In 1991, Bronwyn Warwick murdered an Auckland pensioner who caught her stealing a valuable collection of Royal Doulton china.
She spent a decade in prison, then reoffended — kidnapping, breaching parole, and returning to jail.
In June, she was locked up again after a senior probation officer claimed he saw her buying meth at a South Auckland pub. The Parole Board wasn’t convinced she was a danger to anyone and released her.
Over the past nine months, Warwick has spoken extensively with senior crime journalist Anna Leask, sharing her story and prison diary — the only place she ever described the day she became a killer.
Bronwyn Warwick handed over the prison diary like a loaded weapon - pages filled with guilt, grief, and the truth she couldn’t bring herself to speak out loud.
“I won’t talk about the murder…. I’m too ashamed… if you want to know about it, it’s in the book,” she said.
“Do what you like with it, use it or don’t - it’s up to you. It’s all in there. I won’t talk about it, because when you bring those things up again and get into it, it’s there again, right in the front of your mind for so long.”
The diary also reveals a life most could only imagine.
A transition from male to female started when Warwick was just eight. Stints in boys’ homes, borstals, and prisons punctuated by repeated sexual abuse and assaults. Stripping, sex work. More violations and violence. Drug and alcohol addiction. Trauma. Being harmed - and frequently harming others.
“I’ve had a crazy f***ing life, when I think about it,” Warwick said.
“There’s a story there. There’s probably a movie there. I’m dying, so if I don’t do it now, I won’t do it at all, and you’re the sponge.”
When Warwick began speaking to the Herald, she believed she had terminal stomach cancer. She has since been diagnosed with a hiatus hernia that has had a debilitating impact on her health.
Warwick pulls no punches. She is not speaking to excuse or minimise her offending. She just wants people to understand her.
“The murder… I was heavily f***ed on heroin... In today’s world, I think it would have been a charge of manslaughter… I think part of the way I got treated… was because I was transgender,” she said.
“But ... I took a person’s life regardless of the circumstances, which were not very good. And I have to live with that every day…. I don’t ever forget it… even if I didn’t have parole conditions, I wouldn’t forget it… It’s very hard to live with what I did to another person.”
It was late 1991 when retired nurse Phyllis de Jong met Bronwyn Rachael Warwick in a pub in Auckland’s Ponsonby.
Warwick had been in and out of prison over the years in New Zealand and Australia, one court document explaining that she had “amassed a substantial history of offending in relation to, and as a means of financing, her drug addiction” as well as “very serious violent offending”.
Her crimes at the time included the armed robbery of a Christchurch bank in 1986. Warwick, then 38, brandished an imitation pistol and managed to steal almost $6000 before fleeing in a “dilapidated HQ Holden”.
De Jong - a mother of three adult sons - likely had no idea of this when she invited Warwick into her home.
While Warwick won’t talk about the meeting or aftermath, she has allowed the Herald to publish her memories of the offending from a diary she wrote during her time behind bars.
After a long time making money through stripping, sex work and selling carvings, Warwick embarked on a new “venture” - buying and selling antiques.
She “knew a good deal” about stuff - hallmarks and values and the like - and spent several weeks in a library “reading and studying” before getting down to work.
She’d purchased “a load of hot antiques” from a guy, including a Japanese teapot in a wicker basket.
She writes in her prison diary:
“I showed it to a woman who collected teapots... she invited me back to her flat to show me her collection of antiques, and to negotiate a deal.
“She had a lovely collection, but didn’t seem to know the value of some of the pieces she had. I spotted an entire collection of Royal Doulton. It was the complete thing… 60 pieces all on display in perfect condition. I knew this was worth over $40,000, piece by piece, and I could sell it to my contact for half of that - then get out of the country."
She decided on the spot she was coming back to burgle de Jong. For three weeks she watched the pensioner’s house - tracking her movements.
She recalled:
“The only day she was consistently away for more than three hours was a Thursday; she would leave her house at around 11am and not return until after 3pm.
“It was going to take at least three hours to individually pack every piece in the collection, and two large sports bags to take it away in. If one piece was broken or chipped, the whole collection was worthless.”
