The badly decomposed body of a popular, creative man who attended Auckland Grammar and emigrated to Germany was found this winter in a reserve at Orakei. Who was Socksay Chansy? Steve Braunias reports.



His body was found by a gravedigger. Likely one of the last things he had ever seen, lying on damp earth near a sewer line in a grove of trees - pretty in the daytime, sunlit, with fantails hopping on low branches of flowering manuka, but lonely and terrifying at night - was an urupa, the graveyard at Orakei. It has a chapel and a low white wall and a bell tower. This was all that was left of the Auckland he had come home to, the city narrowing to a graveyard, a bell, a tap for visitors to wash their hands. He had only just returned after productive years in Germany and then a kind of breakdown in Sydney. He had friends, family. There was a queue of people to offer shelter, support. But he lay down in the cold. Across the road on Tamaki Drive, the tide swept in and shuffled out at Okahu Bay, sucking at the sand; and his own life ebbed away, Socksay Chansy giving up the ghost on the edge of a park right beside a village of the dead. His body lay there for a month, maybe longer.

He was 36 years old. To report on this story was to talk with other men all aged 35 or 36, a generation of guys from the same background - classmates at Auckland Grammar, friends from King's College - who had all gone to university or some other tertiary course, partied hard and perhaps unwisely, but survived the crazy years of passage to settle down and get good jobs, buy property, start young families.

The friends remained friends. They still sometimes call each other by a sort of nickname inspired by Socksay - everyone added the "-say" in his name, pronounced sigh, to their name. Duncan-say. Jamie-say. Hugh-say, and so on, an affectionate gesture in honour of their friend with the unusual name. It means "blessed". His parents are Laotian. There was a Buddhist ceremony at the place where he died, monks chanting in that pretty sunlit grove, a manhole marked with paint from the police crime scene. Someone had built a teepee from upright branches, and there was a more sophisticated structure, beneath a bank, of bamboo lashed together with string, next to a piece of soft foam that would make a decent pillow.

An area in the bush at Orakei Reserve which may have been of interest to the police. Photo / Doug Sherring"/>
An area in the bush at Orakei Reserve which may have been of interest to the police. Photo / Doug Sherring

How did it come to this? He was a man on the run. He skipped town, he bailed - that was his MO when things got bad. It was always abrupt, no notice. Next thing anyone knew, he'd gone. And when he fled, he always fled alone.

To talk to his friends was to discover the kind of person he could be, someone gentle and kind, witty and cool. To talk to his family was to learn about the person behind the considerable charm, someone who wanted to hide from the world. He was hiding - concealed, sinking into the earth - when he died.


He was born in a refugee camp. Between two worlds at birth: his parents fled Vientiane in Laos during the terror of the Communist regime, slipping out of their house onto a boat that took them silently up the Mekong River. "We leave night time," said Socksay's father, Sam Chansy. "You don't let anyone know. Someone know, they shoot you. We hired canoe. Eight people on canoe. One hour up the river to Thailand. Very frightening! No suitcase, nothing. Only we got money and gold. That's it. Socksay never born yet, must be eight months inside his mum. When he born, his mum stay in hospital two hours. They say, 'You go now.' But is okay."

They were given refugee status, and arrived in New Zealand 1980. Sam immediately found work. Socksay's brother Peter was born in 1982. They lived in a plain house high up on the Mt Wellington ridge on a busy road surrounded by massive electricity pylons.

His mum and dad split when Socksay was about 10, and the brothers were raised by Sam. He said, "I think he have broken heart when mum leave him. He keep it inside. He never talk to no one about it. He read letter, go for walk." A walk along the shabby footpath beside Mt Wellington Highway, maybe down to the volcanic crater lake of Panmure Basin...How long was he away? "Maybe half an hour. He come back and said 'I don't talk about her. That's it.' And he didn't. If someone come to house and talk about the mum, he not say anything."

