Tony Robertson in Rotorua High Court in 2006. Photo / The Daily Post
Tony Robertson in Rotorua High Court in 2006. Photo / The Daily Post
The former Tauranga man who murdered and raped Blessie Gotingco is also a child sex offender and had just been released under the strictest possible conditions - including 10 years of GPS surveillance - when he killed Ms Gotingco.
Tony Douglas Robertson today lost name suppression, two months after being found guilty by a jury at the High Court at Auckland, and the 27-year-old's criminal history can finally be revealed.
Police believe a local officer who acted on instinct and hunted Robertson down, finding him and the girl with her pants removed, saved her from a worse fate.
Robertson was jailed in October 2006 for eight years after being found guilty of seven charges, including indecently assaulting the girl and attempting to abduct two other children.
On his release from prison in December 2013, he breached his conditions twice in a few weeks and was deemed such a lasting danger that he was to be monitored strictly for a decade, the maximum period of an "extended supervision order".
"I am satisfied that Mr Robertson poses a very considerable risk indeed," Justice Edwin Wylie said in his judgment in February last year. "I consider that it is likely that he will commit an indecency on a child under the age of 12 years, and that he will abduct a child for the purpose of sexual connection.
"The evidence compels the conclusion that [he] is impulsive, and that he is unable to control his anger and aggression. Mr Robertson has a predilection for, and a proclivity towards, sexual offending. He has shown no remorse ... Indeed, he continues to deny it."
He has shown no remorse ... Indeed, he continues to deny it.
Robertson raped and murdered Mrs Gotingco three months after the supervision order was imposed but yet to be enforced.
On the first day of the High Court trial, the jury was told the mutilated body of the Auckland mother-of-three was found in a suburban cemetery in May last year.
The Crown said Robertson ran down Mrs Gotingco and broke her leg as she walked home from a bus stop.
He threw her into his car and drove her to his nearby home where he raped her then stabbed her to death.
Two days later, police found the body in scrub in Eskdale Cemetery, Glenfield after a detective decided to check the location data associated with the GPS anklet Robertson was wearing.
The trial was told electronic data showed he had been driving around the North Shore on the evening of Mrs Gotingco's disappearance and visited the graveyard only a couple of hours before she was due home. The same device showed he revisited the area early the following morning and officers sent there made the grisly discovery. Crown prosecutor Michael Walker said the two cemetery visits were important because they showed "the defendant was planning to kill someone".
"His trip to the cemetery was scoping out where to dump the body."
Tony Robertson in court during his trial for the murder and rape of Blessie Gotingco.
Mrs Gotingco was last seen leaving her workplace, Tower Insurance in the CBD, about 7pm on May 24.
She was meant to get a lift home from a friend but volunteered to do some overtime, which meant she had to take a bus back to Birkdale.
Mr Walker said she was making the five-minute walk home down Salisbury Rd when Robertson deliberately drove onto the footpath and ran her down.
Mr Walker said the impact broke her left leg in two places and caused significant damage to his bonnet and windscreen. Robertson scooped up the injured woman and made the short drive home.
"He parked the car in the downstairs garage of the apartment complex he lived in and, after arriving at his house, he raped Mrs Gotingco," Mr Walker said.
"The small, petite woman, already injured from the first assault, stood no chance against the defendant armed with a knife."
It is alleged Robertson slit Mrs Gotingco's throat and then stabbed her numerous times.
When the police went to his address they found a knife, testing of which showed traces of the victim's blood, the Crown said.
A number of her personal items, including her handbag, were found buried in his garden.
Bloodied towels and mop-heads were found in a wheelie bin, Mr Walker said.
A swab taken from the victim's body turned up a semen sample, which was later tested by ESR scientists. Mr Walker said it provided "extremely strong scientific support" to suggest the defendant had raped Mrs Gotingco.
