Cop killer's partner jailed for drug dealing

The partner of Napier cop killer Jan Molenaar was today sent to jail for her five-year involvement in his home-based cannabis operation.

Delwyn Keefe, 44, was earlier convicted of one charge of selling cannabis and two others of offering to supply and of possessing the drug for supply.

Sentencing her in Napier District Court to two years and three months in jail, Judge John Wild described Keefe as a drug dealer who was willing to supply cannabis to anyone wanting to buy it.

He also said she did not seem to have any real remorse about what she had done.

Judge Wild said he was treating Keefe as a first offender, despite minor convictions for dishonesty more than a decade ago.

He was critical of her evidence at a disputed facts hearing he presided over several months ago, when she tried to minimise her involvement in Molenaar's cannabis-growing operation.

It was based out of the Chaucer Road house in Napier where Molenaar killed one police officer, seriously injured two others and shot a civilian in May.

Molenaar was later found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound following a three-day police siege at the property.

Judge Wild said he rejected Keefe's implication that she had been an unwilling participant in the drug operation.

He said that an aggravating feature of her offending was that she took her 13-year-old daughter ``along for the ride' when she made deliveries of cannabis ``tinnies' to customers.

Although defence counsel Jonathan Krebs said his client had been in fulltime work and her involvement in Molenaar's cannabis operation was ``spasmodic', this was not accepted by the judge.

When police searched Molenaar's house after the siege, they found mature plants in a bedroom converted into a growing room, foil ``tinnies' of cannabis in a drawer along with snaplock plastic bags and a set of scales.

Another 16 snaplock bags containing an ounce of cannabis were found in the basement and more in a kitchen cupboard. About $15,000 was found in a strongroom, along with $5000 in Australian dollars.

Judge Wild said a further indication of Keefe's willing involvement was that she told a detective the $A5000 ($NZ6297) was to be her spending money for a trip to her brother's birthday in Australia.

``You were happy to enjoy the monetary benefits of the cannabis operation,' he said.

On the day the police went to the house, she had replied to a text on Molenaar's phone saying ``my mate has halves at 140' -- a reference to a discount on the usual $150 Molenaar charged for half-ounce deals of cannabis.

When she saw the police arriving, she had grabbed a box containing 16 ounces of bagged cannabis and tried to hide it in the basement.

Judge Wild described Molenaar as the cashier or banker in the drug operation but that Keefe had been involved in selling the drugs from the house and making deliveries.

He considered the operation had been a continuous one, for five years, ``until events last May brought it to an abrupt halt'.

The issue of forfeiture of the cash found at the house would be dealt with at another time, said the judge.

- NZPA