WARNING: This story contains disturbing content
Just 22 hours before she would bleed to death, a knife blade stabbed through her voice box and a shoe print on her face, Charlie Josephine Watson wrote a prescient note to her four children.
“If you find this, then the worst has happened. And for that, I’m sorry,” read the message, which police found on her phone after charging her partner, Tupaea Kerr, with murder.
“I hope you recognise the steps I tried to take to make things safer for you. I’m sorry it wasn’t enough to keep me safe too. I really wish I was stronger.”
Those words were the first jurors in the High Court at Auckland heard this afternoon as the Crown began presenting its case in Kerr’s murder trial.
Watson, 31, had been dating Kerr, now 35, for about three years when the homicide occurred about 11pm on November 3, 2024, outside her Glen Eden, West Auckland, home.
It was far from an isolated incident of violence, Crown prosecutor Faisal Ganchi told jurors during his opening address, describing a relationship “that could only be described as volatile” and “progressively more conflict-ridden” before Watson’s death.
Defence lawyer Arthur Fairley didn’t dispute most of what the Crown alleged.
“It’s shocking,” Fairley said of his client’s abusive behaviour towards his partner. “The way this man conducted himself to this woman was disgraceful.”
But jurors need to focus solely on what was in Kerr’s mind at the time he inflicted the stab wound, he said, suggesting his client didn’t have murderous intent.
It was possible, but still not a given, he said, that the evidence might amount to manslaughter.
Much of the Crown opening, however, focused on that history of violence. The first documented incident was in April 2021, when Kerr got jealous during a conversation about past relationships and hit Watson in the face, causing her to fall into a power box and nearly lose consciousness.
Watson ran away when a bystander intervened but Kerr chased her down. He told her to shut her mouth when police arrived. He was convicted of that attack later that year.
Another moment of jealousy turned violent in September 2024, on Watson’s birthday, when the couple encountered a man at a mall who Watson knew previously. Kerr began beating her as they got into their car, according to the agreed facts.
“She was concerned he would beat her to death once the car had stopped, so at a red light she opened the car door and jumped out while the car was still moving,” the document states. “Ms Watson told her father that this was one of the worst beatings she had got from Mr Kerr.”
But she told police she was too scared to give an official statement.
About three weeks later, Kerr began punching Watson in the face again after waking her up at 3.45am and wanting to talk about past relationships. She fled to a neighbour’s house and called police, but she again declined to give a formal statement, expressing fear.
However, as a result, a family harm alarm was installed at her home, allowing police to instantly be alerted if she triggered it, and Kerr was ordered by authorities to no longer have any contact with Watson.
The alarm was triggered two times in late October and early November, but Watson said it was an accident the first time and declined to make a statement the second time.
Prosecutors Ganchi and Claire Paterson also told jurors they would be showing them videos from the defendant’s own phone, including one recorded an hour before Watson’s death.
“Mr Kerr is making Ms Watson walk around her house to show him there’s no man hiding there,” Ganchi explained.
When he arrived at the house a short time later, Watson ran out the back and was chased by the defendant, prosecutors said.
“She screamed, ‘Help me!’ and, ‘He’s going to kill me!’ repeatedly,” Ganchi said. “He punched her repeatedly.”
Blood poured from her nose, he said, before Kerr inflicted the single fatal stab wound to her neck. After that, prosecutors allege, the defendant panicked and called 111. He told the operator he had stabbed his girlfriend in the neck.
Kerr, with his forearms still bloody, ran when the first officer arrived a short time later, according to the Crown. He stopped when the officer warned she was armed.
Watson suffered a 5.5cm wide wound to her neck and was still semi-conscious but died shortly after she arrived at hospital. She had cuts on her hands and bruises on her forearms, which prosecutors described as defensive wounds. She also suffered a fractured nose and a shoe print to her face.
“Mr Kerr did not have any visible injuries,” Ganchi said.
The defence opening statement was much shorter, which is standard procedure at the start of trials. Fairley will have another chance to address the jury after the Crown finishes calling evidence.
After the opening addresses concluded, prosecutors read aloud the rest of Watson’s final letter to her children as part of the statement of agreed facts.
“Trying to live by a certain way and a certain code, maybe that will never make sense to yous – and maybe you’ll hate me for it,” she wrote. “If you’s do, I don’t blame you.
“But understand this. The worst has ALREADY happened. The worst has happened my babies. Now, once you heal, see with your eyes wide open that you’re freee! Xx free to be. Free to dream. Free to feel safe. Free to focus on what kids your age should be focused on.
“You’ll never have to worry about listening out for whether the footsteps in house seem like angry ones, or whether mum’s getting hurt or whatever else. You’s can just be kids xx. I’m sorry I brought you’s into this world and am now not around to watch you walk this whole experience of life out to my greatest shame. But promise me!! You’s won’t let this alter your path in a hugely negative way!! Promise me, You’s will break the cycles!!
“No drug abuse... And never lay ur hands on a female... and hone in and control that anger inside you... Steer it towards righteous paths... I hope I have time to write a better version of this letter.”
But she didn’t, prosecutors said.
The trial’s first witness was scheduled to be Watson’s father. However, that was derailed after Kelvin “Vince” Watson walked into the court chanting a mōteatea, a Māori grieving song, en route to the witness box.
He lingered at the dock and continued, standing face-to-face with the defendant with only the glass partition between them, as he ignored Justice Dani Gardiner’s order to cease.
Other family members in the gallery joined in the mōteatea as Kerr rose to his feet inside the dock, a seemingly respectful gesture rather than confrontational.
Justice Gardiner ordered the jury to leave the courtroom as the scene continued, addressing the group only briefly about an hour later before sending them home for the day.
“Your job as the jury is to put emotions to one side,” she reminded them. “You need to be unemotional to decide the facts.”
The trial is set to resume tomorrow with another attempt to call the first witness.
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.
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