the University of Canterbury for an engineering degree.
In 1975, he was kicked out of home after a fight with his brother Jeffrey, but occasionally still spent nights at home in a sleep-out at the back of the property.
At one point he told his father he wished he had died as a result of the operation.
In mid-July 1975, after a conversation with a staffer from Sunnyside, Ronald Cameron decided to keep Elliot’s .22 rifle under his bed.
On the evening of July 25, he noticed the rifle was no longer where he had put it.
He was woken about 8.45am the next morning by a noise.
Hearing the noise for a second time, Ronald got up to investigate and found Elliot standing in a room holding his rifle, the muzzle pointing towards the roof.
He took the gun off Elliot and, together with his wife, rushed to Jeffrey’s room.
There, they found their other son lying on his back in bed, blood on his face.
“I went over and looked at him and knew immediately that he was dead.”
When police arrived, Ronald overheard Elliot confessing to an officer, and telling him he had a “long line of psychiatric illness”.
Once at the police station, a detective asked Elliot what happened. Elliot was silent for a long pause, the detective recalled.
Then he said: “I wish I hadn’t done it. I wish I hadn’t done it”.
In his own statement to police, seen by RNZ, Elliot gave a confused account of what happened after he biked over to the house that morning.
“I must have gone into my room. It is behind the garage. I think I went into the house. It was by the back door. I must have gone in through this door as this is the only key I have. I just don’t remember what happened after that. I’m not sure. I think I got into a police car. I don’t know.”
Elliot was also interviewed by a medical practitioner at Sunnyside Hospital.
He apologised for what he’d done, and said he’d been thinking of shooting his brother for years. He had also thought about shooting his grandfather.
Elliot showed “no signs of anxiety or any understanding” of the impacts of his actions on his parents or his own future, the practitioner said. He was under the impression that he would be able to return home and continue his university studies after a few months in Sunnyside.
At his murder trial four months later, three psychiatrists gave evidence that Elliot was insane at the time of the shooting and lacked any appreciation that his act was morally wrong.
It took the jury five minutes to find him not guilty of murder on the grounds of insanity.
Chief Justice Sir Richard Wild granted a final order suppressing Elliot’s name and ordered him to be detained as a special patient under the Criminal Justice Act.
A persistent fear
Alan Cameron said hearing that his cousin had killed his brother was a “terrible shock”.
“There was a conviction, a belief I think, amongst the family, that he was out to maybe take out the whole family.”
Over the decades, as family members passed away, responsibility for staying in touch with Elliot passed from his parents, to Alan’s father, and finally to Alan himself.
For some, keeping in touch with a killer might feel like an unwanted burden. But Alan said he saw something more in his cousin.
“We knew the history. Knew that through no fault of his own he had this tumour, this operation – and again through no fault of his own, it deeply affected his personality.
“He was part of the family. He had a talent, he had gifts, and he deserved to have some support. There might have been an initial fear, but I didn’t think twice once I had some interaction with him.”
Alan and Elliot regularly kept in touch via email, and in September 2010 Alan received an email from his cousin that concerned him.
Elliot started by thanking him for understanding his desire to stay in hospital but said he was “perplexed” by Alan’s comments about him “recovering”.
Elliot reflected on his surgery at 16, saying he didn’t believe there was “a great deal wrong” with him beforehand.
If he had been handled in “a considerate manner” then, he might have lived a satisfactory life, he told his cousin.
“The reality of what happened is that I was intimidated, tormented and bullied and forcibly drugged,” he said, referencing his treatment at Sunnyside. “In the years since then society has made no attempt to assist me to live a reasonable life outside hospital despite my efforts and ability to help myself.”
And he made an alarming suggestion:
“Once someone has been driven to murder … it is a lot easier to … drive them to murder again,” he wrote.
“The probability of me repeating the offence outside hospital is greater than the probability of me repeating the offence where I am and so disrupting society is less when I remain in hospital.”
“I am correctly placed in a mental hospital,” he said. “I should remain where I am.”
In the years that followed, Elliot’s concerns seemed to settle down, and Alan visited him a handful of times – mostly off the hospital grounds.
“They were always positive interactions I had with Elliot, he was intelligent, interested in what was going on.”
‘I would not like to go to jail but this may be my only option’
But his anxieties around any change in his circumstances bubbled up again in 2016 when his patient status was changed to “informal” – meaning he was free to leave Hillmorton.
Distressed, he emailed Alan.
“My mental state has not changed and I would be vulnerable in society and this would lead me to repeat the offence,” he wrote.
“The mood here is to discharge anyone they can regardless of circumstances,” he continued. “I would not like to go to jail but this may be my only option. I would need to remain in hospital. I would be grateful if you were prepared to look at this.”