After Socksay's body was found, police said that he'd been estranged from his family for a long time. In fact he'd been living with his mother and his brother Peter in Sydney before he arrived back in New Zealand and escalated his inexplicable slide towards a private, tormented death. He was only estranged from Sam. They hadn't spoken since Socksay left home, and New Zealand, when he was 21.

Socksay Chansy with his brother Peter when they were younger. Photo / Supplied
Socksay Chansy with his brother Peter when they were younger. Photo / Supplied

Why not? What had gone wrong? Sam said it was nothing, just that he was hard to get hold of - he changed addresses, he changed phone numbers...We tell stories to ourselves to tidy up the mess of family life, to straighten things out. "I not stay at one place. He write letter, where he send to?" Fifteen years of silence, of some cold intense rage, reduced to the postal service. The separation was Socksay's MO - cut and run, and leave the past behind - at its most severe. He removed Sam from his life.

They'd obviously been close, loving. Sam took Socksay to play soccer all over Auckland when he was little. "Every game! Every park. He good player. Want to be number one. He always shoot the goal! Every game, he shoot the goal."

Every park: including one in Orakei, near where his body was found. "I remember that time when I take him to play there," said Sam. His voice became softer, quieter; he drew his hand over his face. "I think he was maybe eight or nine. I don't know. Just a kid. The game finish, and me and him walk down to the park, at Orakei, and he say he like the sea, and the trees, and he say, 'I want to build a house here one day.' Maybe this why he go there. I don't know."

The father of a baby born in a refugee camp, weeping in his house in Dannemora. A copy of Socksay's death certificate lay on the table beside the plate of chocolate biscuits. It read, "Place of birth: Nong Khai." And next to Socksay's name: "No fixed abode."

He was wildly popular. "He was like a hero," said Jamie O'Connor. "It was like, 'Socksay's here!' He was always laughing. Big teeth, big smile. Really cool guy."

We met at a Hells Pizza in Wairau Park on the North Shore near where he works in IT. O'Connor knew Socksay at Grammar. At university, they joined forces with guys from Kings, and established awesome party flats in Gillies Ave in Epsom, and Buchanan St in Kingsland, where the flatmates included O'Connor and Dan Kelly, who now works as an editor at TV3. We met around the corner from the network and sat in the sunshine. He said, "There were four of us in the flat, and it was where people would go to drink and smoke weed and play Nintendo 64 PlayStation...It was a party every night."

Jamie O'Connor told a colourful story about Socksay setting up party headquarters in a downtown insurance office. He'd found work as a night cleaner and would invite friends up to raid the company's open bar and drink on the rooftop. "So there we'd be at 2am, 3am, and he'd be like, 'Have as much as you want to drink!' It was epic. It didn't happen just once, it was like weekends in a row. It was like, 'Party at the insurance place!' It was great."

Flowers placed where Socksay Chansy's body was found. Photo / Supplied
Flowers placed where Socksay Chansy's body was found. Photo / Supplied

But things were already unravelling. Socksay bought a black Audi, which blew everyone's mind. O'Connor said, "We were like, 'What are you doing, bro?' Before we knew it, we were all going around in his Audio. It was fun while it lasted...But the partying wasn't working for him. and financially, I think he got into a bit of trouble. He had debts. Like he turned up to my house one time, crying and upset. He wasn't very happy with where he was at.

"All of a sudden he just picked up and bailed, you know? It was like, 'Oh, Socksay's gone.' It was amazing. He just left without telling anyone."

The Audi was repossessed, and there were other debts that he couldn't settle.

"He was always a precarious individual," said Tom Cotter. He was part of the gang and now lives in Munich, after arriving in Germany to complete his PhD in chemistry. "His reputation preceded him. There were lots of stories about him. He was a contentious character, someone who inspired numerous feelings. People had a lot of opinions about him and one was that he could be a bit of a bullshitter. But he had such a magnetic personality. He was always a lot of fun."

