Photo: RNZ / Ebony Lamb / Jarred Bishop
Can the police use a story to get to the truth about a murder?
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In 2014, David Lyttle, a struggling builder in the little town of Halcombe, answers a knock at his door. What happens then leads him into a shadowy criminal organisation that offers him friendship, a new job, and riches, in exchange for one thing: honesty.
Pressed by the organisation’s boss, David Lyttle confesses to murdering his friend Brett Hall three years earlier. He shows the boss where he buried the body parts. Then, his world explodes. He’s arrested and charged with murder. The whole thing was a police sting operation known as “Mr Big”. And now David has confessed.
Or has he?
The body parts aren’t there. It starts to look like the confession doesn’t add up.
How reliable is a confession obtained by dangling these prizes, and where it costs the suspect nothing to make up a story the boss apparently wants to hear?
And how good are we – and are jurors – at working out whether to believe such a confession?
David Lyttle in the Palmerston North High Court. Photo: RNZ / Anne Marie May
This series follows the prosecution of David Lyttle through to the verdict and its aftermath. We visit the campsite in rugged bushland 30 km from Whanganui where David was building a house for his best friend Brett Hall. We learn that Brett was annoyed at David and believed David was ripping him off. We also find out that Brett was dealing drugs and told people he had a big deal coming up soon. Then he disappeared.
Did Brett fatally fall out with David over a building dispute? Or was he murdered over a drug debt?
The trial looks to be an uphill battle for David Lyttle. There’s the confession evidence. The problem that juries almost always convict Mr Big defendants. And the fact that, in order to show the jury how powerful the manipulation was so that they might understand how he came to give a false confession, David is going to have to convince them that he’s a liar, a dupe and a willing criminal.
Brett Hall disappeared in 2011. Photo: Supplied
Journalist and lawyer Steven Price looks into the stories and failings of one of Aotearoa’s most controversial ‘Mr Big’ investigations. Mr Lyttle meets Mr Big looks at the evidence pointing to David, and the evidence pointing to a drug killing. We examine the police’s astonishing failures to properly disclose evidence to the defence – even when that evidence pointed to another killer. We follow the ups and downs of the trial.
Lawyer and journalist Steven Price examines some of the material from the case. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Along the way, the series gives us a window on the police’s Mr Big operation that has never been opened before. We look at the police’s tactics in the scenarios they create around David, and wonder whether they are genius or evil, or whether it’s possible they’re both.
Leading experts explain the psychology behind those tactics, and how likely they are to produce false confessions. We check out some psychological experiments that provide troubling insights into how we can be mesmerised by confessions, and how malleable and fallible our own brains are.
The series also discovers that there are few legal rules controlling Mr Big stings, which were in fact designed to avoid legal controls. Should Mr Big stings be better regulated?
In the end, this is a series about stories. The story the undercover police told Mr Lyttle. The story Mr Lyttle told Mr Big. The competing stories the prosecution and defence told the jury. The stories the court tells about the case. The story told in this podcast. We fill our uncertainties with stories. Can we ever escape them?
Written and presented by Steven Price
Executive Producers Justin Gregory, Katy Gosset & Tim Watkin
Director Duncan Smith
Music Ebony Lamb and Gram Antler
Images by Ebony Lamb. Design by Jarred Bishop
Supported by Michael and Suzanne and Borrin Foundation and Te Kauhanganui Tatai Ture, Faculty of Law, Victoria University of Wellington
Photo: Victoria University of Wellington
Photo: Borrin Foundation
