His trial began last month in the High Court at Christchurch before Justice Jonathan Eaton and a jury.<\/p>\n
Rodger has pleaded not guilty to murder and claims he is not responsible for the death. <\/p>\n
The Crown alleges that Rodger killed Leman at Morgan \u201cMolly\u201d Grant\u2019s home while she and Sara Plimmer \u2013 a friend of the victim who had spent the afternoon with him \u2013 were present.<\/p>\n
The court heard earlier that Rodger had claimed Leman was already dead when he got to Grant\u2019s property and that the women and police were trying to set him up. <\/p>\n
Richard Leman. Photo \/ Supplied <\/p>\n
The Crown finished presenting evidence, including lengthy testimony from both Plimmer and Grant, to the jury today.<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer Ethan Huda then called Rodger to give his version of events just before the lunchtime adjournment. <\/p>\n
The jury heard that at the time of the alleged murder, he was living with his partner, not far from Grant\u2019s house in Rangiora. <\/p>\n
The couple have been together about five years and have a preschool-age child together and Rodger\u2019s partner has two teenage children from a previous relationship.<\/p>\n
On the day Leman died, Rodger had been in Christchurch \u201cpurchasing some product\u201d which he explained meant \u201cbuying some meth\u201d.<\/p>\n
While in the city, he was messaging Grant. <\/p>\n
He then returned to Rangiora and confirmed that he was driving around the town in his car \u2013 which was captured at various locations on CCTV. <\/p>\n
He denied having a firearm with him that night. <\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely didn\u2019t,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve just been in town buying a large amount of [meth] … half an ounce, which is about 14g.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I wouldn\u2019t want to get caught with 14g and a gun driving around in my car \u2026 I\u2019d be instantly locked up \u2026 driving around in Christchurch, there\u2019s more chance of being pulled up \u2013 there\u2019s a lot more activities going on and more police presence in Christchurch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Scott Rodger is on trial for murdering and dismembering Richard Leman and dumping his body in his own car at a vacant North Canterbury. Photo \/ RNZ, Pool<\/p>\n
The jury heard earlier that Grant had messaged Rodger, inviting him to her home because she \u201cwanted to get high\u201d. <\/p>\n
She told him she was alone at the house and when Leman arrived unexpectedly soon after, she messaged Rodger to let him know.<\/p>\n
She said she only told Rodger because her circumstances had changed and she did not want to look like she had lied. <\/p>\n
She said she later deleted that message on Rodger\u2019s orders.<\/p>\n
He said he did not delete any of his messages from that night. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t even know why she would have erased that message,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never responded because I was still driving \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodger said he went to see Grant \u2013 who he had known for 20 years \u2013 because \u201cI\u2019d already told her I\u2019d come over\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew she was hanging out and I knew she wanted a session and stuff like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd to tell you the honest truth, I don\u2019t even know why I went because we hadn\u2019t even been speaking \u2013 we had been off terms for a bit of time. I just decided to go around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huda asked his client if he went to the address with the intention of \u201crobbing\u201d Leman. <\/p>\n
Michael Scott Rodger. Photo \/ RNZ<\/p>\n
Rodger rejected that suggestion. <\/p>\n
He said he was \u201cnot doing too bad\u201d financially at the time and did not need any money. <\/p>\n
He explained he had been paid around $70,000 in compensation by a government department for \u201ca situation I was in when I was younger\u201d and had some family money.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a relatively decent amount of money at that time, as well as other things that were worth a lot of money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, as my mum had died not long beforehand, I was reasonably well off and doing quite well for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodger confirmed that on the night of the alleged murder, he had more than $20,000 in his bank account.<\/p>\n
He will continue giving evidence this afternoon. <\/p>\n
Anna Leask is a senior journalist who covers national crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2008 and has worked as a journalist for 20 years with a particular focus on family and gender-based violence, child abuse, sexual violence, homicides, mental health and youth crime. She writes, hosts and produces the award-winning podcast, A Moment In Crime, released monthly on nzherald.co.nz<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His trial began last month in the High Court at Christchurch before Justice Jonathan Eaton and a jury.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1117,4487,159314,49738,47529,19724,20733,42,14235,159315,4275,15360,43,15160,40,38,41,39,54],"class_list":["post-312621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accused","tag-christchurch","tag-dismembering","tag-evidence","tag-fatherofthree","tag-given","tag-gives","tag-headlines","tag-killer","tag-leman","tag-murder","tag-murdering","tag-news","tag-richard","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}