Two people have been found guilty of murdering Christchurch mother Angela Blackmoore 28 years ago.
Former debt collector David Hawken, 50, and ex-stripper Rebecca Wright-Meldrum, 51, were on trial in the High Court at Christchurch after denying murdering Angela Blackmoore on August 17, 1995.
A third person,
On Friday, the jury returned guilty verdicts for the pair after 14 hours of deliberations.
Blackmoore’s family cried when the verdicts were read out. Her partner, Laurie Anderson, had a large smile across his face.
The two defendants were silent as the verdicts were delivered. As he left the dock, Hawken looked at someone at the public gallery, beating his chest.
Anderson told media he felt “fantastic” as he walked out of the court building.
He said he wanted to thank the prosecution, as well as the police for the hard work they had done to solve the murder, including the officer in charge of the case, Detective Sergeant Todd Hamilton.
“[He] was here from day one... fantastic stuff.”
Anderson said he spent four weeks listening to the “two parasites from society”.
“I knew Hawken was involved in Angela’s murder that night. He is a two-bit con artist, always looking to steal or trick people by giving false promises. When Angela insisted to seeing the money first, he decided it would be better to plan to kill her - knowing she was pregnant, alone, and having no chance to live, just showing how sick a man he is, just a coward.”
Using intimidation and threats was Hawken’s “game”, Anderson said.
He said Wright-Meldrum saw herself as a “jilted-lover” who was “jealous of Angela for finding a better life”.
“She was still in the same shithole... she resorted to murdering her old best friend knowing she was happy and pregnant and didn’t want her anymore. Angela had found what she wanted.”
Anderson said he still did not have closure.
“You’ll get an answer later for that one... I’m a dog with a bone, I’m getting all the bastards.”
“This is not the end.”
Asked what he was alluding to he said “Wait and see”.
“It’s like dominoes... we got one, we got two, we got three and then I’m after four. I know the picture.”
He said before the trial he did not know the full picture and was learning about the case as it proceeded.
“The end goal was to get these people.”
Asked about Blackmoore’s son, Anderson said he was “very relieved”.
Hamilton said police had “tirelessly sought” to bring justice for Blackmoore’s family.
“At this time I would like to acknowledge Angela’s parents, Pauline and Ray, who unfortunately are no longer with us to see this result that has been achieved for Angela. I would also like to acknowledge Angela’s other family members, Jill and Leanne. I would also like to acknowledge Angela’s partner at the time of her death, Laurie.
“I also want to thank all of the Police staff that have been involved in this investigation over the years, especially since 2019, and the small team that have bought this matter to trial.”
In her closing address to the jury, Crown prosecutor Pip Currie said there was “overwhelming” and “compelling” evidence to prove both defendants were guilty of murder.
Powell’s evidence was “powerful” and while he lied initially to police in 1995 when spoken to, when he was interviewed again 24 years on he admitted his involvement and explained how it happened, and who he did it with.
The jury could convict on Powell’s evidence alone but the jury had “corroboration” in several respects, Currie said.
She referred to Hawken’s partner at the time, Toni Parris, who said there were several meetings between Hawken, Wright-Meldrum and Powell at the Cashel St home she lived in with Hawken before Blackmoore’s murder.
Besides Powell’s evidence, Currie also pointed to evidence from Tina Cartwright, who claimed to the jury she played a game of Dungeons and Dragons with the couple shortly after the murder.
She said she asked the couple if they had been up to anything exciting, to which Wright-Meldrum said they had killed somebody and they had stabbed them, that the person had let them into the house, and that they were an “ex-friend”.
Cartwright asked who committed the murder and Powell said he did it, but Wright-Meldrum said she was also involved.
She also pointed to Blackmoore’s ex-husband, William Blackmoore. At the time of Blackmoore’s murder, Hawken was “assisting” the couple, who had separated, with the sale of one of their properties. The property needed to be sold to reduce the debt on their mortgage and protect their home on Cashel St from being sold.
In his evidence, William Blackmoore told the jury that two years after the murder he served a trespass notice on Hawken, who then allegedly threatened him by saying he would name him as the reason for Hawken getting Blackmoore killed.
