Dimetrius Pairama was found dead at a derelict house in July 2018. Photo / Supplied
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
It was a colourful bedsheet - blue, the 14-year-old recalled.
“He ripped it [to make rope for a hanging]. That’s the one she got killed in.”
Sitting in a small Manukau Police Station interview room, Detective Damon Peterson kept the tone conversational, careful not to betray emotion or judgment that evening in July 2018 as the child witness matter-of-factly outlined for him the sadistic treatment of 17-year-old friend Dimetrius “Precious” Pairama in the final hours of her life.
The 14-year-old told police she was too afraid to stop the torture inside an abandoned Māngere state home days earlier as three older acquaintances took turns beating Pairama then forced her to undress, tied her to a chair, shaved off her hair and burned her involuntarily exposed skin with a makeshift blowtorch. The final act of violence, the witness said, was to make Pairama choose how she wished to die that day: via stabbing or hanging.
“That’s when I went in the room and told her to get out,” the girl told police, explaining that she offered to give Pairama back her clothes and let her climb out the window without telling the others. “She didn’t want to - she was too scared.”
Jurors in the High Court at Auckland spent hours today watching two of the child’s videotaped interviews in the murder trial of a woman who was 16 years old the morning that Pairama was forced to hang herself. Both the defendant, now 21, and the child witness, now 19, have name suppression.
Two others - Ashley Winter, who was 27 at the time of the killing, and Kerry Te Amo, 24 - were found guilty by another jury in 2019 of Pairama’s murder. The 14-year-old, who was given immunity in exchange for her testimony, was a crucial witness at that trial.
Although charged with murder at the same time, the 16-year-old defendant did not go on trial until this week. Defence lawyer David Niven acknowledged to jurors on Monday that his client took part in some of the torture, but he insisted she is not a murderer.
The witness told police at the time that Pairama had travelled with her and the three others willingly that morning. Neither Pairama - described by prosecutors as “bubbly” and naive - nor the witness realised the sinister plans for her until after they arrived at the state house, she said.
But shortly thereafter, Winter pulled the 14-year-old aside and ordered her to give Pairama “a hiding”, the witness told police.
“I told [Winter] I didn’t want to cos she did nothing really,” the witness said, explaining that she went into the closed bedroom with Pairama after Winter told the 14-year-old she would be the one to suffer if she didn’t go along with it.
The witness said she at first faked a beating, talking with Pairama instead, but was forced to punch the victim in the shoulder after Winter angrily stormed in and grabbed Pairama by the hair - suspicious that it was too quiet. Winter then sent the young witness out of the room as she began administering a beating of her own that involved stomping on Pairama’s head with her bare feet, she said.
“It was really hard - you could hear it,” the 14-year-old recalled.
After Winter finished, it was the defendant’s turn to beat Pairama, the witness said, explaining that the defendant was sad about it afterwards because she and the victim had been friends since childhood.
“[Pairama] was crying to stop but they wouldn’t stop - they just kept punching,” the 14-year-old said of the attacks.
“They put [her underwear] in her mouth. She could hardly breathe,” the witness said while asked to give more detail about the next phase of the attack, in which Pairama was forced to disrobe. “After that, they tied her on the chair. Ashley said to shave her hair.”
When asked by the detective if Pairama resisted, the girl said she just cried.
“She doesn’t know how to fight at all,” she explained. “She just went with it.”
In the interview room, the 14-year-old was encouraged to position the detective in a chair to show how the victim was bound. She pointed to the middle of her back when asked how long the victim’s hair had been, and to the detective’s short hair when asked how long it was after the assault.
The witness said she could hear from behind the closed door what sounded like bones breaking as Te Amo took a turn beating Pairamo before the others came back in and Pairama was burned twice with bursts of flame created by an aerosol can and a lighter.
“Stop it, please,” she pleaded through tears, the child recalled.
Pairama was then untied from the chair and told to lie on the ground, where the group agreed to put sheets on her because she was cold, the witness said.
“That’s when Ashley called us to have a talk in front of [Pairama],” the 14-year-old said.
“How do you want to die?” Winter is alleged to have asked the victim, explaining that her only two options were to hang herself or for Winter to stab her to death. “You have until 3 o’clock.”
A short while later, the others were distracted looking for a shovel, the girl said, telling the detective that is when she offered to help the victim escape.
“I asked her if she was all right,” she recalled. “She said no. She said she wants to see Nana.”
Pairama told the 14-year-old to tell Winter she wanted to die by hanging and she wanted to get it over with, the child told police. The witness said she was then told to leave the hallway where a noose, made out of the bright bedsheets, was being prepared.
She was supposed to keep a lookout for police in an adjoining front room of the home but fell asleep, she said, explaining that she woke up to Winter opening the door. She caught a glimpse of Pairama’s body.
“I got scared when I saw her,” she said. “When Ashley saw me looking she closed the door. She said, ‘Just don’t think about that’.”
Afterwards, there was a discussion about what to do with the body. Winter wanted to bury it under the house, but they still couldn’t find a shovel and Te Amo suggested they put the corpse in a steel drum on the property, police were told. The witness said she was ordered not to help out because she was too young to deal with such matters.
They left the house around 1pm, spending some time in Mangere’s town centre. They bought chips, the child recalled.
When asked why the group had turned on Pairama, the 14-year-old said she overheard a couple of reasons from Winter and the 16-year-old but said it seemed to boil down to “some Facebook stuff”.
“She didn’t know what was going on,” the witness said of Pairama. “It was a big shock. She was crying, telling Ashley she didn’t have anything to do with it.”
She recalled Winter responding: “Karma is a bitch.”
During the police interview, the child wore baggy clothes and had to be asked by the detective not to put her hands over her face so she could be more clearly heard.
With almost exactly five years having passed since the interviews, she looked like a different person in a sombre black skirt, dress shirt and overcoat today as she watched the videos along with the jury from a different room in the courthouse where she’ll be able to testify without seeing the defendant.
Lawyers are expected to start asking her questions tomorrow as the trial continues before Justice Kiri Tahana.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.