Millionaire wife-killer Gregory Meads released from prison
Thursday, 22 February 2024
Matamata multi-millionaire horse breeder Gregory Meads has been released from prison.
Meads shot his wife, Helen Meads, in 2009, days after she said she was leaving him.
Meads’ defence was that it was an accident. A jury disagreed and he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2011.
A multi-millionaire Matamata racehorse-breeder who shot his wife dead days after she told him she was leaving has been released on parole, after finally admitting he deliberately pulled the trigger.
Waikato man Greg Meads was convicted of killing his wife, Helen Meads, in 2009, outside his stable block.
The Meads were living apart at the time of the shooting, when Greg Meads took a shotgun to the stables where Helen was and shot her in the throat, killing her instantly.
At his trial in 2011, Meads’ defence was that the gun had gone off accidentally and he had not deliberately pulled the trigger.
The jury did not believe him and, after just three hours of deliberation, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum of 11 years before parole.
Meads was said to be worth around $40m at the time of the killing, according to Helen's father, David White.
After serving more than 11 years in a minimum security prison, Meads was released this week on February 19, after a New Zealand parole board hearing concluded he was at “low risk of re-offending”.
He had now “come to terms” with the killing, although he “maintained a denial for many years, being unable apparently to face the fact that as someone with a self-image of a good, law-abiding person he had killed his wife,” parole board chairman Sir Ron Young wrote in the report on his release.
Meads had maintained the stance that the gun went off by mistake for more than eleven years in prison, and was previously denied parole last year - and in 2021 - for maintaining “that this was simply an accident”.
After seeing psychologists, Meads had now accepted that “he had deliberately pulled the trigger and he had murdered his wife,” Young wrote in the report, adding “this was an extremely serious murder that arose in very worrying circumstances essentially out of the blue.”
Following the trial, Helen Meads’ father David White revealed he'd encouraged his daughter to leave Meads because of his abusive, violent tendencies.
White has spent many years campaigning against family violence, and previously told Stuff that he supported his son-in-law’s release, although could never see himself forgiving him.
Meads has been released to a family residence in Tauranga with special conditions: he is not to go to Matamata, Rotorua or Auckland, and he is forbidden to contact any victim of his offending without prior approval of his probation officer.
He must also disclose any “intimate relationship” at the earliest opportunity.
All parole conditions would be reviewed in July 2024, the report said.