Dan Kelly said, "I never remember him being unhappy. He was always smiling, always laughing." When he thought of Socksay now, what picture of him came to mind? He said, "He's smiling., He's laughing. That slight cackle he had. And I see him with other people, with a group of friends. I don't see Socksay alone. I think of him with all my other buddies."

It's difficult to accurately trace his whereabouts and wanderings after he skipped town. He went to Sydney, and stayed with his mum, and later travelled to the US, where he stayed with his aunt in Rhode Island. That didn't go well. His cousin Arouny Wongsaene said, "He ended up just sleeping and eating, and staying in his room. 'You know what', my mum said, 'you're not really helping.' So she paid for his ticket to Germany, and off he went on his merry way."

He never kept in touch with anyone - friends, or family. He simply disappeared. Next thing anyone knew, he was living in Berlin, had got married, and was doing pretty well for himself as a film and video editor. No one back in New Zealand had heard from him in years but by coincidence a group of old friends from Grammar and King's all fished up in Germany, and Socksay eventually, perhaps reluctantly, got in touch.

Socksay Chansy in Sydney. Photo / Supplied
Socksay Chansy in Sydney. Photo / Supplied

These were good years. Jamie O'Connor said, "I went over and hooked up with him in Berlin. I hadn't heard from him in years, not a word, nothing! But he was just like the old Socksay. We had picnics, went on bike rides. Everything was going really well. And he was such a great host. Anything he was doing, he was like, 'Come along. Come with me.' Super generous."

Hugh Smith knew Socksay at Grammar. He travelled to Berlin in 2012, and saw him for the first time in over 10 years. He works as a landscape architect now, and we met at a nice café in Parnell. He said, "He'd got it together. I was impressed. He had a great group of friends, and he was really generous with his money. He introduced me to all these people.

"I was actually the first person from the old days who he saw. He really wanted me to stay with him. I got the feeling it was really important to him that someone he knew from Auckland was back in his life again. He was making new friends all the time, but he needed an old friend, I think. He wasn't desperate about it; it was more like he was anxious that I come and stay.

"And it was great. At first. But then I started seeing a dark side."

He stayed in his room and heard voices - his own voice, talking to himself. "Socksay was unravelling," said Hugh Smith. "Berlin has a big party scene. His partying escalated, it got out of hand, and he went on a downward spiral. He'd go out and not come back for a couple of days, and then he'd shut the door of his room, and not come out for a week.

"I'd say, 'Hey man, I'm going out with some friends for dinner at their house, it's free, so no cost, come along!' And he'd say, 'No. I don't want to come out of my room.' I'd hear him holding conversations. I was like, 'Did you say something?' He'd say, 'It's just me talking to myself'."

He stopped coming into work. "I think he was fighting against his demons for a long time," said Pedro Deltell Colomer, a Spanish film editor who formed the Lemon Face video editing company with Socksay. "He was a very intelligent man, happy, a funny person. A lot of friends. But from the beginning he had a dark side."

There it was again, the "dark side". He said, "He could be quiet and depressive." Later, Socksay told Pedro about hearing voices. And this: "He was taking medication for his illness. I don't know what kind of illness it was." He didn't know the name of it, or the type of medication, but he knew it was to do with mental illness.

"He was showing signs of depression," said Jeremy Bailey, an old schoolfriend who hooked up with Socksay in Germany. Bailey is part-owner of the very hip, very successful restaurant The Burger Lab, described in tourist literature as "a kingpin of Hamburg's artisan burger craze". Taking hamburgers to Hamburg, and knocking it out of the park. Life has been good to Bailey in Germany; when we spoke, his newborn baby was gurgling in the background. It was at his stag do where a tremendous reunion of Auckland friends took place - Jamie O'Connor was there, Hugh Smith, Socksay. That was in 2012, when life was good to Socksay, too.

