RSA Triple Killer William Bell Takes Corrections To Court For Security Rating Last Year

A notorious murderer apologized for his crimes at the beginning of an Auckland court hearing while initiating his case against Corrections.

William Dwane Bell became one of the nation’s highest-profile killers when he killed three people and wounded a fourth at Mt Wellington-Panmure RSA in December 2001.

Mary Hobson, 44, Wayne Johnson, 56, and William Absolum, 63, died during the robbery.

He also seriously injured Susan Couch, who worked part-time doing the club accounts.

“I am not proud of what I did. I committed a heinous crime,” Bell told Auckland High Court today.

“That is reprehensible in any society.”

He said there were no words to atone for the suffering he had caused.

“But I’m really sorry for what I’ve done,” he said.

Bell represents himself in a case against Corrections in which he alleges that he was wrongfully reclassified as a maximum security prisoner after an allegation that he planned to kidnap a prison staff member.

The claim was made by someone who had called Crimestoppers claiming that Bell was planning to take a hostage in an attempt to escape.

Bell said the rule of law applies to everyone: sinners and saints and everything in between.

The law does not require someone to have led a “blameless life” to qualify for protection.

“Human rights are universal.”

Public officials “are not immune” from the law, which is itself what gives them power, he said.

“When the rules of the law are ignored or violated, they should be held accountable for their actions as much as anyone else should be accountable for theirs.

Bell told the court that it had maintained a low-medium safety rating without issue from 2016 to the middle of last year.

But this was changed to the maximum until investigations were completed and he lost his job in the kitchen.

Your case is a judicial review of that decision.

Bell, who is currently classified as low-medium again, said there was no evidence he was hatching a plan to escape.

He claims that individual truck license plate details were written down in his notebook to keep track of the role each truck played.

Phillip John Smith’s name and bank account number were also noted in the notebook, the court heard.

But Bell said it was a note to make sure he paid Smith. That note wasn’t Bell’s handwriting, he said.

“That’s the writing of Phillip John Smith,” he said.

Bell told the Superior Court that he had no intention of escaping from prison.

“I’ve been in this place for 20 years.”

Now there was light at the end of the tunnel, he said.