Jeff Ryan Whittington

Early in the morning of May 8, 1999, a central Wellington CCTV camera captured a glimpse of the tall, rakish figure illuminated occasionally in pools of street light as he trailed off into the gloom. Jeff Whittington was drunk and high on datura as he made his way down Vivian St after a night out. He'd had a few mugs of the hallucinogenic tea, boiled up at a friend's flat, earlier in the evening and spent his night out dancing and drinking with girls in town. About 4.20am a policeman found him sprawled on Vivian St, but Jeff told him he was alright. The officer helped him onto the footpath and continued on his way. Jeff struck on in the direction of the Aro Valley home he shared with his father above a dairy. People who saw him that morning would later say he looked a lot older than 14. He had purple hair and wore green nail polish. Then-Wellington High School principal Prue Kelly recalls the fourth-former as "the boy in the sewing class." "He dressed with flamboyance… he coloured his hair and his nails. But around High, he wasn't the only one of the boys to do these things." On that morning, May 8, 1999, Jeff probably did not look out of place on the bohemian corner of Cuba and Vivian - home to cafes, art shops, neon-lit bars and flesh clubs. Tassled and bedazzled Cuba carnival-goers would have partied down the intersection in the months before Jeff would cut across it on his lonely walk home. Yet he would only make it about halfway up the street's un-lit west when a pair of strangers driving by clocked the boy with the purple hair. Detectives didn't know who the boy on life support in Wellington Hospital was or how he came to be kicked senseless in Inverlochy Place, a nook near Aro Valley. Seeing the way he was dressed, they skipped the mainstream news organs of the day and instead had his description broadcast on an alternative radio station in hopes of getting the gravely injured teen identified in time to get his family to his side. Sure enough, then-Detective Inspector Brett Kane recalls, the station's listeners had the boy identified within hours as Jeff Whittington, 14, of Aro Valley. That meant his family was able to sit with him, Kane nods sadly at the memory. Jeff died the next day. Stephen James Smith, 27, and Jason Morris Meads, 25, had come home later on the morning of May 8 with a couple of prostitutes, boasting they had beaten a "faggot" who had been wearing makeup. "They said he told them to f*** off so they kicked the shit out of him and left him for dead," a friend of the pair said. "They said they had never seen anyone bleed from the places he bled from. They were laughing about it." The men admitted in court they had been drinking that night and in the early hours of the following morning, drove by and picked up Jeff. They said the saw the teen - a stranger to them - sitting on the kerb and said they feared he might be beaten up. They told the jury at their December 1999 trial all three wound up on Inverlochy Place, a short drive away, to smoke a joint. They claimed they bashed Jeff because he argued with Smith after spilling beer in the back of Meads' car. Yes, they told the court, they punched and kicked him - but denied stomping on Jeff's head, saying they never meant to kill him. Jeff's injuries told a brutal tale. An autopsy found he had a ruptured bowel and blows had caused his brain to swell, fatally. He had boot marks on his skin. When a woman found him, he was lying alone in a puddle at 4.40am. He had suffered severe brain damage and died in hospital the next day. Smith and Meads were sentenced to life imprisonment. Reports of Jeff's funeral recounted cannabis leaves painted on his coffin and young mourners who spoke of how Jeff liked writing stories, foxes, candles, and magic, and that he followed Goth culture. Jeff had been into wearing earrings and a stud pierced through his lower lip. His personal diary detailed homosexual encounters, referred to fleetingly during evidence at trial, but it was never clear whether he identified as gay. Ronald Trifero Nelson got to know Jeff, in a way - BATS theatre in Wellington had insisted he get the Whittington family's blessing for the play he was writing about the teen's murder. Corner 4am and Cuba was a sell-out show - but there was nothing "joyous" about the 2007 production, Nelson recalls. In its making he spoke to Jeff's sister for hours, interviewed his friends and read the eulogies written about the teen. Nelson chose not to cast a "Jeff" in his play - instead telling his story through the eyes of bit players in the tragedy. The performance proved harrowing for Jeff's sister. One of Jeff's killers is now out - Meads admitted defrauding Inland Revenue of about $17,000 from behind bars in 2007, and was released in 2013. Smith has since been in and out of lock-up. Drink-driving and alcohol abuse have punctuated his short bursts of freedom since 2014, and he's currently back inside - not eligible for parole again until 2017. Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/faces-of-innocents/81580818/faces-...