In early December 1991, Warwick broke into de Jong’s flat through a sliding door and spent about an hour inside photographing the collection piece by piece.
She then travelled to Wellington on an overnight train to meet her buyer and discuss the deal.
Warwick wrote:
“We went over every photo and finally agreed on a price of $18,000 cash, price on delivery if the collection was in the same condition he had seen in the photos.
“The next Thursday, I waited at the end of the road out of sight and waited until her car went past. Then I made my way down the hill, over the fence, and into her small backyard. I snapped the lock on the ranch slider and made my way inside. I had estimated that it would take me two-and-a-half to three hours to pack this collection up…. I had at least four hours or so I thought.
“She came home just after midday. I was so busy packing, I didn’t hear her come in. The first I knew was when she said to me, ‘What are you doing in my house?’
“I panicked and grabbed her, put her on the couch, told her I didn’t want to hurt her, and I was just taking her Doullton collection. She started wheezing and finding it hard to breathe. She asked for a nebuliser machine, which I got her, and she laid back on the couch slowly getting her breath back.
“I decided to put her in the bathroom, but then she started yelling the place down, so I took her in the bedroom, put her on the bed, and tied her to the bed. She then started screaming again, so I put a gag on her and went back to packing the collection. I could hear her struggling and muffled sounds, so I knew she was still OK.”
At 2.30pm, Warwick finished packing up her stolen treasure.
She said she checked on de Jong and “made sure she was as comfortable as possible”.
She rifled through the woman’s handbag and took her car keys and $5000 cash, which de Jong had withdrawn at the bank earlier that day to purchase a new vehicle.
That was the reason she came home early - she wanted to drop the money off rather than carrying it with her all afternoon.
Warwick said:
“I loaded the two bags into the car, went back and checked the gag wasn’t stopping her breathing. I left, leaving the front door open and hoping someone in the building would notice the front door open and her car gone, and go in and investigate.
“I learned later that Meals on Wheels came around at 4.30pm... unfortunately, she had panicked, and the gag had moved up over her nose. She had passed away.”
Warwick was arrested at 3am the next day at a motel in Huntly. She had purchased cheap car to drive her spoils to Wellington but it blew up soon after.
She wrote:
“The police arrived with their guns drawn at 3am. They found the bags straight away. I was taken back to Auckland a couple of hours later and arrested for murder. The next few months were a blur, as if I was standing outside of my body and looking in.”
After a trial in the High Court at Auckland in 1992, Warwick was found guilty of murder.
She had denied the charge, maintaining that while she killed the victim there was never any murderous intent - but the jury took less than an hour to convict her.
Warwick’s lawyer maintained she had done what she could to make her victim comfortable before she left, making sure “the gag did not obstruct her nose” and telling her where her car would be abandoned so she could retrieve it.
Warwick was sentenced to life in prison and spent 10 years inside before the Parole Board agreed to release her back into the community.
She continued to offend, breach her release conditions and was recalled to prison three times between 2002 and 2009.
In 2010, she was convicted of kidnapping and aggravated burglary, bringing her total number of offences to more than 130.
On January 28 of that year, she was hitchhiking and was picked up at Huntly by a 25-year-old law student driving to Auckland.
Sentencing notes obtained by the Herald state that Warwick “pulled a knife” on the victim, “pushing the point against his left side, near his kidney”.
“You told him not to move and to keep driving or you would kill him. You switched the knife between his throat and his kidney. You directed him to drive… on to an isolated country road… where the car was stopped."
Warwick ordered the student out of the car and took off.
Police soon caught up with her and she led them on a chase during which she “drove dangerously and at speed, eventually losing control” and wrecking the vehicle.
Warwick pleaded guilty to the charge, telling the Herald that the incident was a failed attempt to take her own life.
“My idea was to steal a car and run it into one of the concrete elements and wipe myself out,” she said.
“I was quite serious. The first car that stopped for me was a Range Rover with two old people in it, and I thought straight away that I can’t do this, because that thing won’t kill me. Then the next car that stopped me was an old bomb car with a student in it.
