It was 1.30am when Anthony Ballantyne made a distraught call to 111 from his Whangamata home.

"Body. Dead. Here. Now," he told the operator, the High Court in Hamilton heard at the start of his trial for murder today.

The house is Achilles Ave where the victim was found. Photo: Mark Taylor/Fairfax NZ.

"I woke up with a dead body beside me. My friend, he's dead."

When police arrived at Ballantyne's Achilles Ave home an hour later they found blood splattered and smeared on the walls and floor of the house.

In the laundry was the body of 76-year-old Ivan Peter Kapluggin. He had suffered multiple stabbing and chopping-type wounds, including a 7cm cut from the lobe of his left ear to behind that ear. There were two more stab wounds in the left side of his neck and two in his back.

There was also an 8cm chop wound to the left side of his head, and a similar 8cm chop wound across his lower lip, and cuts across the fingers of his left hand, consistent with defense wounds.

These details were revealed by Crown prosecutor Ross Douch on the second day of a two-week jury trial, where Ballantyne, 62, stands accused of murdering Kapluggin in the early hours of February 3, 2015.

Ballantyne was arrested in Whangamata on February 23 and he pleaded not guilty to the murder charge the following day.

Kapluggin was a United Kingdom passport holder with New Zealand residency, who had been living in Thailand.

He had returned to New Zealand on February 2, to set about selling a property he owned in Waikino.

He was picked up from the airport by his younger brother David, before the pair met Ballantyne in Waihi, where the two brothers parted ways - David Kapluggin headed back to his home in Tauranga and Ivan Kapluggin and Ballantyne travelled to the Whangamata house, where Ballantyne had a roast cooking in the oven.

What happened in the time after they got there had been the subject of great investigative scrutiny and careful reconstruction of what the Crown believed occurred, Douch told the jury of seven women and five men.

One of the first things the jury heard were some of the details of the 111 call, during which Ballantyne sobbed and wailed at the operator. At one point he disconnected the call, but the operator called him back.

"Why, why, why, why is he dead?" Ballantyne asked.

The police operator queried whether the death could have been caused by some sort of haemorrhage, Douch said.

"No, he's dead. There's a knife there," Ballantyne allegedly replied.

After being called, police launched a homicide investigation and cordoned off the house opposite the popular Williamson Golf Course to undertake a scene examination.

At the time police said the occupant of the house was helping with inquiries, but would not comment on the relationship between the occupant and Kapluggin.

Lawyer Thomas Sutcliffe is defending Ballantyne in the trial before Justice Timothy Brewer.

- Mike Mather/Stuff.co.nz