A memorial for Socksay Chansy in Berlin. Photo / Supplied
A memorial for Socksay Chansy in Berlin. Photo / Supplied

"When I met him in Berlin I was surprised at how established he was," said Tom Cotter. "He had an apartment, and a girlfriend, and he was engaged in running a small production company. He was paying the bills and spending time with creative people. Berlin is an artist's city, and he was living the kind of life people really want to carve out for themselves over there. He had a nice place, and he took me to his studio - it was the real thing, you know, because there was always a question of whether there was anything behind what he said. But we went there and he was really doing things, and making things which were fulfilling for him."

Jeremy Bailey said, "I think that it really boils down to mental health issues which went unchecked, or properly medicated, and Socksay being stubborn and not wanting to reach out for help. Those issues just spiraled out of control."

"He was this cool Asian dude," said Johannes Ostertag, one of Socksay's closest friends in Berlin. "He was very witty, a gentle person, bright, a good friend." They worked together as film editors. For once, a date could be fixed to Socksay's whereabouts: Johannes's girlfriend at the time, Katrin Katz Kobberg, emailed her reminiscence of Socksay, and wrote, "We all met at the video company when I was an intern in mid-2009."

She furnished another date: 2014, the year which seems to have been the beginning of the end. Johannes Osterberg sublet his apartment to Socksay. Katrin: "I am not sure what happened exactly but I know that Socksay was a li'l party animal and went wild from time to time, meaning using lots and lots of drugs. Either this destroyed his relationship [with Johannes] and led him to lose his job or other way round. I am not sure. Anyways, he couldn't pay the rent and owed Johannes lots of money, and then suddenly he left Berlin to go to his family in Sydney.

"Last time we spoke before he suddenly left he was anxious and seemed desperate. No job, no girl. And it was tense because Johannes was there and they were arguing."

Cut and run, leave the past behind. Johannes said, "When he left - he didn't tell me. He just left, just disappeared."

He was like a fugitive. He travelled light, hardly left a trace. There was the cat from his marriage, a small old wooden box that he left in Johannes's apartment and which Kirstin took, and keeps on her make-up table. "It's a little reminder of him," she emailed. "All I can really tell you about Socksay is that he was a sweet and kind person. He had his flaws as everyone of us does, and also his personal struggles and demons he was fighting. It made me sad to see that they won."

All the old friends from the past in Auckland were guys; it was striking to hear a woman's perspective, the tenderness which she felt for him. Slim, funny, gentle, charismatic - he was attractive to women, and there were stories about two relationships after his marriage broke up. There was a German girl: "She was pretty kooky," remembered Jeremy Bailey. "An interesting character, a unique character. There were lots of arguments, it was a very emotional relationship."

Pedro Deltell Colomer - a Spanish guy talking about a New Zealander's relationship with a German girl - met her, too. He said, "She was a bit dark. A philosophy student. A bit depressive. But she was okay actually, she was good for him. Arguing maybe too much. Then he meets an American girl. She was very beautiful and a bit older than him. I don't think she was bad for him exactly but I think she was maybe a bit too exciting for him. She loved to party, you know."

That romance faltered. Alone, broke, out of it, in debt - "No girl, no job," as Katrin Katz Kobberg said. He was heading for a fall. His exit from Germany was like a photocopy of his departure from New Zealand.

Jeremy Bailey talked about Socksay's descent into depression in 2014. "We were talking about the past in New Zealand, and he said he'd made mistakes, that there were things he felt guilty about and he couldn't get over it, things like owing people money, and not doing the right things by them or whatever, but it was all in his mind. Any good friend will forgive you if you front up. It was more just that it was like a catalyst for his mental health issues.

"One of the last times we spoke I said to him, 'Look, I think maybe you've got some depression issues, maybe paranoid schizophrenia or whatever,' and I tried to advise him to seek help. Then he moved back to Sydney."

Katrin Katz Kobberg: "The last thing I heard from him was a short Facebook conversation when he was in Australia. He said he was sad that he left without paying Johannes and to ruin their friendship. I tried to calm him down and told him they will be friends again."

