Child-murderer Anthony Roma back in prison after alleged parole breach

Anthony Lawrence Roma arrives at the High Court in Wellington in October 1991 after being charged with murder. Photo / File

A man who murdered a 7-year-old boy in Napier 27 years ago, acting on what he said were voices exhorting him to "kill a Pākehā", has been recalled to prison after allegedly breaching his parole conditions.

Anthony Lawrence Roma was jailed for life after breaking into a Napier home and murdering Simon Reaney in 1991.

It was about daybreak on the Sunday of April 14, 1991, when Roma burgled the two-storey Reaney family home on Madeira Steps overlooking St John's Cathedral and attacked Simon and his 11-year-old brother Michael.

Simon was bludgeoned with a car jack Roma had taken from a workshop, and died in hospital two days later. Michael was severely injured and was on life support in hospital for a fortnight.

The boys' father, accountant and former Otago and Hawke's Bay rugby representative Stephen Reaney, was also attacked as he confronted the naked and chanting intruder while his wife protected their infant daughter.

After the 1991 attack, Roma fled Napier but was apprehended a week later in a farm paddock in Central Hawke's Bay, half-naked, chanting and brandishing a furry black toy duck as if it were a voodoo doll.

At his trial in the High Court at Wellington, Roma denied a charge of murder, the jury being told of his drug-induced psychosis and claims he had heard voices exhorting him to ''kill a Pākehā''.

He told a psychiatrist he believed he was a Māori warrior and had to kill, but an insanity plea was rejected at his trial.

Roma was released on parole in 2003, but was recalled to prison the following year for breaching his parole conditions by committing an indecent act in a Manukau shopping mall in South Auckland.

In 2011 he was again released on parole, after the Parole Board said he had made "huge changes in his life", despite pleas by the victim's family that he should remain behind bars.

The board said that while his crime was appalling Roma had credibly expressed remorse for what he had done.

"He has an insight into his own offending and behaviour and an openness about him which was never previously the case,'' it said.

This month, however, on June 11, the Department of Corrections applied for an interim recall to prison order for Roma, a Corrections spokesperson said.

The application was made after Roma allegedly breached his standard and special conditions by consuming alcohol.