His whole life, Tom Nixon ran from who he was. Whether he was professing his innocence to talk his way out of trouble, or going by a false name in witness protection, he was living a lie. Eventually, it caught up with him. MICHAEL WRIGHT reports.

It was karma. The man knew it. His business was failing, his mother was sick, his partner had broken up with him and now he had to sell his house. As his friends packed up his belongings around him, he sat in a chair and watched. “I was Tom Thumb,” he said, “Now I’m nothing.”

Karma can be a bitch. When it’s bad, bad things happen to you, obviously, but it can also make you rueful. Thinking about opportunities missed, and what you might have done differently.

Sitting in that chair, the man knew exactly what he would have done differently. Years earlier, he had been caught in a police drug sting and named names of some of the gang members he was involved with to escape conviction. In exchange for his testimony, he was placed in witness protection, given a new identity and a new life. Now, things were coming unstuck. He was dispossessed and paranoid that his past was about to catch up with him. In less than two weeks, he would be dead.

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The man was born Thomas Charles Nixon, on November 26, 1962. As a child, and young adult, he lived in Northland. He was an entrepreneur, and amassed a fleet of trucks that serviced, among other things, Marsden Point oil refinery. He owned dogs, a parade of other vehicles and a Harley-Davidson.

All that came apart on New Year’s Day, 1997. Riding his Harley too fast, on the way to see his girlfriend and reconcile after a fight, he crashed, crushing his pelvis and damaging his left index finger, so badly it had to be amputated below the knuckle. He spent months in hospital recovering before discharging himself, prematurely, and limping home in pain. Almost immediately, a mate came around. “Try this,” he said to Tom. It was methamphetamine, or P, and it took all Tom’s pain away. He was hooked.

Tom’s initial habit lasted 10 months. In that time – late 1997, into early 1998 – his world shifted. After the accident, he’d had to sell his trucking business, and he filled the void it left with drugs. He entered the new, burgeoning meth underworld as a user and purveyor and developed gang connections. Three years later, as part of a covert police operation, he was caught on tape appearing to agree to sell some ‘cut shit’ for a gang. Afterwards, he would lament the three measly words that did him in. Yeah, no worries… Can do, mate. Something like that.

Early on the morning of January 31, 2001, police searched Tom’s home just outside Whangarei and he was arrested. It was one of 24 properties raided as part of Operation Pope, a two-month investigation targeting gangs and drug bosses in Auckland, Northland and Coromandel. About $100,000 worth of methamphetamine was seized. Detective Inspector Viv Rickard told the media that despite being relatively new to New Zealand, methamphetamine use was growing quickly. “It’s now the drug of choice,” he said.

Tom was charged with conspiracy to supply and manufacture methamphetamine. “Ridiculous,” he would later say, despite having likely been dealing the drug for some time. “I’m not going to jail for something I didn’t do.” So affronted was he at being charged with crimes he hadn’t yet committed, he began to listen when police told him he didn’t need to take the rap. All Tom had to do was testify against others arrested as part of Operation Pope. Then, he would enter a witness protection programme, be given a new identity and relocated to a different part of New Zealand.

It was a momentous decision, but Tom gave it little thought. Of course, he would do it. “I’ll get out of it, and I’ll point the finger at those guys, who are criminals anyway,” he thought. At the start, it seemed like the right move. It was fun driving around with the cops, pointing out locations, who lived where, who drove what car, how he got that cut shit to sell. A bit like Miami Vice, Tom thought. He loved that show. His information, and later testimony, helped to convict two gang members.

In September 2002, nearly two years after his arrest, Tom started a new life in the South Island. His new first name – Stephen – was chosen for him, but he could pick his own last name. He went for a walk, saw a sign with ‘Johnson’ on it, and thought it seemed common enough. He was now Stephen Johnson.