Another email from Elliot arrived moments later.
Again, he referenced his surgery as a teenager, the bullying and forced drugging he said had happened at Sunnyside, and his fears about what would happen if he was not in a protected or controlled environment like Hillmorton.
“I may not have a better alternative than to re-offend. My vulnerability will lead me to recommit my original offence if forced on.”
He urged Alan to see if the status change could be investigated, and reversed.
Alan told RNZ he tried his best to support Elliot.
“He was institutionalised from a teenager… He wanted to stay close to the care facilities. The difficulty was that they had assessed him sufficiently well to go out to the community.”
Elliot enjoyed heading out each day to his gardening job, and got on well with the people he worked for, Alan said.
“But he always wanted to come back to the institution so every night he would come back and stay under some kind of care. He still had a fear … that he could be a risk.”
In late 2022, Elliot pressed Alan to intervene after learning that repairs on the unit he lived in might force him to move to Princess Margaret Hospital.
Elliot believed there were ways he could stay at Hillmorton, and asked Alan to write to Director of Area Mental Health Services Dr Sigi Schmidt.
In January 2023, Alan sent Elliot a draft of the letter he was intending to send but Elliot was unimpressed, replying that Alan was “not getting the full picture”.
Alan acknowledged that he couldn’t know all the details.
But he told his cousin: “Sending them this correspondence will at least make them aware there is someone else taking an interest and prepared to not only support but to ask questions.”
Elliot never emailed him again.
Alan continued to advocate for his cousin, emailing Dr Schmidt anyway and asking to be kept informed about anything affecting Elliot’s welfare.
Dr Schmidt replied that Elliot had not agreed to his clinical care being shared with Alan, but concurred that would be helpful. He had passed on Alan’s request for disclosure to Elliot’s treating psychiatrist, he said.
The last direct contact Alan had from Hillmorton was in September 2023, when he got a phone call “out of the blue” inviting him to a social event. Alan couldn’t attend, but the carer asked if he would like to talk to Elliot.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to’, but he wouldn’t come to the phone.”
The next call he got about Elliot, 13 months later, was the worst news imaginable: he’d killed again.
The second killing
Elliot first began gardening about 10 years ago for a small group of residents in the Christchurch suburb of Mt Pleasant, including Bill Phelps and his wife Faye.
After Bill died in 2022, Faye began hiring Elliot more regularly to do the gardening.
Her daughter Karen, who lived down the road, also hired him and, even now, describes Elliot as a “very hard worker”.
Unaware of his background, Faye nonetheless noticed that Elliot was “a bit different” and struggled with certain tasks, Karen said.
“So, she’d just be selective about what she asked him to do and keep it simple, like weeding, which he was good at, and sometimes pick things up after him.”
In early October 2024, Elliot and Faye agreed over email that Elliot would visit to do some work on October 4.
At the same time, Hillmorton Hospital staff were assisting Elliot to reduce some of his belongings that he had accumulated at the hospital. He was recorded as being anxious about his immediate future.
On the morning of October 4, Elliot followed his usual morning routine: he had breakfast at Hillmorton and then left the hospital to catch the bus to Mt Pleasant.
He arrived at Faye’s home just after 10am and met her at the garage door. He fetched a small axe from the garage that he had used in the garden before.
Then he struck Faye several times in the head with it.
The injuries he caused were catastrophic, and fatal.
At 10.14am, only seven minutes after he arrived, he walked to the bus stop across the road, caught the bus to Hillmorton, and was back at the hospital at 12.17pm.
An hour later, a hospital staff member suggested to Elliot that he could get rid of a box of bike parts from his unit. He threatened to “kick her head in”.
About 4pm, Elliot told two nurses that between 10am and 10.30am he had assaulted a woman in Mt Pleasant with an axe and told them to call the police.
The nurses reported his comments to Police Communications at 4.36pm. The reports were not taken any further.
Karen, who was on holiday in the North Island, last spoke to her mum shortly before 10am on October 4.
When she did not hear from Faye in the coming days, and could not reach her, she became so worried she decided to end her trip and head home early.
Late in the afternoon on October 6, Faye’s lawnmower man, Aaron, had finished working next door and was pushing his lawnmower up her driveway.
He had his headphones on under his earmuffs when he looked up, and saw something on the ground. Taking a closer look, he realised it was Faye.
“I just started throwing things off and calling out. I thought she had an accident. I thought she just fell over and smashed her head or something,” he said.
“I knew she was dead and I knew that she’d been passed away for a long time… I was just trying to think of the right thing to do. I was just trying to grab my phone … and I was just shaking and trying to dial the number, and I was sort of walking around circles and calling out.”