“So that was my thinking. I was at the end of my rope. I’d been living rough for months and hardly eating. It was a shit time… I just got worse and worse. I was living on beer that was dropped off at the back of the hotel, and I was living on bread that was dropped off at the back of the grocery store. I was just taking stuff - and that was that.”
The presiding judge said the offending was serious - and perhaps not surprising given Warwick’s life to date.
“Your early personal circumstances are certainly rather tragic,” he told her.
“From an early age, you identified gender dystonic feelings. You began dressing as a female at around age 12, which led to bullying at school..
“When you left school, you began to associate with transvestite prostitutes and commenced work in the sex industry. You became involved with class A drugs and amassed a substantial history of offending in relation to, and as a means of financing, your drug addiction.
“You have suffered prolonged and severe physical and sexual violence from when you have served times in prison, and you suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. You have significant physical and mental health problems. You have a significant history of substance abuse from an early age.”
It is important to note that since the kidnapping 15 years ago, Warwick has only ever been arrested for breaching her parole conditions - not for any violent or new offending.
Warwick spoke about her early years - and wrote about them in her prison diary. She was the eldest of four - her siblings all sisters - and spent the first chapter of her childhood in Kekerengu, north of Kaikōura.
“I spent my early years milking cows, feeding out hay, helping around the farm and sometimes going out on the boat to get the crayfish pots,” she said.
School was simple and inclusive. “The first school I went to had eleven children… no ‘boy’s games’ or ‘girl’s games’, just all in together.”
Born Brian Ronald Warwick, she had known since age eight that she was Bronwyn.
At 11, her family moved to Wellington, and when she started at a bigger school she realised she how different she really was.
“It wasn’t a very pleasant time — the first time I heard words like sissy, poofter, f****t. I had no interest in boys’ games like rugby; I preferred skipping, hopscotch, and netball. I was lonely, confused, and alienated.”
The family moved again, this time to Porirua. There, she befriended a classmate who also dressed in women’s clothes.
“We’d leave school at lunchtime and experiment with hair, makeup, and clothes. Eventually, we planned a trip to Wellington dressed as girls. Nobody sprung us. It was a rush.”
They made more excursions, growing in confidence. But at home, things were difficult — her parents moved her into a shed. Shunned at home, she found her place in central Wellington.
“By this time, we were totally accepted as women. We went to Cuba Street, where there were prostitutes and nightclubs.”
A chance meeting with transgender icon Carmen Rupe changed her life. “She was loud, proud, and everything was big. She told us about hormones, which doctor to see — and that there were others like us.”
Warwick began taking hormones and immersed herself in Wellington’s nightlife. She met strippers, including Georgina Beyer, who would become the world’s first openly transgender MP and mayor.
“I took ‘lessons’ from Georgie and learned a lot. I couldn’t wait for the hormones to do their job so I could get up on stage.”
At that point, drugs weren’t a major part of her life: “I would occasionally drink.” Then came the American soldiers on leave from Vietnam, “loaded with money and drugs”.
“I drifted into that scene… got hooked on heroin, smoking it, then injecting. We would trade sexual favours for it.”
She made “great money” through stripping and sex work, but was also sexually assaulted, beaten, and robbed.
That wasn’t her first experience of abuse. As a child, her mother sent her to a boys’ home for misbehaving. There, a guard repeatedly assaulted her.
Her first arrest came after grabbing a policeman’s hat during a scuffle in Wellington. “I thought it was a good trophy,” she said. She was charged as male and held in a men’s cell, “not a nice experience”.
She returned to “the heavy gear” and was eventually sentenced to 18 months in prison on multiple charges.
“The nurses were very good to me. They fought with Corrections to get me hormone tablets. Eventually, they agreed — I was the first prisoner in a male prison to be given female hormones.”
She kept to herself and served the sentence without major issues. On release, she returned to Wellington and Auckland, where she continued stripping and used drugs heavily.
“We were never short of money, but I wasn’t happy. I earned over a thousand dollars a week — but didn’t save anything. Sometimes I’d work the streets early in the week if I wanted something special. It was a very hard life.”