Stephen Johnson lived in a sparse flat in central Christchurch and had $16,000 in the bank. He had no house, no friends, no dogs, no Harley, no business and, really, no purpose. The cold reality of his new life, and the haste with which he had discarded his old one, started to sink in. Bereft, he ventured out of the city to pubs in places like Governors Bay and Diamond Harbour. The verdant hills of Banks Peninsula reminded him of Northland. He felt invigorated. He moved to a small town out of Christchurch, bought a house and started a new business – Tom Thumb Earthmoving.

It was the start of the final act of Tom’s life. Everyone still called him Tom, by the way, assuming his business was a nod to some nickname. What else would you call a guy with a missing finger? It was the perfect cover. Tom started to feel a bit like his old self.

Tom Thumb Earthmoving specialised in driveways, site clearing and retaining walls. It started with one truck and one Posi-Track loader but more quickly followed, along with employees to operate them. Its eponymous boss was a brash, gregarious man. The type to pull into the local cafe, park his truck somewhere inconvenient to everybody, walk inside in muddy boots and then talk loudly on the phone while he waited for his coffee. If he liked you, he was unfailingly kind. If he didn’t, well, then you would probably find out. Rumour had it Tom once set fire to a commercial sign of some people he fell out with, and he wasn’t above undoing work if clients didn’t pay their bills.

He was a big man. He’d been weedy as a kid and bullied for it. Now he was broad-shouldered and over six feet tall, always dressed in work clothes. A proper bloke. He liked cars, gadgets and having a beer. The rambling home he lived in didn’t have a garage, so he converted the lounge by cutting a hole in a wall with a chainsaw and putting a big door in. The door didn’t work very well, and the lounge had flowery wallpaper, but Tom parked his Ford Escort racer in there and covered the walls with tools and lewd calendars and called it a garage. The place had four bedrooms anyway, and he only used one. One of the others was for his dogs that he’d snuck back up to the North Island to get.

This was the man Rebecca* met, in about 2005, when she was a single mother, living in a nearby town. Rebecca loved Tom’s outsized persona. He was so loud and confident, she thought, like an American. Mostly, though, he was fun. Why shouldn’t he order a cup of tea in a cafe and pour it into the saucer and slurp it as loudly as possible? “He was different,” Rebecca said, “I’m probably always drawn to those kinds of people.”

Their relationship blossomed, and they had a son, Damian*, in 2008, who looked just like his father. “My little sparkle,” Tom called him. But then things stalled somewhat. Tom and Rebecca never lived together – Tom didn’t want to – and they both had other, turbulent interpersonal relationships that occasionally brought havoc on their own. After one particularly bitter episode, involving accusations about Tom’s past, Tom made a decisive move. He called Rebecca and asked her and her mother to meet him. He had something to tell them.

The revelation was a long time coming. Since he had moved to the town, Tom had cultivated an air of mystery around himself. Locals whispered that he was an undercover cop – Tom did nothing to disabuse them of the notion – and he sometimes hinted at a dark past. “Don’t talk to me about gangs,” he might say after a few beers, without elaborating. Rebecca knew that Tom enjoyed this notoriety, but until that meeting she didn’t know how much of it was true.

Tom told Rebecca and her mother the story about the meth and the gangs; the three measly words and the bullshit conspiracy charge. That he’d cut a deal with police and been given a new identity under witness protection. That he’d signed himself out of the programme after just a few months – he didn’t like the restrictions – but had been able to keep his new name and a back-channel to his old handlers. If he was worried about his safety, or needed to ask them something, he could always call.

It was a lot to take in, but Rebecca wasn’t really surprised. Tom’s past had been a mystery, now that was explained. It didn’t change anything for her. The drug and gang elements weren’t great, but she still felt the same way about him. OK, she thought, that’s your real story. Good to know. He was still Tom, only now she knew that really was his name.

Still, though, there were secrets. Rebecca didn’t know Tom’s real last name. Once when they visited his parents, who had relocated to Canterbury to support Tom, she saw the name ‘Nixon’ on a bottle of his father’s prescription pills. “Is your surname Nixon?” she asked. “No,” said Tom, “That’s just the name Dad uses.”

