One Legged Women Amputee

Web of lies

Feilding amputee Dean Richard Mulligan was sentenced to a minimum 15 years in prison yesterday for murdering Whanganui woman Marice McGregor in April last year.

As reporter JONATHON HOWE discovered when he spoke to one of the lead investigators, Mulligan's web of lies started well before the trial.

It was while searching for love online that Whanganui woman Marice McGregor met the man who would eventually bludgeon her to death and leave her body in a roadside ravine.

The 45-year-old sickness beneficiary's first contact with Feilding amputee and computer technician Dean Mulligan, 43, was on the NZ Dating website in mid-2008.

She soon began a physical relationship with the married Mulligan, who is missing half of one leg, and reportedly fell in love with him.

Their bond was such that Ms McGregor gave him at least $20,000 of her inheritance, and left her house and car to him in a $5.99 will bought from Whitcoulls.

But when she started asking for her money back and threatened to encroach on his life, Mulligan's only solution was murder.

Detective Senior Sergeant Neil Forlong, second in charge of the homicide investigation, said it was initially tough for police because they had no body.

"We didn't know what we were dealing with. What we had was a missing person and on the face of it, things didn't add up."

The last time Ms McGregor was seen alive was while collecting firewood and pine cones on Old Parapara Rd in the Lismore Forest area, north of Whanganui, on April 19 last year.

Her red Suzuki Escudo, with her wallet inside, was seen abandoned later that day. She was reported missing a week later.

Police searched the area, stopped cars and asked for information about a green Mitsubishi 4WD van seen in the area. They also discovered Ms McGregor's phone was turned on for a short time in the Feilding area on April 20.

Mr Forlong said Mulligan made himself known to the investigation team early on.

"It's unusual because he was there right from the word go. Though we would have established that he was a contact of hers anyway.

"The reason he was spoken with was he alerted the McGregor family that he hadn't spoken to her for some time. He was certainly the last person to see her alive so he was of real interest."

After an initial interview with Mulligan on April 30, investigators knew something wasn't right with his story.

"From the first conversation there were a number of quite clear lies that didn't take too much investigating to discover they were lies.

Caroline Larsson pursues golfing dreams on one leg - Ladies ...

Caroline Larsson was caddying for her younger sister, Ladies European Tour rookie Louise Larsson, at the Pegasus Women’s New Zealand Women’s Open in February.

The 22-year-old Swede, who is two years older than Louise, turned professional in January and was planning to compete at Ladies European Tour Qualifying School herself for the 2012 season, but on 5 March, she returned for a check up and was told that amputation was the only option after doctors found five malignant tumours, called chondrosarcoma, in her thigh.

She first began to feel that her knee was swollen, but did not see doctors until a year later, when she had trouble bending her knee to read putts on the golf course. She had her first operation in June 2010 and the second in February this year.  

“After the amputation, I had a rough time. There are feelings that I cannot describe actually because it’s not like usual pain; it was like pain from the inside, right from where they took off my leg,” she says.  “The nerve was on my foot before, but I couldn’t feel my foot, so they call it phantom symptoms. I was like that for three days. It still hurts and I have to take medications until at least the end of July.”

‘Carro-spirit’

Caroline is a fighter. Just two weeks after surgery, she was out swinging at her home course in Karlstad, hitting balls whilst balancing on one leg as well as performing sit ups and push ups in the gym.

She said that she was happy to be alive after a near-death experience in New Zealand. Following the Ladies European Tour event in Christchurch, she and her sister Louise were sitting in a restaurant having lunch when the earthquake, which police believe killed 182 people, hit the city.

She said: “The floor was jumping, plates were jumping, windows were crashing and we came out. Buildings were coming down and we just survived. Out restaurant and four other buildings were the only buildings left standing on the street: the choice of restaurant saved our lives.

“After that I had a completely different view of life coming home because we could have been killed. One month later I had the decision that my leg had to be amputated. I was in shock because I felt so good and I had been through so much.”

When the day of the operation came she was not particularly worried and she had her boyfriend, Martin, with her to help her stay calm, “There was no looking back; I could only look forward,” she says.

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