David Hawken and Rebecca Wright-Meldrum appearing in the Christchurch High Court charged with the murder of Angela Blackmoore (inset).
David Hawken and Rebecca Wright-Meldrum appearing in the Christchurch High Court charged with the murder of Angela Blackmoore (inset).
Debt collector David Hawken’s partner asked him during a heated argument in the days after Angela Blackmoore was murdered in 1995 if he was going to “get me whacked like Angela?”, a court heard today.
Hawken, 50, and ex-stripper Rebecca Wright-Meldrum, 51, are standing trial at the High Court inChristchurch for Blackmoore’s murder on August 17, 1995.
For 25 years the case went unsolved before police suddenly received fresh information in 2019 and Jeremy Crinis James Powell was arrested.
He pleaded guilty and was jailed for at least 10 years for bludgeoning and stabbing Blackmoore 39 times.
The Crown alleges that Hawken ordered Powell – who will be a key Crown witness in the case - to carry out the hit, offering to pay $10,000, while Wright-Meldrum, a close friend and ex-lover of Blackmoore, helped him gain entry to her house.
Hawken and Wright-Meldrum both deny any part in the killing and have pleaded not guilty.
Today, Hawken’s partner back in 1995, Toni Parris, has given evidence, talking about the days leading up to – and after – the killing.
She recalled being suspicious of regular hour-long closed-door conversations at their Cashel St house between Hawken, Wright-Meldrum who she knew as ‘Biscuit’, and her boyfriend Powell.
David Hawken and Rebecca Wright-Meldrum both deny murder and are standing trial at the High Court in Christchurch. Photo / George Heard
Sneaking down the hallway “curious as to what the heck was going on”, she tried to overhear their conversations but never heard anything, the court heard.
The Crown allege that from “early on” Hawken had an eye on the financial benefit of the Blackmoores’ two properties – at Cashel St, and a section on Ferry Rd – and wanted to use them and his own assets to secure loans for future business ventures, including a multimillion-dollar property development at Moncks Spur, Redcliffs, while also looking to set up a telecommunications business.
Parris understood there was “some sort of agreement” between him and the Blackmoores but alleged that Hawken had said if Angela Blackmoore didn’t agree he would “deal with her”.
“I took it as a threat,” she told the court this morning.
Angela Blackmoore was 21 when she died at her home in August 1995. Photo / Supplied
On the day of the killing, Parris and Hawken attended her grandfather’s funeral and was with him most of the day, apart from about an hour when he went out with a debt-collecting associate.
Two days after the murder, Parris claims William Blackmoore visited their Cashel St property and he talked with Hawken alone at the bottom of the section.
When she asked what they had been talking about, she claimed that Hawken said he was telling his friend “how to handle the cops”.
Later, Wright-Meldrum and Powell also came around and she claimed that Hawken said “something like, ‘we should probably get you two out of the country at some stage’.”
“It was a very odd thing to say,” Parris told the court.
Police involved in the vast Operation Vancouver murder probe raided their Cashel St property one morning during a row between Parris and her partner Hawken.
“I remember we were having an argument in the bedroom,” she said.
“I was really upset and got really angry and he must’ve been really angry with me too.
“I said, ‘What are you going to do about it, are you going to get me whacked like Angela?’”
At that moment, the police came knocking at the door and he never responded to her, Parris told the court.
Hawken’s lawyer Anne Stevens KC, however, questioned Parris under cross-examination and suggested that the hour-long meetings between Hawken, Powell, and Wright-Meldrum never happened.
She denied defence suggestions that she was now “determined to cause trouble” for Hawken.
One of Hawken’s former debt collectors Jarrod Constantine recalled driving around with his boss in the days after the killing, tossing about a theory that someone had been hired to murder her.
He told the court today that Hawken’s “theory” was similar, except that William Blackmoore contracted a killer for $10,000 and that they would be paid through the sale of a house or insurance.
“I pretty much laughed... I said, ‘$10,000, f*** off, you can’t do anything for that price and [Hawken] goes, ‘You’d be surprised’,” Constantine told the court.
It stuck out because of the “minimal amount”, he said, but “didn’t think much of it”, saying he didn’t know that Hawken was being questioned by police around that time.
Days later, Hawken took him to the Templar HQ gang headquarters in Christchurch, Constantine told the court.
On the way, Hawken allegedly told him: “Watch what you’re asking [about the Blackmoore murder case] because these guys will probably kill you.”
He says he waited outside while Hawken talked to the “top guy” while he was eyeballed by men outside the gang pad.
Constantine says he “felt a bit threatened” and afterwards, he and Hawken went their own ways.
Under questioning by Hawken’s lawyer Stevens, he admitted “floating theories with lots of people” over Blackmoore’s murder and only gave a statement to police in 2021.
The murder went unsolved for more than two decades before Powell was arrested in 2019 after police offered a then-record $100,000 reward.
Wright-Meldrum’s defence counsel Stephanie Grieve KC suggested to the jury earlier that the key issue for them was whether Powell is “credible and reliable” when he says Wright-Meldrum was with him when he murdered Blackmoore.