She knew that Tom had used meth at least once more, too. It was the first time Rebecca was to meet his parents, at Christmas, and they stopped on the drive, so Tom could smoke his pipe. “He said, ‘Don’t tell my parents I’ve got this,’” she recalled.

“He lost the pipe in his car and he couldn’t find it and he went berserk trying to find it [in case] his parents… saw it. He was really upset about disappointing them again.” Tom always took a gun with him on those Christmas visits, Rebecca said. “He said ‘If they know where my parents live they know I’ll be there on Christmas Day and that’s where they’ll come to find me’… He thought until the day he died that he was going to be hunted down and killed.”

Throughout this time, Tom kept growing his company, regardless of whether it was a good idea or not. Tom may have been an entrepreneur, but he wasn’t much of a businessman. “He was a bit silly,” said Rebecca, “He’d do things, like, he got a job on a hillside… I haven’t got a truck that can go up there. I’ll just go to town and buy one’… For this two-week job. Then he’d say, ‘I haven’t got any food in the cupboard.’”

The extravagance extended to his personal life. He owned at least a dozen vehicles, all in varying states of disrepair. One was a champagne-coloured Porsche that he bought and sold and re-bought at least three times.

One year he bought himself a limousine for his birthday. “He was so excited about it,” Rebecca said. “He felt like he deserved it. And it was so cheap… Why wouldn’t you want this?… Look at it, Rebecca… Look at the lights… It’s so awesome… Sit in it. And then it conked out, and he parked it in what he called the hall of shame which was down the back of his house.” Inside, Tom owned what seemed like every small appliance known to man. Rebecca once counted 14 just in the kitchen. “Milkshake maker, rice cooker, panini press, cheese toastie machine, deep fryer… he never used any of them.”

Tom’s capacity for excess masked a deep malaise. He never quite reconciled his cocksure persona with the forced anonymity of his new existence. “He couldn’t help himself,” said Rebecca. “He’d go, ‘I’m still a wanted man,’ but he was the one always popping up the flag.”

At one point, Tom decided he wanted to get into rallying. He spent tens of thousands of dollars on a racing Ford Escort and all the gear before Rebecca gave him a reality check: if Stephen Johnson did any good at rallying he might get his name in the paper, maybe even a picture. Not the smartest move for someone whose safety depended on keeping a low profile. The Escort was duly admitted to the hall of shame.

In late 2010 Tom met Aaron Cooper. They were at a heavy vehicle licencing course and got to talking. “He was a lovable guy,” Aaron said, “He wasn’t in it just to make money.” Tom invited Aaron to work for him and help run his business – never Tom’s strong suit. Aaron accepted.

After the February 2011 earthquake, which devastated central Christchurch, things took off. Tom and Aaron formalised their partnership in a new company – Tom Thumb Logistics (TTL). Over the next few months, TTL did a lot of demolition and site clearance work in the central city. Carting away the rubble of stricken buildings, some of which had claimed lives. “It was pretty horrific work, but we were paid a shitload of money to do it,” Aaron said.

Aaron called Tom Tom, like everyone else, but he didn’t know his business partner’s secret. He met Rebecca and Damian, even Tom’s parents, but surnames never came up. It didn’t occur to him the couple of times TTL had a bit of media exposure that Tom’s behaviour was odd.

“Looking back now, every time Tom Thumb went on the TV, it was me,” Aaron said. “If we were on the news, it was me. It was never him. Campbell Live did a thing on us out at Sumner. The road was rooted. [We] took water over. At no point was he there… Colombo St by KFC. The army were controlling the water. I remember the paper turned up, they took a few photos, and Tom basically gapped it.”

By mid-2011, relations between the two directors of TTL Ltd were deteriorating. After years staying clean, Tom was back using meth. He started behaving erratically. “Tom was really in a self-destruct mode,” Aaron said, “He sort of went out of his way… I gave him a few ultimatums to sort his life out.”