Intercepted phone calls also played a significant part in the trial. About 15 minutes after being called by police in October 2019 about being interviewed, Wright-Meldrum called her partner to say if she was not home to assume she had been arrested.
In a call with someone else, she said she was going to prison and made arrangements for her animals and her home.
In another call, which Currie said was a “slam dunk”, Wright-Meldrum said Blackmoore’s murder had nothing to do with any gang, and that while police were interested in gangs “we were safe, and now we are f.....”.
Currie rebutted the suggestion Hawken was only trying to help the Blackmoores, and was “the good guy”.
“It’s pretty clear that David Hawken was not just getting involved here to help out a mate, he had his eye on Cashel St for his own ulterior motives,” she said.
“He got involved because he was only thinking about one person and that was David Hawken.”
Hawken’s lawyer, Anne Stevens KC, said in her closing there was a “whole series of red flags about the Crown case”.
She said there were two options suggested - murder which was “repugnant, illegal and fraught with risk”, or doing a deal with Blackmoore which was lawful, risk-free, and didn’t involve Hawken’s money.
“Option one, murder, is the Crown case.
“It doesn’t need me to tell you that it’s nonsense, it’s also a no-brainer because Angela’s death can’t benefit David Hawken, her death results in transfers of properties by survivorship to William Blackmoore.”
Hawken was “a man of ideas, a talker, a negotiator, not an aggressor” and the Blackmoores’ “Mr fix-it”.
Stevens said a deal had already been done regarding selling property before Blackmoore was murdered.
She referred to several witnesses, including Parris, who she said were “not credible” and biased.
Stevens said it “defies belief” to hire a killer and then not pay them.
“What a terrible idea … piss off the murderer by not meeting your side of the contract. Is a hired killer going to walk away from their fee? … not likely.”
In regards to Powell, who Stevens said was the “lynchpin of the Crown case”, if the jury believed he was lying about Hawken, the prosecution failed, she said.
Stevens said Powell was a liar, referring to his first statement to police, his denials at the beginning of his interview in 2019, and said he had lied during the trial.
She said Powell had an incentive to blame Wright-Meldrum and Hawken as he could tell his family and friends he was threatened into murder, and for when he was sentenced.
The only person in the trial “obsessed with death” was Powell, Stevens said.
“He purposely inflicted a death on Angela that was sadistic and involved her fighting for her life.”
There was a “total absence of motive” for Hawken, she said.
Wright-Meldrum’s lawyer, Philip Shamy, told the jury the most important evidence in the trial was the “silent evidence”.
“The Crown paid little attention to it, said very little, probably for very good reasons, probably because it doesn’t support their case against Mrs Wright-Meldrum.”
He said the Crown spent most of their time defending Powell, which should concern the jury, he said.
Shamy said the silence evidence did not lie, it did not guess, nor did it have a motive.
“This silent evidence is the forensic evidence, forensic evidence from the scene. It’s the pathological evidence,” he said.
“How can Mr Powell be relied upon if the scene, what’s found at the scene, doesn’t support it … how can he be relied upon if the autopsy evidence doesn’t support him?”
He asked the jury to be “very careful” in taking into account the intercepted phone calls, warning everything had context.
Powell told the jury Wright-Meldrum helped “mop up the blood”, however, there was no evidence of that occurring, nor were her fingerprints found.
“Is she that clever?... She’s a stripper, not a forensic scientist … she’s just taken part in the butchering of her friend and she’s savvy enough to wipe fingerprints, but only her own? How do you do that?”
Powell’s accusations were “nonsense”, he said.
Shamy said Powell’s evidence that he struck Blackmoore with a baseball bat three times on the head so hard that it broke was not consistent with the injuries she suffered.
“The sheer brutality of this killing is quite outstanding in some ways, it’s a savage attack. A bat and a big blade, against an unarmed woman in her kitchen in her house, who had no idea this was coming.
“What kind of man, what kind of human being does that? Is he someone you would trust?”
Shamy called Powell a “liar”.
“He lies when it suits him. And of course, he’s a murderer. And not just any murderer, but someone who is capable of doing what you’ve seen. This is not a one-wound murder, this is brutal.”
Sam Sherwood is a Christchurch-based reporter who covers crime. He is a senior journalist who joined the Herald in 2022, and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.
The woman was shaken by the incident.