He got in touch with Johannes from Australia, and wired him the money. "I said, 'Well, thank you, Socksay, that's great.' And we had a nice talk. He seemed okay," said Johannes. "Actually I travelled to Australia in 2013, and visited his mum and family. They were really nice people and just had a normal life. When I heard he left Germany to go there, I thought, 'That's good! They will make things alright'."

"He stayed in his room for a couple of years," said his cousin Mel Wongsaene.

"I don't want to say it's depression or mental illness because I'm not 100 per cent. But towards the end of last year my mother kept in close touch with Socksay's mum, and she was very concerned for him - sleeping all day, not working, talking to himself in his room. She was concerned with his mental health. But he refused to see anyone."

When he first arrived in Sydney towards the end of 2014 to stay with his mum and his brother, though, he was hopeful about picking himself up and finding work. He skyped another cousin, Mel's sister Arouny Wongsaene. She said, "He sounded really positive. He said his next step was to look for Melbourne, that he had quite a number of contacts there. He was up about life in general and asked how the kids were, and he spoke about coming back to New Zealand and visiting us, and meeting his nephews and nieces."

It was Socksay's last stand. The call marked the final time he felt confident about the future or made plans. 2015 was his lost year. He went into his room, and shut the door.

Socksay Chansy was believed to be sleeping rough in theold army facilities at Orakei Marae. Photo / Doug Sherring
Socksay Chansy was believed to be sleeping rough in theold army facilities at Orakei Marae. Photo / Doug Sherring

"That Skype call was when he last spoke to me," said Arouny. "I hadn't heard from him for a few months, so I Facebooked him. He didn't reply, but that was just how he was. He never needed to keep in constant touch with you. He'd go and do his own thing, and come back when he wanted to.

"Then my auntie [Socksay's mum] called me, and sad he wasn't doing well. Whatever prospects he had in Melbourne must have fallen through, and she said he was spiraling into depression. She said, 'It's really bad.' I said, 'Oh you know he how he is, he'll get over it, and he'll find something, you know, to get him back on his feet'."

He was falling to pieces, the pieces getting smaller and smaller. If he was in hell then he was surely dragging everyone else down with him; it must have been intolerable to have to live with him while he stayed stuck in his room, talking to himself - worse, listening to himself. What gloom he must have created, what anxiety and distress. If the walls were closing in on Socksay then they were surely closing in on his family, too.

It was always going to come to a head. It duly exploded, and afterwards it left everyone in an agony of guilt. But no one was to blame. It was just a sick person forcing his way out. According to Arouny, the fight began when Socksay started yelling at his mum, and then yelling at Peter's fiancé, so aggressively and frighteningly that she locked herself in he room and called Peter. He raced home and there was another massive argument. It ended when his mum paid for his ticket to Auckland, and gave him $ 500.

"He really wanted to come back to Auckland," said Mel. "It was his thing, that he kept asking to come back to Auckland, and he'd secure a job. The plan was for his dad to help him and Socksay was very open to that."

It must have signalled a fresh start, an opportunity to get his shit together. He'd had a lot of good times in Auckland before things got too much. He'd been happy there. It was his city, he knew it intimately. He could renew old friendships, straighten himself out. He was only 36.

He was depressed, and the depressed person laid down and died. A gravedigger had gone into the bush to look for ferns. There was a tangi scheduled that day, on Saturday afternoon, at the Orakei urupa. His old friend Hugh Smith who knew him during good times in Auckland and later in Berlin went for a jog along Tamaki Drive and saw the crime scene - the yellow tape, the forensic team in blue paper overalls.

Socksay hadn't called anyone. Not his father, not his friends. He didn't let anyone know he was back. He roamed around the city with just the clothes on his back as autumn turned to winter and he lasted less than a hundred days. He was always on the run from dates, they revealed his whereabouts, but they finally caught up with him and pinned him down - he arrived on or about April 1, he was spoken to by police on April 25, his body was found on July 23.