In the end, the final ultimatum came from Tom. One day, he told Aaron he wanted out. Aaron told Tom he was doing his head in, and they parted ways. Tom left with just enough equipment to keep working for himself.

It’s not clear exactly when Tom’s mental health started to decline. Why is more obvious, though. There was the meth relapse – he quit for the final time as he left TTL – and he was still drinking heavily, like always, and smoking marijuana. Then, about the time he struck out on his own, he learned his mother had terminal bowel cancer. He was distraught. “His mum and dad were so close to him,” Rebecca said, “He always looked after mum. Mum was the most important person in the world.”

In October 2011, Tom went to his GP. His post-earthquake business was faltering, he wasn’t eating, and his self-esteem was shot. The doctor diagnosed him with severe depression and prescribed an antidepressant, not knowing that Tom was hopeless at taking medication. He treated all pills like they were paracetamol. If he woke up feeling fine, he wouldn’t take any. The next day, if he felt down, he’d swallow a handful. It was about this time he bought himself his final birthday present – the white limousine.

Just after New Year, Rebecca ended things with Tom. Though, really, the end had been coming for years. Ever since Rebecca had been pregnant, and raised the idea of them living together when the baby came, and Tom got all worked up. Do we have to talk about this now?

“Something changed in my head then,” said Rebecca. “I knew it was never going to be that kind of a future. That’s when I sort of held myself back a bit.”

Then, the final indignity. Tom had to put his house up for sale. After months of toiling on his own, he felt like he couldn’t make ends meet. In a year, he had amassed $100,000 of debt. The day the sale went unconditional, a friend saw Tom’s truck parked at Little River. Tom was sitting on the side of the road, crying.

The week of the sale, Tom, unsurprisingly, was feeling no better and wound up back at his GPs office. The doctor added another medication to help him sleep which Tom, again, likely took either too much of or not enough. A month later, one of his friends was so worried about him they called the doctor again, and Tom was referred to the Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES) at Hillmorton Hospital in Christchurch. At his first assessment, he talked openly about suicidal thoughts but insisted he would never take his own life. He considered the idea cowardly. But he was, he said, extremely worried that the gangs he had grassed on up north would track him down to Canterbury.

For four days in a row, Tom talked with either his psychiatrist or case manager, circling the same problems: difficulty sleeping, loss of confidence, fear of gang reprisal and his sure belief that he was a failure. He talked about bursting into tears when his friends were packing up his belongings in his house. He couldn’t bring himself to help them. He started sleeping in his car instead of his bed. “That doesn’t feel like my home any more,” he told his friends, “I’ve got no home… I feel like a tumbleweed blowing down the street.”

Tom’s friend who had called the GP supported him at the meetings, but Tom refused to allow any disclosure of his treatment to his parents, or Rebecca. As a result, his parents were oblivious to the extent of their son’s plight. Rebecca was more cognisant. She knew that one day, a few weeks after he was referred to PES, Tom had dressed up in full gang regalia, and sat on his Harley holding a shotgun, intending to kill himself. But he couldn’t do it. ‘I thought, Good,’ said Rebecca, ‘He can’t do it.’”

In a strange way, Tom and Rebecca now grew closer. “We’d been together for years and years, but he’d never sort of asked me questions about myself,” said Rebecca, “[Now] he was asking me questions like, ‘Do you still see any of your friends from high school?… When did it start to go wrong for you in us being together?’ Trying to catch up on eight years of knowing someone on a surface level. He got to a place where he wanted it to be different.”

Tom turned his newfound capacity for reflection on himself. Despite withholding the seriousness of his depression from his parents, he started calling them repeatedly, crying and apologising for all the trouble he’d caused them. And he made candid admissions to Rebecca. “I think he knew he’d done the wrong thing,” she said, “He said, ‘It’s karma. I’ve been a shit all my life, and it’s coming back to bite me in the arse.’ It was like he was finally able to see. He said, ‘I’ve always done the wrong thing, I’ve always run from commitment, I’ve always run away from the cops, I’ve always tried to say it wasn’t me.’ He’d never been able to confess to that ever.”