Meanwhile, Karen was almost home when she got a call from police asking where she was.
Once inside a patrol car sent to pick her up, an officer told her that Faye had been killed and a homicide investigation was under way.
Karen’s thoughts raced between the fact that her mother was dead, and who could be responsible.
“I knew it had to be someone she knew and [Elliot] was one of the only people she hadn’t had police-checked because he had been working in the neighbourhood for over a decade.”
Elliot was arrested at Hillmorton Hospital that evening. He told police he had arrived at Faye’s house to find her injured, and had left immediately as he did not want to be blamed.
The following morning Karen was told who the killer was. She could not believe it.
To her, Cameron appeared just a “harmless elderly man doing a bit of gardening to supplement his pension and get out of the house”.
Then she found out he had killed before. She was “shocked and horrified”.
In Wellington, Alan Cameron was at home when he received a call from police.
Elliot had been charged with murder. Alan was stunned.
“I wasn’t ever expecting that. I knew he was going out to the community, and others knew he was going out to the community, and he felt himself safe to do that, providing he had the same arrangement with Hillmorton.
“His concern was that he could be a risk, if what for him, was a stable living arrangement, was upset… I feel something happened to change his mental state.”
‘Beyond broken’
Karen is still searching for answers.
She wants to know why no one told residents that Elliot Cameron was a killer – or that he was a mental health patient.
She also wants to know whether he was getting enough support and, if not, whether that put the public at risk.
An independent review into what happened is under way.
Health New Zealand deputy chief executive Te Waipounamu Martin Keogh earlier expressed “heartfelt condolences” to Phelps’ family for their loss.
“We have taken this tragic event extremely seriously and a full external review is progressing.
“We have been in touch with the family and are keeping them updated on the review. Once the review is completed, it will be shared with the family and the coroner.”
Keogh was unable to provide further comment while the review is ongoing and the coroner’s inquest is yet to be completed.
Director of Mental Health Dr John Crawshaw said in a statement to RNZ it was “very concerning” where the same patient has been involved in “two tragic incidents”.
“In these instances, an independent review is triggered to investigate the incident and make recommendations for changes to services and for those recommendations to be acted on.
“The independent review commissioned by Health New Zealand into the incident is yet to be completed.”
The Ministry of Health oversees the process and plays a regulatory role in monitoring Health New Zealand while any recommended changes are made.
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey said in a statement to RNZ he had been “very clear” more needed to be done to improve mental health and addiction outcomes and services in New Zealand.
The Mental Health Bill currently before Parliament aimed to set out a new approach to the decision-making around change of status from special patient. If passed, the Bill would establish a Forensic Review Tribunal responsible for determining long leave, reviewing the condition of these patients, and determining changes in legal status.
“Any serious incident, particularly where someone is tragically killed, is a cause of very serious concern.
“That is why it is important that investigations and reviews are triggered and recommendations for changes to services are acted on. As Minister my focus will be on ensuring agencies involved are putting in place the necessary changes to help prevent these incidents occurring again.”
There are echoes of other cases.
Three years ago, in June 2022, Hillmorton Hospital forensic mental health patient Zakariye Mohamed Hussein stabbed Laisa Waka Tunidau to death as she walked home from work. Hussein was on community leave at the time of the killing.
RNZ earlier revealed another case involving a man who was made a special patient under the Mental Health Act after his first killing was recently found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity for a second time, after killing someone he believed was possessed.
Because of Elliot’s voluntary status, since 2016 he had been free to come and go as he pleased within reason.
There had been discussion about him moving – but he did not want to.
That meant that, at the time he killed Faye Phelps, there were no court orders or other legal requirements compelling him to remain at Hillmorton Hospital, nor was he under treatment.
It was not just Alan Cameron who Elliot had warned.
At Elliot’s sentencing it was revealed that in December 2022, he told nursing staff that he would be “hard to ignore if he was chopping up bodies” and continued threats over the next couple of months to kill people if discharged from hospital.
In July 2024, Elliot threatened “disastrous measures” if he was discharged.
Karen Phelps said it is “shocking and appalling” that Elliot had expressed his vulnerability and the risk he believed he posed to the community with Hillmorton staff. She does not believe he was listened to or given the help he needed, and was therefore “a ticking time bomb”.
“They knew Elliot had vulnerabilities, they knew he’d killed before.
“In my view, knowing Elliot was continually raising concerns about his mental health and the fact he might reoffend if released into the community, the blood of my mother is clearly on the hands of the DHB. It’s hard to see it any other way.”
It appeared Elliot was receiving no care for his mental health, she said.
“How did Hillmorton think that a person who has been institutionalised for his entire life, for decades, was ever going to cope by himself out in the community again?”