The scene where Socksay Chansy's body was found in Okahu Bay, Auckland. Photo / Doug Sherring
The scene where Socksay Chansy's body was found in Okahu Bay, Auckland. Photo / Doug Sherring

Sam Chansy got a phone call from the police a few days later. He'd been in the police force himself, in Vientiane, as a sergeant. "Policeman say, 'I got something to ask you, Mr Chansy.' Then they come to house, show me photo, and say, 'Is that your son?' But I'm not quite sure. I cannot identify him. I'm 65, my memory's not much good. I never seen him in long time. So I phone up the mum straightaway."

What misery it was for him to sit and talk about the death of his son who he didn't recognise. And part of the wretchedness of it was that it could have been prevented, that there were at least three occasions after Socksay arrived in New Zealand when he could have been saved from himself. He managed to slip through each time.

There was the case of the unread email. When he left Sydney, his mum emailed Sam to tell him that Socksay was on his way and to pick him up at the airport. But he didn't check his emails until after the flight had arrived.

Well, that was just bad timing. But there was another, stranger incident when Socksay was put into a kind of protective custody - and still slipped out of reach. It was at the airport. Police later told Sam that he attracted suspicion. "Police there, immigration peoples, they say he doesn't look like he has nowhere to go. He just walk around and around."

Was he looking for his father? "I don't know," said Sam.

"Police hold him and check him and see if he have a drug. They say, 'Are you alright, do you need help?' He say, 'I am alright.' They bring him to the hospital for two days. They check him, and ask if someone can help him, but he say he is alright. He got my business card.

"They say, 'Well, he still got some money.' The mum, she gave him $ 500. He still got $ 407. He got money, he is 36-years-old, he's a man, he not harm anyone, they can't hold him."

Sam went looking for him, the whole family were anxious and worried. "I drive up to that place where they collect the food. You know? Hobson Street. Yes, the City Mission. There. I stop the car and see if he come out or not." He parked outside backpacker hostels, he drove around and around downtown.

Where was he, what did he do after he arrived back in Auckland? The trail goes cold, and then it's picked up again on April 25, when a third opportunity presented itself to stop Socksay from his descent into a dangerous and ultimately fatal madness. The police caught him committing a crime. He'd broken into a house. He hadn't taken anything, he was just using it for shelter. They took his photograph, they questioned him - and let him go.

The incident with police was Socksay's last chance at salvation. He didn't want it. He wanted darkness, he needed rest.

He made his final bed in bush beside a park overlooked by the magnificent homes along Paritai Drive. To meet his friends, that generation of 36-year-olds from Grammar and King's such as Brody Nelson and Duncan Greive - homeowners and talented entrepreneurs (Nelson is technical director of the app-driven Parkable, Greive runs the Spinoff media site), both with young families - was to see the life that Socksay could have enjoyed, too. He was just as clever, just as chill.

Friends of Socksay Chansy: (from left) Leonie Hayden, Duncan Greive, Brody Nelson and Martin Dykes. Photo / Peter Meecham
Friends of Socksay Chansy: (from left) Leonie Hayden, Duncan Greive, Brody Nelson and Martin Dykes. Photo / Peter Meecham

But he was suffering. When the body was discovered, word went around the immediate neighbourhood that it was probably the crazy old lady who lived rough and could be seen most days outside the local bakery, feeding seagulls and pigeons. The ex-Grammar boy who was mistaken for a homeless woman. Police ruled out foul play, and an inquest will be held to establish cause of death. It seems far less likely to be suicide than exposure. But there's hardly any more comfort in that for friends and family, who are left to contemplate the horror of Socksay dying on the wet ground at the edge of a reserve.

Jamie O'Connor said, "How could someone die like that? What were they doing there? It's - I mean - it's - it's unspeakable."

Auckland friends held a wake at Galbraiths in Mt Eden. They sat around in a state of shock and tried to make sense of it. It was a very New Zealand send-off - beers, low voices. In expressive Berlin, about a hundred people who knew him on the party scene assembled one night at Gorlitzer Park to light paper lanterns and say goodbye to Socksay as the pretty lanterns drifted, glowing, into the sky.