Tom still enjoyed visiting Rebecca and Damian. Rebecca would cook dinner and Tom, fast losing weight, would finally eat something. “The only time when I feel any good is when I’m here,” he would say. He would sit on the floor and play with Damian, his little sparkle, smiling and crying at the same time. On one of his last visits, he looked at Rebecca, tears in eyes, his chin wobbling, and came as close to asking someone for help as he ever would: “Could I just come and stay?” Rebecca said no. It would be too awkward.

On the evening of Friday, March 23, 2012, Rebecca and Damian visited Tom. Damian was riding his pedal-less balance bike. When they arrived, Tom was eating pasta out of a coffee cup. It was the kind of packet meal that needed to be cooked on a stove, but Tom had just poured boiled water on it and started eating. The night before he had tried to give Rebecca all the food out of his pantry. Now, watching Tom grapple with raw pasta, she suggested he come over for dinner. If she wasn’t going to let him stay she could at least cook him something.

As they talked, they crept toward the front door to keep an eye on Damian, who could move fast on his bike. Their son took off down the road. “I’ve got to go,” Rebecca said, heading after him, “Come on.” Tom stood motionless.

“I turned back, and he was just still standing there,” Rebecca said. “Ten steps outside his front door just like that. Just watching me. Running, I was. Running away. “

***

Tom most likely died that night. Or the next day. No-one is really sure, but on the Saturday he didn’t answer his phone and when Rebecca and others called at his house there was no sign of him. Windows were wide open and his keys were in the door. On Sunday, Rebecca tried again. This time, she went inside and saw Tom’s abandoned coffee cup pasta from Friday still sitting on the stove. That was a bad sign.

It was when she went back outside that she found him. She knew before she even saw. Tom was in a storage container next to his house surrounded by his possessions. She could see his body through the sliding glass door he’d put in. She called the police.

It was another day and a half before Tom’s body was taken away. The death of someone who had been in witness protection was not treated like a regular suspected suicide. A cordon was placed around the property. Generators were brought in to power floodlights so scene-processing could continue at night. Police officers combed the house. Rebecca was questioned at length. A hearse arrived at the scene, but left again. Two years later, a coroner ruled Tom’s death a suicide.

In hindsight, it’s difficult to see it any other way. Apart from the police due diligence on the death of a protected witness, Tom’s death was plainly a suicide. His mental health record, his behaviour and the manner in which he died all supported that. It took Rebecca a long time to understand why she never saw it coming. For days, that single thought bounced around her head. How could I not know?

“I didn’t think I was the kind of person that would miss the cues. You always think ‘I’d be a better friend than that. I would notice if my friend was going to kill themselves, wouldn’t I?’ He tried to give away all his food… It just ate away at me for such a long time that I missed it.”

Rebecca describes the last few months of Tom’s life as being like he was wading through something heavy. A dazed version of a regular person. He could still hold a conversation but everything else was too much. He didn’t eat, he didn’t pack up his house, he didn’t take his medication properly, and he refused to let Rebecca or his parents know about his treatment. After Tom died, Aaron went to finish the job he’d been working on – it was a mess. It was like Tom was crying out for help, but couldn’t bring himself to actually ask.

“It was his pride,” said Rebecca, “People are saying he deserves it because he’s always been so cocky and so confident, and now he’s getting taken down. I can see them looking at me different. He wasn’t the big man any more. He really felt like he was being punished… for being so showy and so confident.”

The last photo taken of Tom is of him and Damian sitting on the couch at Rebecca’s house, about three weeks before he died. The man in the picture is wearing work clothes, as usual, and a blank smile. These were the visits when he would grin through tears as he played with Damian, and tell Rebecca it was the happiest he felt any more. If you didn’t know the man you might say he looked at peace in that photo. Rebecca thinks he just looks tired. “You never really knew what the story was with him,” she said, “I look at it and I go, He’s trying to tell me something. He really should be saying, ‘Help me’, but he never said that.”

* Names have been changed