A woman with name suppression is on trial in the High Court at Auckland, accused of having helped kidnap and murder 17-year-old Dimetrius Pairama in July 2018. Photo / Michael Craig
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
A woman who at age 16 participated in the hours-long torture of her former friend inside an abandoned Māngere state home - but insisted she didn’t support the 17-year-old victim’s forced hanging - has been found guilty of kidnapping.
But jurors in the High Court at Auckland were not able to agree on verdicts for murder and manslaughter, meaning a lengthy retrial is now likely.
The group spent about 12 hours deliberating over the course of two days, indicating early on that they were in agreement on one charge regarding the kidnapping and death of Dimetrius “Precious” Pairama but hopelessly deadlocked on the other two.
The defendant, now 21, continues to have name suppression. She looked ahead with little reaction as the verdict was read, while Pairama’s mother sat behind her in the courtroom gallery, weeping.
Justice Kiri Tahana declined to immediately set a sentencing date for the kidnapping conviction. The case will be recalled next month to determine that matter, as well as to potentially set a new trial date for the other charges.
Over the course of the four-week trial, prosecutors Claire Robertson and Rob McDonald painted the defendant as someone who harboured “bitter resentment” over a perceived Facebook slight by Pairama and perhaps teen drama over a boy they both liked. As “trivial” as those reasons might sound, they were enough to prompt the defendant to act as a “wingman” after another co-defendant took the lead, they argued.
But the defence presented a different picture of the defendant - a “vulnerable” person with the mental capacity of a 9-year-old who could not have cared less about Facebook drama but was under the control of a domineering, “predatory” adult nearly twice her age.
“You are not dealing here with a normal 16-year-old,” lawyer David Niven told jurors earlier this week, arguing that his client’s presence during Pairama’s hanging inside an abandoned Māngere state home five years ago did not equate to participation, aid or encouragement - the legal elements needed for a murder conviction.
He also argued that she wasn’t guilty of manslaughter, which happens when someone is killed in the course of another crime but without murderous intent.
A verdict on the murder or manslaughter charges would have brought to a close the unusually lengthy criminal justice process for the horrific July 2018 killing of Pairama, who according to witnesses was repeatedly punched and stomped on, forced to disrobe and tied naked to a chair with soiled underwear stuffed into her mouth, had her hair hacked off, was burned on sensitive areas of her body with a makeshift blowtorch, had household chemicals and baby formula poured on top of her, burning her eyes, and was ultimately forced to choose the method of her murder: hanging or stabbing.
Although the defendant elected not to testify, multiple witnesses said she talked about being present when the hanging occurred and helping to cut down the body and hide it in a rusted steel drum behind the home afterwards.
Co-defendants Ashley Winter, who was 27 at the time of the killing, and Kerry Te Amo, 24, were both found guilty by the same jury in 2019 but the current defendant did not join them at trial because she was being held as a special patient in the Mason Clinic psychiatric facility. Her mental status changed last year, with a judge deeming her fit to stand trial.
A fourth person who was at the house, then 14, was never charged with murder - she was instead given immunity in exchange for her co-operation with police and testimony at both trials.
Prosecutors described Pairama this week as a “happy and outgoing” teen who “appeared to be doing her best to find her way in this world”. Like the defendant, she had a learning disability, had been in and out of Oranga Tamariki care and would sometimes run away and live on the street.
The motive for her killing varied among the three defendants, prosecutors said. The 14-year-old witness said Winter was the instigator and the driving force - blaming Pairama, without any evidence, it seemed, for an attack she earlier suffered by gang members.
The 14-year-old said the current defendant actively participated in the torture but seemed to initially have doubts when Winter held a meeting in front of Pairama and proposed killing her. However, the witness said the 16-year-old went from reluctant to “keen” when Winter reminded her of the Facebook row.
“By the end of the meeting she was all in - she was committed to the plan,” Robertson told jurors during the Crown’s closing arguments, describing the current defendant as “no mere bystander to Ms Winter’s deranged plan”.
“She helped Mr Te Amo to get the noose ready and she was present in the hallway during the hanging. It was deliberate. She knew what was happening.”
Robertson cited testimony from the 14-year-old and three other key prosecution witnesses as evidence of the current defendant’s participation and encouragement in the murder.
One of them was another 14-year-old witness who wasn’t in the house but met up with the group on the same day as the killing. She said the current defendant confessed to her, and when the witness didn’t believe it the defendant took her to the house to see the body for herself.
“She told me that she murdered someone and I asked why,” the witness told police in a recorded interview. “She didn’t tell me. She told me her name ... the one that died. And, um, [the current defendant] said that she deserved it but [she] regretted, um, murdering her cos that was her best friend.”
