Cherub's long, ruthless criminal career in 13 short years

By TONY WALL

The small boy with a cherubic face lingered in a Papakura alley, waiting for his victim to pass on the way to school.

Eleven-year-old Bailey Junior (BJ) Kurariki had stalked his quarry and knew this was the route he took each morning.

When the boy walked into the alley BJ pounced, punching him repeatedly in the head and leaving him cut and bloodied on the ground. The reason? The boy had "got smart".

The spiteful attack in February last year was BJ's trademark - he had become feared by children across South Auckland.

It was also a stepping-stone to a killing.

BJ wept in the dock in the High Court at Auckland on Saturday as a jury found him guilty of the manslaughter of Pizza Hut delivery worker Michael Choy on September 12 last year. Five other teens were also convicted for their part in the slaying.

BJ was just 12 at the time of the killing and at 13 is the youngest person to be charged with murder in New Zealand.

The boy was supposed to be in the care of Child, Youth and Family Services when Mr Choy died, but had run away.

The New Zealand Herald can reveal that BJ had been running riot for years before the killing - terrorising, beating and robbing other children, encouraging friends to wag school, shoplifting, tagging, sniffing glue and smoking cannabis.

It seemed there was nothing his family, education and welfare agencies or police could do to stop his out-of-control behaviour. Until now, he was never charged with a crime because children under 14 can be charged only with murder and manslaughter.

Police have scotched defence suggestions that BJ was just following along with his older friends. They say he would often be the ringleader, encouraging older boys to follow him, and that he was easily the most experienced criminal of those on trial for the Choy murder.

"He wasn't scared of anything," says Senior Constable Len Johnson of Papakura, who dealt regularly with BJ over a two-year period from 1999. "He was just so gung-ho, he would go in first with no fear and without thinking. Once he loses his rag he's just overcome, he's overwhelmed, he just can't control himself."

Mr Johnson says he could hardly believe it when he took the boy to do community work one Saturday last year and he began picking a fight with a 16-year-old over a pie. "He was just causing havoc."

Some of BJ's problems can be traced to his background - he is the product of a violent, alcoholic father and abused mother. He was moved about South Auckland, between parents, and attended seven schools. He was expelled in Standard Four and began doing correspondence school from home.

He acknowledges he gets his violent temper from his Rarotongan father, who was jailed several times for assault. BJ's mother, Lorraine West, has a restraining order out against her former husband.

During the murder trial the Herald spoke to Ms West, 54, at her Otara home, adorned with elaborate Maori-style carvings BJ made.

Most people who know the family say she did her best, but BJ was too wild.

Asked if she thought she was a good mother, she said: "I'm the best I can be. I wouldn't say champion, but I always make sure there's food in the house, the rent's paid and the place is clean."

Having a son before the courts on a murder charge was traumatic for a woman who also suffers from skin cancer and glaucoma.

She says she has had recurring dreams in which Mr Choy's family chant "Hang, hang, hang" at her son. In another dream, BJ is drowning. She reaches out to him but loses his hand and he slips away.

"Sometimes I go and have a shower and stay there for three hours 'cos I think I'm going to wash the nightmare away," she says.

Ms West knows something of what BJ has gone through - as a child she too was put in welfare custody. Growing up in Ngaruawahia, she was 14, she says, when her mother remarried and announced the new husband did not want her six children.

She is still bitter towards her mother, who is now in a retirement home in Hamilton. "We put her in there to make her feel what we went through as kids."

Ms West was placed in a foster home in Hamilton but she would not listen to her new "parents" and was sent to Kingslea residential centre in Christchurch, where BJ would be taken after the Choy murder.

She was at the centre for about three years during the mid-1960s, and has the trademark home-made tattoo - the word "mum" etched on her thumb with Indian ink - as a permanent reminder.

She and her friends would unscrew the windows and go and sleep on the beach, gathering shellfish for food. "I ran away 36 times - the police would bring me in one door and I'd be out the other."

She says she was "kicked out" of Kingslea at 17 and moved to Auckland, staying at a Middlemore hostel and getting a job as a cleaner.

In 1982 she married Bailey Kurariki, a pipe fitter. She had four children to him and four more to another Rarotongan. BJ, born on May 15, 1989, is her youngest.

Ms West would work from 7pm until 5am to get enough food to feed her children. "I never had a day off, I couldn't afford it."

BJ was always spoiled and knew how to play his parents off against each other. If he was not allowed to do something or have money, he would turn on the tears until he got his way.

Those who know him say he is an intelligent boy who could sometimes be pleasant and co-operative.

He began school at Park Estate in Papakura, then went to Opaheke, Mangere Central, Clendon Park, Rowandale, Park Estate again, Red Hill and finally Kelvin Rd.

The principal of Park Estate, David Prchal, says BJ was a "bundle of trouble" even as a new entrant, hitting other children. He came back to the school in November 1997 at the age of 8 for about three weeks, and by that stage was "very much into standovers". He usually acted alone.

"He was cunning enough even then to know that outside the school gate we can't do anything, so the attacks would happen outside the gate."

Mr Prchal remembers one particularly severe beating. "He whacked the kid and knocked him to the ground, then went in boots and all, kicking and punching. The boy was left with cuts and bruises and got a hell of a fright."

The principal tried to get to the bottom of the attack but could find no motive. "The stock response was, 'He got smart to me'. I really don't think he cared."

