The 38-year-old has been dead for more than four years. He was callously killed by Wellington painter and decorator Sean Dennis Brown on January 24, 2007 - Brown's 23rd birthday - and his body, wrapped in bedding, dumped down a steep bushy bank near Upper Hutt.
After reporting Harold Skudder missing in February that year - when regular contact dried up and she had been unable to track him down - Mrs Skudder and the rest of her family finally found out his fate in March last year when police recovered the skeletal remains.
Mr Skudder had been bedding down temporarily on the lounge floor of the two-bedroom Housing NZ unit Brown shared with his mother and teenage brother in Stokes Valley. Brown resented him being there and, after a drinking session on the night of his 23rd birthday, dropped a 15.75kg concrete ornamental cat three times on to the sleeping man's head.
The Skudder whanau had kept hoping their son, brother and father would turn up again - that he had started his life afresh after splitting from his partner of seven years with whom he had four young children he adored. There is also an older child from a previous relationship.
"He rang me every Mother's Day and I was waiting for it," a tearful Mrs Skudder told NZPA outside the High Court at Wellington this morning, recalling her fresh anguish yesterday.
The Skudders had just witnessed Brown, now 27, being sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, with Justice Ronald Young imposing a minimum non-parole period of 13 years.
"I don't know what to say, honestly," Mrs Skudder responded to media inquiries afterwards.
"It's just a shock now that it is all over. Where do we go from here?"
The family knew Brown would get a mandatory life imprisonment sentence after a jury found him guilty of murder earlier this year and were pleased with the length of the non-parole period.
Said Ben Skudder Junior, Harold's older brother: "We would like Sean Brown to get some help. We are happy we have our brother back and our son."
When they were ready, the whanau would look at having an unveiling ceremony.
"We will all pull together as a family, as we have been doing," he said.
"It has been a long journey for all of us - a hard and arduous time."
Ben Skudder refused to discuss his brother's children, except to say the loss of their father was "always a challenge" for the youngsters. However, the wider family gave as much support as possible.
The adult members who attended the sentencing then moved away from reporters and cameras to form a tight circle, crying, hugging, comforting Molly Skudder and each other.
In court Justice Young described the murder of a vulnerable victim as brutal and callous, telling Brown: "It is difficult to be clear about your motivation for killing Mr Skudder."
The defence of provocation was raised at the trial but rejected by the jury.
The judge accepted that Brown, a self-confessed alcoholic who had had a difficult and abusive childhood, was sensitive about protecting his mother and younger brother and that his remorse for the murder was genuine.
Brown may have, at least initially, lost self control when he dropped the cat statue on his victim's head the first time.
"But you then continued that murderous attack."
Justice Young said that, even though Mr Skudder's behaviour was overbearing and Brown resented him being in the house, the short term boarder was "irritating, but no more".