The family have the worst of it. Sam Chansy wept in his home in Dannemora and said, "I don't know why this happen. I got a good house, I got spare room for him, he be comfortable. I prepare a job for him; I ask my boss, he said he can start anytime."

He went to the spot where his son died. "I think he lie down there and not have energy to get up," he said. "Too cold. Just not get up."

He talked with someone not long before he died, very likely the last person he spoke to, not far from where he lay down in the cold. "He made a profound impact on me," said Neil Mahi.

We met at the Savage Memorial. Tourists from China bent forward against the wind that tore around the grassy point. Neil was a big man, with a thoughtful, open manner. "Let's walk," he said, and we strode down a hill towards Tamaki Drive. The water was choppy, and boats rose up and down. "I met him there." He pointed to a concrete gun emplacement that clung to the side of the bank; the roots of a tree twisted around the roof in a kind of embrace.

Neil is security manager at the nearby Orakei marae. He patrols the grounds most afternoons. It attracts vandals, drug users, vagrants; he asks them to respect his ancestral land, and to move on. He'd been told about a guy who was sleeping in the embankment. He went there, and found Socksay.

The emplacement is a snug kind of place. It's an ideal spot for someone sleeping rough and needing shelter. It has a roof. There's a small window where a shaft of light creeps in. There's a kind of gutter in the middle of the floor where rainwater collects. Neil found Socksay lying on a black plastic rubbish bag.

"What struck me straightaway was that he had almost nothing on him. Nothing substantial. A little backpack, and the plastic bag - that was his bed. That was him. He had a supermarket bag with a few supplies in it. He had light clothing on and it was obvious there wasn't much in his backpack. He looked like he was out for a stroll."

The two of them went outside, and sat on the grassy bank and talked for maybe quarter of an hour. "I said, 'Are you hungry, bro? Do you want some lunch?' He declined. He said, 'No, I'm fine.' I told him he was on Maori land. He didn't realise. He said, 'Oh, I'm really sorry.' He was really understanding. He offered to give me some money as an offering. I said, 'No, you keep your money, bro.'

"He really was the nicest guy. Quietly spoken, polite, courteous, respectful. But his body language was all closed. He sat there huddled, with his head down. No eye contact. He was holding something within himself.

"He really made an impression on me. I went home and I was in such conflict about asking him to leave. There's always been a level of conflict that I've felt but none like this before and it was because he was such a sweet guy.

"'Bugger it,' I thought, and I filled a container from my dinner - we'd had a chicken meal - and my old army thermal mat. I thought, 'He'll have come back.' So I went there but he was gone.

"I went inside the emplacement and there was $ 2.40 in coins that he'd left on the black plastic mat as a koha. That broke my heart."

Orakei Reseve where Socksay Chansy was found dead in the bush. Photo / Doug Sherring
Orakei Reseve where Socksay Chansy was found dead in the bush. Photo / Doug Sherring

Socksay's last act was to honour an debt. Unpaid debts always meant a lot to him; they were a torment, a sign of bad faith, of letting people down. He couldn't bear that. The coins might have been the last of his money and he spent it on paying a debt he didn't actually owe.

"I come back here sometimes," Neil said. "I had my own ceremony for him. I have a Buddhist faith, so his passing resonated with me on that level, too." We looked out towards the water, and North Head. "He was such a nice guy. Gentle."

When we'd first walked inside the emplacement, and we were looking around that small, damp tomb, Neil pointed to a coin on the floor. "I think that was Socksay's," he said. We weren't in there very long and then he said, "Let's get out of here."

Where to get help:

Lifeline: 0800 543 354 (available 24/7)
Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO) (available 24/7)
Youthline: 0800 376 633
Kidsline: 0800 543 754 (available 24/7)
Whatsup: 0800 942 8787 (1pm to 11pm)
Depression helpline: 0800 111 757 (available 24/7)
Rainbow Youth: (09) 376 4155
Samaritans 0800 726 666
If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.



- NZ Herald