Hayden Miles Hayden Miles was afflicted with severe behavioural problems from an early age, the trial of his accused killer heard this afternoon. His mother, Jacqueline Miles, was not in court this afternoon but in a written statement she said he had developed behavioural problems which became so bad that she asked CYF for help in 2010. Her son was subsequently sent to live in a number of 'family homes' and she took a 'tough love' course. Hayden was not improving and in 2011 he was moved into the home of the tough love course leader. But even there he had difficulty following house rules and the last she saw her son was around 3pm on 22 August, 2011, the day he was attacked by Gavin Gosnell, the partner of his friend Nicolette Vaux-Phillips. Jacqueline Miles said her son frequently spoke of Vaux-Phillips as a good friend and he had mentioned they would go flatting together. By early evening of the 22nd she could not contact him and had phoned the police expressing concern for his safety. She then received a txt from him and spoke with him using another person's phone as his had been stolen from him. "He said he had been jumped, his phone stolen by three Maori guys. He said he was bleeding a little." he says she asked her son to come home but he never did. Jacqueline Miles then detailed a series of Facebook wall messages left by Vaux-Phillips which the court had earlier heard were sent after Gosnell had brutally beaten Hayden Miles and he had died of his injuries. In a series of postings and messages Miles was led to believe that Vaux-Phillips was also concerned about the whereabouts of her son and was hiding the fact that he was already dead and his body cut into 12 pieces for disposal. This deception continued as late as the end of November. Miles said that in the second to last Facebook contact she had with Vaux-Phillips she was told that her son had turned up bloodied after a beating on 22 August, that Vaux-Phillips and Gosnell had cleaned him up and put him to rest on a couch but by morning he was gone. In previous testimony Vaux-Phillips said this was a lie Gosnell concocted. In the final message, on December 1st, Vaux-Phillips asked for any photos of herself and Hayden "Because I've got none of us." Hayden Miles’ body parts were subsequently recovered from a local cemetery and Gosnell charged with his murder. Vaux-Phillips has already been sentenced to a year’s home detention after admitting a charge of being an accessory after the fact to culpable homicide. A tenant who moved into the Cashel Street flat in which Miles died has described it as looking as though street kids had been living in it, with stains, filth, rubbish and many holes punched or kicked through the walls. Under questioning from Gosnell's lawyer he admitted that the flat had been vacant for several weeks and there was no actual evidence that the squalid conditions dated to when the accused and his girlfriend, Vaux-Philips, occupied the flat. The trial is set down for two weeks but it is possible it may wind up mid-next week.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 9th April 2013 - 2:44pm