On the morning 40-year-old Robert Hart was fatally shot through his motorcycle helmet on a West Auckland driveway, Jasmine Murray said she heard an unexpected bang as she sat nearby with partner Adam North inside a stolen Suzuki Swift they called their own.
“Then we see Dillz running across the road and jumping in our car and we panicked,” the then-20-year-old would recount to police five days later, as she sat in an interview room at the Henderson Police Station, newly charged with murder.
“Adam was like, ‘Get the f*** out of my car’,” she told the detective as she painted a picture of the chaotic minutes that followed. “We didn’t know he was going to do it. The guy’s name is Dillz and he lives in Green Bay.”
A recording of the interview was played for jurors today in the High Court at Auckland as prosecutors called their final witness in the joint murder trial of Murray, North and Dylan Harris, otherwise known as “Dillz”.
Police would find Hart dead on his parked motorcycle minutes later that November 2021 morning.
But by then, the Suzuki had left the scene with all three people who would later face trial for his death.
“We need to turn around! We need to turn around! It’s the right thing to do,” North was saying as they drove away, according to his partner’s account to police.
Murray continued: “And it was just like, ‘No, no, f***ing say nothing’. But my partner 100 per cent was like, ‘We need to turn around. We have to turn around’. I’m there shaking, like crying, and I’m freaking out, and then Dillz just made us drop him off.”
As the couple parted ways with Harris, they decided to abandon the car, Murray said.
“We were in shock, we were scared, we were frightened and we didn’t know what to do,” she explained. “I literally even grabbed all my clothes and stuff out of the car and put them in the bush so I could go back and get them later, because I was like f***, you know?
“I knew how that would’ve looked at that time and how it is looking now.”
Murray’s statement matches the theme that defence lawyers for her and North have tried to convey during the trial, which has been going on for a little more than a week so far. They were unknowing and unwilling participants in Hart’s death, they have indicated. Harris’ lawyer, meanwhile, has suggested that the shooting was an accident rather than murder.
But prosecutors have suggested a different narrative in which Murray and North had much bigger roles to play in the death, having allegedly lured Hart to the driveway where he died by setting up a fake methamphetamine purchase.
They used a Facebook account on a stolen mobile phone to impersonate one of Hart’s Facebook friends then asked him to sell $3000 worth of meth, picking up Harris for what was “essentially an execution” after they arranged a place to meet the victim, prosecutors Sarah Murphy and Robin McCoubrey have alleged.
But at the time of Murray’s police interview, Detective Sebastian Stowers didn’t mention the alleged set-up - careful not to interrupt as the young murder suspect insisted repeatedly that she didn’t know anything aside from the bang and the hasty retreat.
She described Harris as someone she’d never met before and who North hardly knew prior to Harris calling them up out of the blue that morning and asking for a ride so he could pick up some money. The couple was in the dark as to what Harris was getting the money for or who he was getting it from, but they agreed to give him a ride, she said.
“What I’ve said is what it is really,” Murray insisted. “I’m still trying to deal with it myself. I don’t know whether to apologise in these, but yeah, there’s not really much more information I have to give about Robbie and his death. Whoever [has] done it will pay for it - that’s all I have to say. They deserve to. That’s it, really.”
She added: “I honestly want you’s to know that what I’ve said is all I know, and that’s the honest truth. If I’d known more I would put my hand up and I would say something, but what I know is what I’ve said. And I hope you’s get to the bottom of this, I do [sic].”
Murray said she and her partner knew Hart and his family and they had no reason to wish harm on him.
“I want nothing more than for the person who [has] done this to be f***ing locked up and f***ing paying for what he’s done to Robbie’s family, his children,” she said. “And I will stand up if I have to, you know, because it’s not right, it’s not right. It’s cruel, it’s f***ing cruel. Someone’s life’s been taken. That’s all I’ve got to say, and I basically have nothing more I need to add.”
She did, however, add more: “I haven’t done anything. I literally haven’t done anything. I’m f***ing innocent.”
Detective Stowers wore a face mask and a PPE gown as he conducted the interview, which occurred during Auckland’s lengthy 2021 Covid-19 lockdown. Murray also wore a mask and folded her arms across her white T-shirt as she spoke. She wore a similarly white dress shirt today as she sat in the dock, although it often wasn’t visible as she ducked her head down low into her lap, out of sight of jurors.
Harris, meanwhile, sat one row behind her staring straight ahead as he watched the recording in which he was frequently mentioned.
Murray spent nearly two hours in the police interview room, but took a break at one point after asking to speak with a lawyer. She came back and was told she had been advised not to answer any more questions, but she agreed to continue co-operating after the detective asked her if, instead of asking questions, he could show her some CCTV and photographs.
She identified a photo of Harris as the person she believed killed Hart.
She was then shown CCTV footage showing the Suzuki pulling up near the spot where Hart was killed.
“See, it looks to me like he’s placing something in his hoodie as he’s getting out of the car,” the detective said of Harris. Prosecutors would later describe the item as the murder weapon.
“That’s not what it looks like to me but okay,” Murray replied.
“I mean, if I was going to be part of a murder scene, I don’t think I’d park around f***ing cameras, that’s for f***ing sure, you know?”
The interview ended a short time later.
“I’ve told you what I’ve told you. You’ve got your photos and that there. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, what this is,” Murray said. “What’s the end result of all of this? I know myself, I haven’t killed no one [sic].
“This is my f***ing life that I’m messing with, but I haven’t done anything. And hopefully you can get to the bottom of the fact that I haven’t. Like, I don’t see how I have any involvement in that at all apart from seeing someone [running] across the road, jumping in our car and telling us to f***ing drive. ... But anyways, so at least say no more. Statement finished.
“I know myself. I’ve done the right thing and I’ve said what I’ve needed to say. Maybe a bit much, but hey, it is what it is.”
None of the three defendants have yet indicated whether they intend to testify at the trial. They will have an opportunity to sit in the witness box, if they wish, when the trial resumes on Monday before Justice Paul Davison.
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