Another witness with name suppression described a brief conversation with the defendant weeks before Pairama’s death in which she recalled the defendant saying of Pairama: “I wanna f***ing kill her.” And a fourth witness, Josiah Rolleston, testified that the defendant boldly bragged to him, “We killed the bitch”, even though they barely knew each other.
“She played very much a leading role in the act of torture,” Robertson added, arguing that it makes no sense she would beat Pairama, burn her, cut her hair and help tie her to a chair but then turn into the victim’s advocate when it came to the next step. “She was, you might think, Ashley’s wingman.”
But the defence argued there were reasons for jurors to doubt each of the witnesses touted by prosecutors.
The witness inside the house didn’t seem to fully comprehend what “keen” meant and wasn’t in the room when Pairama died, while the 14-year-old outside the house had memory issues even five years ago about who had said what, Niven said. His client’s fear of Winter may have caused her to take shared responsibility for the killing in discussions with others even if in reality she played no part, he suggested.
Meanwhile, the witness who said the defendant talked of wanting to kill Pairama weeks earlier was schizophrenic and had been drinking that night, Niven noted, suggesting her entire testimony should be disregarded. And Rolleston initially told police that the defendant said, “We killed her” - a bland statement, Niven argued, compared to, “We killed the bitch”.
It makes no sense, he said, that his client would willingly serve as a “wingman” to Winter, who she had never met until the night before Pairama’s death. But there appeared to be a “genuine friendship” between his client and Pairama, he said.
“This obviously affected her very deeply,” he said, pointing to testimony from social workers who interacted with the defendant after the incident. “She was scared, she was upset, she was crying, she wasn’t sleeping, she was having nightmares, she was seeing ghosts.
“She never expected things to go as far as it did.”
Niven argued the prosecution was relying on emotive, biased words such as heinous, degrading, gruesome and torture when “what actually happened is not as terrible as those words might suggest”.
While his client did assault Pirama, he described the attack as “mild to moderate”. Pairama was later found by the pathologist to have no broken bones, internal injuries or cuts. As for helping to cut Pairama’s hair, that “might be an act of humiliation but is not going to do any physical damage”, he pointed out. He acknowledged the defendant “appears to have mimicked what Ashley did” when Pairama was burned with a blowtorch made from a lighter and a spray can. But while it “sounds awful”, the pathologist saw no signs of serious burns, he said.
“While you might recoil from those descriptions ... the actual harm that was caused was minimal,” he argued. “None of that contributed in any way to Dimetrius’ death.
“There is a gulf between what happened earlier and what happened in the hall.”
There was no direct evidence of who did what in the hallway as Pairama was forced to hang herself, he said, suggesting that his client was not a direct participant. Even if she was present and observing, her inability to extract herself from the situation should be attributed to her disability rather than malice, he said.
He pointed repeatedly to testimony from neuropsychologist Valerie McGinn - the defence’s sole witness, who concluded after multiple tests that the defendant suffered from foetal alcohol spectrum (FASD) disorder and as a result functioned essentially as a 9-year-old.
When taking the disability into account and also considering Winter’s older age, her larger frame and her “bullying, domineering type of personality”, jurors should agree the defendant “was not a completely free agent to do as she chose” that morning, Niven said. He noted the neuropsychologist’s testimony that people with FASD can often navigate simple situations but tend to get overwhelmed in complex situations.
“What happened inside that house, things very quickly became very complex,” Niven said. “It’s clear that she is not going to cope with what’s about to be unleashed. She is basically ambushed [with the proposal to kill Pairama] and put in this very difficult situation.
“She wanted it to stop [but] she had limited abilities to do anything,” he added, describing his client as “subservient” to Winter.
But FASD is not a defence to murder, prosecutors argued, suggesting that the defendant was far from helpless and clearly knew right from wrong. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have lied to police about what happened, they said.
“How do you want to die?” was a “very literal” and simple statement - not at all complicated, Robertson said.
During their deliberations, which stretched over two days, jurors asked several questions regarding the defendant’s presence in the hallway during and after the hanging. Simply witnessing a crime without intervening is not illegal, but there can be situations in which someone’s presence amounts to encouraging an offence, Justice Tahana responded to one of the questions, noting in response to a follow-up question that “encouragement” can be through words, conduct or both.
Helping with Pairama’s body after the hanging is not considered part of the hanging itself, she said in response to another question.
Jurors indicated they were deadlocked Friday afternoon, almost exactly 24 hours after they were first sent to begin deliberating.
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.
The man then went on to kick a police officer while being walked to a patrol car.