One client beat her so badly she was hospitalised for 10 days, with a fractured skull and serious genital injuries.
“When he discovered I was a transsexual, he started beating me with a rock. Then he used the wine bottle we’d been drinking from. The police came, took a statement — I never heard any more about it. Like I was a transsexual prostitute and I deserved it.”
As soon as she was well enough, she moved to Sydney to join a friend in Kings Cross. “Physically, it took three months to recover. Mentally, I never did.”
She spent weeks hiding in a flat, consumed by shame. Eventually, she started working at a club — first behind the bar, then as a hostess, and later practising with the dancers.
Two years later, she returned to New Zealand hoping for a “normal lifestyle” — but brought back a “huge drug habit.”
“I was living in a world of fantasy… one minute everything was in your face and real, the next nothing was real. It was like being out of body, looking in.”
She ended up in prison again, this time at Witako (now Rimutaka), where she discovered carving. It became both a passion and a job. After release, she opened a carving shop in Wellington that did well with cruise ship tourists.
But when business slowed, Warwick began selling hash oil to stay afloat.
“I didn’t know when to quit and eventually got busted. The shop was closed and I took all my carvings and tools to Auckland.”
She tried something new — antiques.
“I knew a good deal about hallmarks. I spent several weeks in the library studying before starting that venture.”
It was through that venture that Bronwyn Warwick met the woman she would go on to murder.
Neither the murder nor the kidnapping appears to be what Bronwyn Warwick is best known for. Unlike other homicides, an internet search doesn’t yield chapter and verse on the killing of de Jong.
But Warwick going on the run in 2023? That made headlines.
On March 31, police announced a parole recall warrant for the then-74-year-old, calling her “dangerous” and urging the public not to approach. Her mugshot was widely circulated.
She wasn’t found until April 19 — and only because she turned herself in.
She later told the Herald why she ran — and how she stayed off the radar.
“It all started because a friend died,” she said.
“I was given the task of doing the carving for her unveiling. I was already working on another for a well-known singer’s anniversary. Then I got really sick in May, didn’t get back on my feet until mid-June, and had just six weeks to finish both.
“I started panicking, so I got into the meth — it gave me the energy and time to work.”
Warwick had one carving finished, one half done, when a surprise drug test caught her out.
“The probation officer rang and told me I’d tested positive and would be recalled at 5pm. She rang at 3.15pm. I thought, f**k this, and took off.”
She packed a camping bag, cleaned out her bank account, and left her South Auckland home. She briefly stopped to tell a friend, then boarded a bus heading north.
She stayed with a friend for a few days, then decided to go bush.
“I bought a sleeping bag from the Salvation Army, a tarpaulin from a hardware shop… that was all that fit in my pack. When clothes got dirty, I’d just go back and get a full change for $10.”
She went to places where people living rough could get a meal, shower, and wash clothes — “no questions asked.”
She moved around a bit more - staying with a prison mate, in a beach cabin, in a “snug” under a Manawatu church.
“I lay there listening to talkback callers asking why they were running around looking for some old gangster granny,” she laughed.
One day, she ventured upstairs for a meal and met a farmer. They bonded, and he invited her to stay at his property - offering a free bunk bed in return for stable cleaning and odd jobs.
“Then one morning, he said I’d just been on TV — they were calling me dangerous.
“He said, ‘I don’t believe it and I won’t say anything — but you’ve got to get out of here.’ He drove me back to town, and I shot to Wellington.”
Warwick hid out in a backpackers’ hostel, cut her hair, and started growing a beard. Low on money, she headed to Whangārei.
“I spent my days fishing on the heads. Every third day, I’d go into town for a meal, shower, and clean clothes.”
She slept in a bush-covered area surrounded by rocks. One night, torrential rain washed her out of her shelter, down a hillside, and wedged her — still in her sleeping bag — behind a seat on a walking track.
“I couldn’t move. In the morning, I managed to get out. I’d broken something in my pelvis, couldn’t walk properly, and hobbled into town.”
She went to a radio station and knocked on the window.
“I told the lady that the guy on the radio might want to talk to me. She asked who I was. I gave my name — she must’ve Googled it. She came back with a coffee and told me the police station was just over the road.”
