Anaru Morunga is on trial in the High Court at Whangārei, charged with murdering former partner Jasmaine Reihana. Photo / NZME
The mood in a courtroom shifted as a man accused of murdering his ex-partner took the stand and doubled down on a narrative of gang plots, phantom pursuers and a cousin he maintains was both absent at a tangi but somehow present.
What followed was a methodical dismantling of the stories Anaru Morunga continues to stand by, even as CCTV and witness testimony have been presented and proven him otherwise.
Morunga, 35, is on trial in the High Court at Whangārei, charged with murdering Jasmaine Reihana, the mother of two of his children.
The Crown alleges he murdered Reihana on September 8, 2024, by stabbing her at the Pouto Peninsula home in Northland he shared with his mother, Suzanne Morunga, and her partner, Michael Jones.
He is also accused of arson after allegedly setting Reihana’s car alight with her body inside at the far end of the Ripirō Beach farm, before fleeing and leading police on a State Highway 12 chase that ended with his arrest near the Brynderwyn Hills.
Earlier this week, the jury watched Morunga’s evidential interviews recorded with police toward the end of September 2024.
In the days leading up to Reihana’s death, the pair had been at a tangi in Ōtorohanga, which Morunga told police featured “a sea of mobsters, patched members”.
While there has been witness evidence that there was no presence of Mongrel Mob members at the tangi, the defendant has repeatedly claimed that he was being chased by gang members around that time.
Another common theme Morunga has repeatedly returned to is his belief that Reihana was having an affair with his cousin, Hezekiah Poharama.
He claimed Poharama was at the tangi and had sex with Reihana in her car.
Morunga also described hearing voices during the tangi, that he believed his son and brother had been kidnapped, and another family member had been raped.
Poharama has given evidence at the trial that he had only met Reihana once, and that was seven years ago.
He said he was not at the tangi because he was in prison at the time.
Morunga’s mother also gave evidence that Poharama was not at the tangi, and that she had not seen him in 15 years.
While the Crown officially closed its case on Wednesday afternoon, this morning Morunga chose to give evidence and took the stand.
Defence lawyer Arthur Fairley did not give an opening address to the jury and also chose not to question Morunga.
Instead, Crown lawyer Bernadette O’Connor launched into a cross-examination of Morunga, questioning him about the statements he had made to police.
Morunga continued with his claims that he was under attack by gangsters and Reihana was going to sell their oldest son to the Mongrel Mob.
“When I talked to these high-ranking members, they said they were interested in my oldest son because of his genealogy,” Morunga said of claimed conversations he had at the tangi.
“Hezekiah Poharama was never in Ōtorohanga [at the tangi], was he?” O’Connor asked.
“Not his physical being, but his prospects were,” Morunga responded.
Morunga claimed that at the tangi, he was “holed up in my nana’s shed” with five generations of his family under his watch.
While he was in the shed, he said he spoke to Poharama through a closed door.
He claimed Poharama said: ” Sieg f****** heil“.
“I opened the door and they ran away,” Morunga said.
“These claims are made up,” O’Connor later put to Morunga.
“No, they’re not. They’re orchestrated by the Mighty Mongrel Mob, the most feared gang in the world,” the defendant said.
Morunga also maintained he was being followed after the tangi by a convoy of cars.
However, O’Connor replayed CCTV from locations Morunga had visited leading up to Reihana’s death.
“There was no convoy, was there?” O’Connor asked.
“I seen one car I recognised,” he said, referring to a vehicle that was parked on the road.
“Where are the 10 people in the shop?” O’Connor asked when showing CCTV footage from a liquor store Morunga was in.
He had claimed there had been a group of people who were following him in the shop.
“Maybe not in the shop, Jaz [Reihana] was on the phone to them,” he said.
Witnesses have also given evidence that no cars were driving up and down the driveway of the Pouto Rd address, as Morunga has claimed.
O’Connor put it to Morunga that he had been smoking a lot of methamphetamine at the time, to which he said he had not.
However, Morunga said he had “supercharged” in the car before going on to the marae to face “the death squad”.
O’Connor refreshed what he had said in his police interview.
“You said, ‘I was cooked like a f***ing cooked thing’,” O’Connor reminded him.
But Morunga said, “You can take from that what you want”.
While Morunga had admitted to police that he had stabbed Reihana, causing her death, it is unclear what his defence to the murder charge is.
While giving evidence, he agreed that he had admitted guilt, but said he wanted the opportunity to tell his story in court.
When O’Connor asked for details around the moment of Reihana’s death, he claimed she had a pistol on her that she reached for.
“I reached, she reached, I won,” he said.
O’Connor said this was the first time anyone had heard that Reihana was allegedly armed and suggested Morunga was making up his narrative as he went along.
“Whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah. I’m telling the truth, I swore an oath,” Morunga said.
O’Connor put to him that when he stabbed Reihana, he knew that she would die.
Morunga went quiet before responding.
“I don’t think I meant for her to die, I just needed her to stop what she was doing to my kids and my family.”
Further on in the cross-examination, Morunga re-enacted the scene using a tissue as a knife.
“Before she pulled the gun, I stepped to her,” he said.
He claimed Reihana said, “We should have killed you first”, before he plunged the knife into her neck.
“I took control of the situation,” Morunga said.
He maintained there was a “trigger man” hidden in a false floor of the car who wanted to kill him.
Investigators have established that the remains in the burned-out vehicle belonged solely to Reihana, and there was neither a concealed floor nor any firearm present.
The trial continues before Justice David Johnstone.
Shannon Pitman is a Whangārei-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the Te Tai Tokerau region. She is of Ngāpuhi/ Ngāti Pūkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.