Author Ronda Bungay has called for the introduction of "diminished responsibility" as a legal defence after hearing tragic tales of female killers.
Years spent investigating cases with her late husband, the celebrated defence lawyer Mike Bungay, QC, gave her a good insight into the criminal mind.
And research for Scarecrows, her book
about women who kill, and the associated television documentary, When Women Kill, has cemented her opinion that killers can be mentally out of control without being legally insane.
"I don't believe in battered women's syndrome because rational women do kill," she says. "But if we had diminished responsibility, then at least one of the women interviewed on this documentary wouldn't have been convicted of murder.
"Kim [Tawhai] was affected by drugs and living in a state of siege. She didn't even kill the right man. She wasn't insane but she wasn't in control."
When Women Kill promises a "startling and brutally honest" account of two women convicted of murder. The candid storytelling of Kim Tawhai and Condesa Shaw certainly delivers that.
Tawhai, aged 34, is an articulate and apparently talented woman who lost control of her life under the pressure of her control-freak husband and killed the friend who was best man at their wedding.
The story of 36-year-old Shaw, a woman who was sexually abused from the age of two and turfed out of home at seven, is equally compelling. She was convicted after stabbing her boyfriend in a drunken fight.
Bungay says neither woman is making excuses for what she did.
"They just explain what happened. They have nothing material to gain, only the hope that other women will learn from their lives, and that maybe one life will be saved in the sharing.
"Unless we stop seeking revenge and start looking for clues, society will continue to lose its innocence and nothing will change.
"I wanted the community to know why women commit murder. And I was interested in the women healing themselves by telling their stories."
The documentary's interviews with both women, now released from jail after serving 10 years, are as gripping as the written accounts in Scarecrows, although there is perhaps too much emphasis on the arty, shaky-camera dramatisations that accompany them.
As well as exploring the killers' minds, the documentary looks inside prison.
Cecelia Lashlie, manager of Christchurch Women's Prison, acts as tour guide and reveals the benefits that isolation and therapy can offer women in jail. "They begin to process their lives in here," she says, pointing to a single cell where an inmate spends hours alone.
"We have to teach them to dream again."
There's no doubt that Tawhai and Shaw are dreaming of a better life now they're out of jail. They long to make up for the lost years, especially with their children. And they hope their powerful message will stop others - including those children - from falling into the trap they did.
Bungay also has a new ambition, born of seeing too many cases involving drink and drugs.
"I'm starting a degree in alcohol and drug addiction. There isn't a crime I know about that doesn't involve them."
Who: Ronda Bungay
What: When Women Kill
Where: TV One
When: Tonight, 8.30
Author Ronda Bungay has called for the introduction of "diminished responsibility" as a legal defence after hearing tragic tales of female killers.
Years spent investigating cases with her late husband, the celebrated defence lawyer Mike Bungay, QC, gave her a good insight into the criminal mind.
And research for Scarecrows, her book
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