A former soldier given home detention for leaving guns at Quinn Patterson's Whangārei rental home says he was conned by the double-murderer - a man he considered a trusted friend and employer.
Michael Hayes told Newshub he just wished he'd recognised that Patterson was going off the rails before he went on to kill.
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In July last year, Patterson killed two property inspectors and shot and injured contractor Jeff Pipe. The trio visited Patterson's place to install some smoke alarms.
After the killings Patterson called Hayes and left a message; the gunman was then surrounded by police, and the house where he'd been holed up caught on fire and burned to the ground.
Hayes recently worked in the wilds of Cambodia and Laos defusing landmines, his trade saving lives and helping others.
But his association with Quinn Patterson would ultimately land him in court, linked to the deaths of two innocent women - property inspectors Wendy Campbell-Rodgers, and her daughter Natanya Campbell.
"How do you know that anyone could kill?" Hayes said.
"I mean, this was a person who was my friend... You don't go thinking about those sorts of things about your friends and people you trust.
"He never came across as any sort of psychopath."
Hayes worked for Patterson; they were mates who met most months for a meal at the local RSA, and they'd sometimes do target practice at Patterson's place.
It was around May 2017 when Hayes left six of his guns there. Patterson never had a gun licence.
"That was a mistake. For sure - 100 percent, it was a mistake," Hayes said.
Hayes even allowed Patterson access to his firearms licence number so he could bid for guns on Trade Me. He says the deal was Patterson would pay - but Hayes ultimately filled out the police paperwork, collected and kept the guns.
"Gullibly I let him use that number," Patterson says, adding that he shouldn't have done it. "I would just like to say that they all were delivered to me - the ones that I knew about."
But then there were the ones he says he didn't know about. Patterson set up a second Trade Me account using Hayes' name.
Without Hayes' knowledge, Patterson also set up a fake Yahoo email account, and used it to try to get gun parts into New Zealand.
"The police have shown me email accounts that he made in my name, and of course he had all my personal details because I worked for him."
He'd also been writing to Customs trying to import gun parts, effectively impersonating him.
"He basically did a really good con job on me - and God knows who else."
On one occasion he saw weapons at the property that weren't his, and when he asked Patterson about it he said "I got them off a mate".
One of the guns he saw Patterson with was a heavily-modified .22 Gervarm.
"A semi-automatic .22. cut down... and it was silenced as well," Hayes said. Newshub understands a cut down .22 was the murder weapon.
The deaths weigh heavily on Hayes' mind.
"My heart goes out to them," he says. "I spent my life saving lives... not having anything to do with taking them."
Asked if he felt connected to taking the lives, he said: "Only in that I didn't recognise the signs in Quinn... because I know the firearm he used was not mine."
Police could not prove the gun was his either, which is why his sentence was confined to his own home, as opposed to a prison cell.
Newshub.