Karen said the mental health system is “beyond broken” and that the public is at high risk.
“Our family never thought in a million years something like this would happen. The reality is it could be any member of the public next.
“There are unwell people in the community not getting the help and support they need all over the country. It’s appalling and sad – for the person needing help, the people they harm as a result and the many people tragedies like this touch and traumatise for the rest of their lives.”
Alan Cameron, too, is “certain” his cousin had expressed his “own vulnerability and risk of harm to the public” to staff at Hillmorton.
“I don’t want to be seen to be part of a campaign to vilify Hillmorton as a whole – because there were people there who genuinely cared for Elliot and other residents,” he said.
But he said those in authority need to be held to account for what they could have reasonably done in response to Elliot’s concerns and threats, he said.
More could have been done to encourage the family to be involved and support Elliot, Alan said.
“I made it quite clear that I was prepared to be involved in supporting earlier… It might well have made a difference.
“To protect his privacy they won’t involve the family, but he wanted my involvement.”
He acknowledges the difficulties with informing people that someone is a mental health patient, and that could have also risked Elliot’s gardening work, he said.
But it would have given people Elliot came into contact with a chance to take precautions, Alan said.
“It would have also put others on alert to observe him and to keep a note. I’m not saying it’s easy for the institution, but I just think that maybe it’s a general societal thing as well, people’s attitude towards those with mental disabilities.”
In May, Alan and Karen spoke for the first time. Alan told her about Elliot’s life – and his concerns leading up to Faye’s death.
Karen said she was “apprehensive” at first but glad in the end that Alan reached out.
“It was healing for us to connect and start to also connect the dots as to what has gone wrong and why this tragedy occurred,” she said. “I know Alan felt there should have been something he could have done to prevent this. So it was nice to be able to reassure him that he could let go of that guilt and it wasn’t his fault.”
‘Pity and revulsion’
Towards Elliot, Karen said she feels “both pity for him and revulsion”.
“I can see what’s gone wrong for him, but also emotionally it’s hard to process what he’s done to my mum.”
Her opinion of Elliot has changed as more information has come out.
“While it’s apparent he is damaged and in need of mental health support, and I still have some sympathy for that, it’s also obvious he is very intelligent and capable of lying and manipulation.”
She believed Elliot planned to kill her mum.
“She was the most vulnerable of his clients, she lived alone, he knew there was a weapon there and he knew her routine.”
For those reasons, Elliot should remain in a secure facility for the rest of his life, where he can get the help and support he asked for all along, Karen said.
“Public safety must come first and should always have come first. Sadly, it wasn’t prioritised by the DHB and the result is what happened to my mum.”
She misses her mum: a “loving, kind, generous soul” with a strong Christian faith, who was always thinking of others.
Karen believed Faye would have forgiven Elliot.
For Karen herself, “forgiveness is still a work in progress”.
Two days before sentencing, Alan and Elliot met at Christchurch Men’s Prison for an hour. It was the first time Alan had spoken to his cousin since Faye’s murder.
The most significant thing Elliot told him was that, despite pleading guilty, he had no memory of killing Faye.
Elliot also said he liked working in the garden for Faye and her family and considered them friends, Alan said.
“He made it very clear he had no desire to harm Faye. He would not have wanted that.”
Elliot’s feelings that he had been pushed out of Hillmorton were still agitating him months later, Alan said.
“He still holds this fear, which he’s always held, which seems to be justified, that the damage to his brain and personality puts him at risk, and the community at risk if he’s not kept under some supervision.”
At sentencing, Elliot addressed Justice Rachel Dunningham.
His words echoed back 50 years to what he told police, and the Sunnyside doctor, after he killed his brother Jeffrey.
“I’m extremely sorry that I’ve done what I did,” he said.
“I didn’t intend doing that, I just don’t know what happened.”
Elliot’s life is “sad in one way”, Alan said.
But through his own efforts, he had made a life that was meaningful to him over the years.
“He could study, go out gardening. He could have some interaction.”
Alan wonders if there may have been a different result if he pushed harder on Elliot’s behalf. He worries about what lies ahead for Elliot and whether he will survive the next few years.
“All I can really do now is be there for him.”
He pulls out an old handwritten letter from 2009, in which Elliot had written to Alan’s mother, expressing sympathy after a fall and hoping she was OK.
Within the wider family there were some who believed Elliot would always be a risk, Alan said – that he suffered from some kind of “emotional deficit”.
“But I didn’t see it. I saw a person who was friendly, concerned for others, really interested in the family, the world and our welfare,” he said.
“Despite all he went through, a human being came through. It’s sad that whatever precipitated this, happened at this age.”
rnz.co.nz
