In his home town of Wellington, Daniel ‘Jack’ Kelsall was known as the boy who didn’t quite fit in. He had a friendly, polite demeanour, but a quick temper too.

“Jack seemed to get anxious very quickly and lash out at students,” said one former class-mate at the Montessori high school where he studied.

“He was quiet but had a very penetrating stare.”

Kelsall’s road to murder started 2220km away from Sydney, in the leafy suburb of Khandallah, near Wellington.

Neighbours remember seeing the awkward, skinny, red-haired teenager coming to and from the cul de sac where the family’s cliffside home sat perched over a foggy Wellington Harbour.

When then Daily Telegraph returned to the Kelsall’s Khandallah street, it was perfectly manicured and whisper-quiet, lined with blooming garden beds and double-storey homes.

Kelsall was adopted into a wealthy family, his parents Lynne and Mark sparing no expense on his school fees, hobbies and summer holidays.

He was afforded every opportunity at life, says Pauline Ray, a family friend who lived up the street.

“The kids were the apples of their parents’ eye,” she said.

“Whatever they wanted to do, Lynne was there for them - if they wanted to try a new sport or drama or music or whatever. The children certainly didn’t want for anything.”

When it came time to start high school, Kelsall’s parents bypassed public schools and enrolled him into the Athena College – an alternative school based on “self-directed learning” tucked away on the ground floor of a grey CBD office building.

Jack mixed with students of all ages and was known for his obsession with video games, fiction novels and the arts, even taking part in school cabaret performances.

“Because of the alternative nature of the school, he was a bit different. Like a lot of the other kids,” one senior student said.

“Some of the kids would have been social outcasts in state schools and that’s why they went to Athena, because they didn’t fit in at mainstream schools.

“I do recall moments when his mood would just turn and he could be quick tempered. I’m not sure if he had a disorder. Jack did this strange thing where he would go around asking for hugs.

It was very odd.”

News of Jack’s arrest over the brutal slaying of Morgan Huxley came as a shock to friends and classmates in the town that raised the unsuspecting killer.

“What could have brought him to do something like this?” Mrs Ray told The Daily Telegraph.

“There wasn’t anyone in the street who didn’t like the family. Jack was a quiet boy. He didn’t appear to have any failures, but he didn’t fit in. You could just sense that.

“I think he was lonely because he didn’t go to a local high school. But he was very much loved.

“The children were Lynne’s heart and soul.”

Another classmate, Jess, remembered Jack as a “quiet, friendly” student.

“He had a real baby face - he was quite a cute kid. He had a few friends and they were into computers and gaming,” she said.

“I’m so shocked, he didn’t seem like the type of kid who would go and do something like that.”

Jack’s father Mark worked in the real estate business and the family moved several times while living in Wellington.

On school breaks, the Kelsalls holidayed at their at their Hamptons-style beach house on the Kapiti Coast, 40 minutes north of Wellington, where Jack’s older brother still lives.

Mark and Lynne realised by primary school that their son was gay. Even though Mark, a fit man with a passion for rugby, “thought differently” to his bookish and chess mad son, he told the trial he always “enjoyed Jack’s company.”

“It’s just what it is. Jack’s got curly hair, he’s gay. We don’t make a big deal out of it,” Mr Kelsall told the jury, adding he never probed his son about his personal life or whether he was going on dates.

Jack started home schooling when Athena closed down in 2009, before he went on to study hospitality and food preparation at the Wellington Institute of Technology.

He always knew his son was happy in his own company, and not fond of sports due to a lack of strength or physical aggression. He only briefly played basketball. Kelsall boarded and continued to study at Wellington TAFE after his parents and sister moved to Sydney.

Alone and struggling to make friends, his thoughts began to crumble into darkness and despair.

So the family made the decision to move Jack to Sydney and into their home in Balmoral.

Even after arriving in Sydney, Jack’s insatiable thirst for reading continued. Mark fondly recalled in the trial how his son would go to Mosman Library, take out a dozen books and return them all, finished, the following week.

Mark knew his son had been homesick for his family while living by himself in Wellington, but the troubles clearly ran deeper than that.

Both parents worried constantly about the impact Seroquel, an anti-psychotic medication was having on their once bubbly boy. Jack had begun taking it in low doses in New Zealand and then slowly increased the amount. With his son’s consent, Mark told a doctor in Sydney of his concerns Jack was being overmedicated and had been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, which had prompted the Seroqual prescription.

The Sydney GP agreed and Jack was eased off the drug. In the trial, Mark told the jury it was at this time he developed the “intrusive thoughts” about following a stranger home from work with a knife. But he insisted to the 12 men and women who would decide his fate that as his body learned to live without the medication and the twisted thoughts had vanished.

Mark said he could not imagine his son being involved in the murder but conceded that he never asked him whether he carried out the killing.

The truth, in the end, did not come from Jack’s mouth. But from the damning file of police evidence laid before the jury.