Anaru Morunga is on trial for the murder of his ex-partner and mother of his two children, Jasmaine Reihana.
WARNING: This article discusses violence and may be upsetting to some readers.
A key witness in a murder trial has described the last night he saw his daughter‑in‑law alive — recalling a woman whose demeanour had shifted to the point she was “not herself at all”.
As he watched her move through the house, Michael Jones said Jasmaine Reihana’s ex-partner Anaru Morunga trailed close behind with a knife hidden in his pocket.
“Something was off,” Jones said.
Morunga, 35, is on trial in the High Court at Whangārei, charged with the murder of his ex‑partner and mother of two of his children.
The Crown says Morunga killed Reihana on September 8, 2024, in the Pouto Peninsula home he shared with his mother, Suzanne Morunga and her partner of 10 years, Jones.
Morunga is also accused of disposing of her body by setting her car alight at the far end of the farm where he worked near Ripiro Beach, before fleeing and leading police on a chase along State Highway 12 that ended with his arrest near the Brynderwyns.
Crown prosecutor Bernadette O’Connor told the jury in opening statements they did not need to determine a motive.
“You just need to be sure he did kill Jasmaine, and he did so with murderous intent,” O’Connor said.
Jones, who was at the house the day Reihana was allegedly killed, is the Crown’s key witness.
He knew her well as the mother of two of Morunga’s children and she had lived with them several times over the years.
Jones said Reihana was generally a bubbly person who would always sit down and have a cup of tea and a chat.
“She’s a pretty good, nice person,” Jones said.
Morunga and Reihana had returned from a tangi and arrived at the Pouto Rd address between 4pm and 5pm on Sunday, September 8.
Jones gave an evidential interview describing the chaos that unfolded over the next 24 hours.
He said he noticed Morunga was agitated and unable to sit still, while Reihana “was not herself”.
“Something was off, she was not herself at all. She didn’t look happy,” he said.
Jones said Morunga followed Reihana in and out of the house several times and at one point, was carrying a knife.
When asked if Reihana saw the knife, he said she would not have because “he had it hidden in his pocket”.
After about 15 minutes, Jones felt unsafe and texted his partner.
“He is fried as f***, he’s scratching his head with a big knife … I think something is going to happen tonight,” the text read.
At 6pm, Jones left the house briefly to alert police and his partner.
When he returned, he was confronted by an enraged Morunga.
“Before I even got to the garage, he was outside,” Jones said.
“He started running towards the car, started kicking it, bashing on the windows yelling and swearing at me.
“He looked evil. It wasn’t a look you want to look at.”
Jones retreated until police arrived around 6.15pm.
He escorted officers back to the house, but Morunga and Reihana were gone, along with her car.
It was dark, and they checked the house through the windows.
“We come back through from the deck when police saw blood on the wall and the floor.
“Thinking about it at the time now, if I had turned on the lights in the kitchen they would have seen it straight away. I wasn’t thinking properly.”
Jones said the police took some photos and left. He confirmed the blood was not there earlier.
Fearing Morunga would return, Jones stayed at a friend’s house overnight.
But by morning he had to return to milk the cows and collect his quad bike.
When he arrived, he noticed Morunga’s ute — which had been parked near the house for days — was gone, replaced by a quad bike.
With his phone nearly flat, he managed to call his partner, who was driving back from Auckland.
She told him to call police.
“She said to get out of there,” Jones said before he went to the cowshed and locked himself inside.
For the next 30 minutes, he heard Morunga’s ute repeatedly coming and going, sometimes stopping outside the shed.
“I just had that feeling like someone’s outside,” he said.
“He stopped for a while and then he took off again, he went back to the house and then 10 mins later, came zooming back up to the shed again.
“It was playing on my mind, why you keep coming up here?”
After 10 minutes of silence, Jones was sure Morunga had left.
He looked out and saw his partner standing outside the house.
“I thought shi**,” he said, but Morunga was gone.
“She was frozen, she was scared.”
The trial continues before Justice David Johnstone.
Shannon Pitman is a Whangārei-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the Te Tai Tokerau region. She is of Ngāpuhi/ Ngāti Pūkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.