“There wasn’t a big arrest,” Warwick said. “Just an old sergeant who let me finish my coffee and walked me over.”
“That was the big escape.”
When Warwick appeared before the Parole Board in 2023, she “frankly conceded to using methamphetamine”.
She was released in May 2023 and began her life on the outside again, determined to stay there.
But in 2024, Corrections made another recall application claiming Warwick had tested positive for alcohol and cannabis. That application was later rescinded because the testing was “incorrect”.
Corrections admitted it had “incorrectly counted” an earlier positive test and conceded the test Warwick had been recalled over had been negative.
Warwick was paid compensation.
“I acknowledge the department’s error led to you being detained when you should not have been and I am sorry for the unneccesary restriction on your liberty and any distress this caused you,” an apology letter from Corrections read.
“The department has investigated what happened, and it appears the mistake was a human error.”
Then in June came another recall application — another knock at the pensioner’s door, another arrest.
This time after a senior probation officer alleged he saw Warwick receive a bag of drugs at a South Auckland pub.
After the alleged May 22 incident, she tested positive for methamphetamine, and Corrections applied to have her recalled to prison for life.
At a July hearing, the officer testified that while off duty at the pub, he saw Warwick accept a zip-lock bag containing a white substance.
Warwick denied being there, saying she was home with the flu.
Her lawyer presented the board with affidavits from the bar manager and an acquaintance stating they hadn’t seen Warwick at the pub since April.
A drug expert testified that Warwick had taken cough medicine, which could potentially interfere with drug testing.
The Parole Board pointed out that, despite the seriousness of the allegation, neither the officer nor Probation Services reported the incident to the police or sought CCTV footage.
Crown prosecutor Christopher Howard maintained the officer was a credible witness and argued the drug test result confirmed meth use, making recall to prison appropriate.
Howard cited Warwick’s history and the risk of reoffending if drug use resumed.
However, the Parole Board was not convinced.
“The recall is not made out. The Board are not satisfied that, whatever happened, has not raised Ms Warwick’s risk to be undue,” said convenor Serina Bailey.
“There was a lot of varying information in the hearing; it is not absolutely clear what happened. But putting that to one side, Ms Warwick’s age, her physical health, her stability in the community with her accommodation and other supports do not satisfy this Board that the recall criteria has been reached.”
Warwick spent a total of 33 days in prison and said the recall was “particularly hard”.
“When I got home, I just sat on the couch for the first four or five days. Every vehicle that came down the drive that I’d jump up and watch day or night, I was that buzzed out,” she said.
“After you’re subjected to that, the feeling is that you can’t trust anybody at any time - that anyone would give you up and their word would send you back in jail.
“They’ve done that twice in the last two years to me for nothing. It’s not right. It just takes the swipe of a f***ing pen to send you back to jail - they don’t have to justify it. It pisses me off… that they have that power to deem you a risk to the community, no matter what."
Warwick said being recalled “throws your life out the window”.
“Anything you’re trying to build up in your life at that stage is gone. I’m sick of it - and that’s what I want people to know about.
“I just want people to leave me alone... the kidnapping was 15 years ago, and other than breaches, I have done nothing wrong since then... Police ripped me out of my house on the word of a probation officer with no evidence, and now I just don’t feel safe anymore.
“These people are causing me to think about going and doing what they think I’m going to bloody do - it’s so wrong.”
Warwick’s life of offending - in her own words and with more from her diary - will also feature in upcoming episodes Herald podcast A Moment In Crime.
These episodes will be available later in 2025.
A Moment In Crime is written, hosted and produced by Anna Leask. Episodes are usually released monthly on nzherald.co.nz, iHeart Radio and your usual podcast apps.
Click here to listen, or find out more.
Anna Leask is a senior journalist who covers national crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2008 and has worked as a journalist for 19 years with a particular focus on family and gender-based violence, child abuse, sexual violence, homicides, mental health and youth crime. She writes, hosts and produces the award-winning podcast A Moment In Crime, released monthly on nzherald.co.nz