On another occasion BJ threatened to kill another child. In his three weeks at the school at the end of 1997, most children grew to fear him.

"We were particularly pleased when he didn't come back. He was the most unpleasant student I've had in the school," Mr Prchal says.

He says he met Ms West to discuss his behaviour but she seemed resigned to the fact that the boy was out of control.

"She said, 'He doesn't listen, what can I do?' It's a sad indictment on our society that nowhere alongthe way was help available."

BJ moved on to Red Hill, where he was a chronic truant, and later Kelvin Rd, where he allegedly stole $400 from a teacher's purse. He was expelled in 1999. With no schools left to attend, he began home schooling.

His mother says that is when the real trouble began. The work was too easy, BJ would finish it quickly and go off skateboarding with friends, some much older than himself.

"First it was BJ and one kid skating, then I'd look out and there'd be three of them, then four or five, then nine. It got out of hand."

She would hear the friends saying to each other as they left the house: "Why don't you get expelled like me, man, it's choice."

Papakura Intermediate School sent BJ a trespass order because he would come into the school and try to convince older friends to wag and spend the day with him.

BJ was caught shoplifting so often he was banned from most shops in Papakura. Police would take him off the street for tagging, or sniffing glue.

Once, he and a group of friends were found hanging around the Papakura shops early in the morning, after BJ had jumped out of his bedroom window.

His mother says that if the boy was not home by 8pm, she would go out looking for him. He would always come home for meals and as far as she knew he slept at home.

Older boys would get him to steal things so they could get money to buy drugs from tinnie houses, she says.

Police were always coming to her home blaming BJ for all sorts of crimes in the neighbourhood.

Ms West says BJ was not violent around the home. "He hit my daughter once, I grabbed him by the hair and banged his head on the wall. He said, 'That didn't hurt' so I did it again ... He had tears in his eyes. He never laid a hand on her again."

That was the only time she hit BJ, but now she wonders whether she should have been harder.

"I think I should have hit the kids - all the mothers [of the accused] say maybe that's what they needed. I always thought boot camp would be ideal for him."

By late 2000, after more than a year of home schooling, Mr Johnson was regularly referring BJ to Child, Youth and Family when the boy committed crimes. In November, he had badly beaten a boy and stolen his bicycle.

After the alleyway incident in February last year, Mr Johnson warned BJ that if he kept offending he would arrange to have him placed in welfare care.

The final straw came three months later, when police were called to BJ's Papakura home after reports that he had thrown rocks at neighbours' windows and screamed obscenities and threats at them.

In June last year, Mr Johnson, fed up that CYF had not acted, decided to move himself.

He drafted the necessary affidavits and went to the Papakura District Court seeking an order placing BJ in the department's custody.

It was granted, and Mr Johnson immediately picked the boy up from his mother's home. He did not seem to care, saying, "Whatever" as he was taken away. Ms West told him to be brave.

A short time later, she moved to Henderson. BJ was placed in a foster home, but ran away after a week.

He was caught tagging late at night and police returned him to his father's place in Papakura.

Mr Johnson went on leave and was unable to make sure BJ was returned to welfare custody.

He says CYF's attitude was that the boy was better off staying with his family if he kept running away.

He says BJ should have been taken to the secure residential centre at Weymouth. Instead he was allowed to stay with his father for the next 2 1/2 months until another foster home was found in Devonport.

BJ ran away from the home, saying an older child had beaten him.

On September 7, he turned up at his father's place with a black eye, and CYF was notified.

By the time social workers came to pick him up, he had disappeared. No one from CYF saw him again until after his arrest for the Choy murder.

Three days before the murder, BJ and a group of older friends allegedly tried to rob a KFC worker they had lured to a Papakura address. The plan fell through when the driver turned out to be a woman.

But Mr Choy was not so lucky. He was lured by a bogus food order to a dark driveway in Chantal Pl, where he was met by BJ and an older girl pretending to be customers.

The court heard BJ signalled for the attack to happen, saying "go Alex", at which point Alex Peihopa leaped out of the dark and hit Mr Choy in the head with a baseball bat.

A fatally injured Mr Choy staggered to nearby homes, banging on doors for help, but people were too scared to let him in.

BJ and the other attackers had gone to friend Lisa Waikato's home nearby with pizza boxes.

She heard a noise outside, found Mr Choy and stole money from his belt bag. Mr Choy managed to stagger to his father's home 900m away. He died in hospital the next day.

In the days that followed, BJ is said to have pretended to shoot at the police helicopter when it hovered overhead. His mother says he had done that since he was a little boy.

Police finally picked BJ up three days after the murder, skateboarding near his father's house.

He initially denied taking part in the murder, but later confessed and took part in a video reconstruction.

However, the Court of Appeal ruled the admissions out, because police had breached his rights as a child by not going far enough to ensure a family member was present during the interviews.

The Crown relied on statements BJ made to friends.

In court, BJ sat at the end of a long table of accused with his sister behind him acting as support person.

He usually sat doodling but sometimes lifted his head when his name was mentioned.

His mother attended court every day. She says she would have washed her hands of him if he had been the one who wielded the baseball bat.

She knows that BJ will go back to Kingslea, where she lived all those years ago. She plans to visit him once a month.

She believes BJ should be punished, and when he is released wants to send him straight to Rarotonga, away from the streets of South Auckland that were his stamping ground for so many years.