Police and forensic staff investigate the scene where a woman was found dead in June 2024. Her partner, who is on trial for murder, has name suppression. Photo / Alex Burton
Two months before she was allegedly beaten to death by her longtime on-again-off-again partner, an Auckland woman sat on her bed next to a uniformed police officer and matter-of-factly demonstrated having been recently strangled by the same man.
“I think he might have said, ‘I’ve had enough,’ or something, but he grabbed me then by the throat...” she explained as she sat cross-legged and as a children’s television show played in the background.
“He started shaking me quite hard. I fell back onto the bed on my back and he got on top of me then and kept going. So he was kind of pushing me down but shaking me quite hard.”
At some time around that point, she said, she realised she couldn’t breathe because of the pressure on her neck.
“I wasn’t choking or anything like that, but I couldn’t take any air in,” she said.
“Things like this have happened quite a lot, and because of what I know, everything, I didn’t react at all. I didn’t try and fight him off or nothing. I just kind of went limp and let him do whatever he was doing.”
The tactic worked, she recounted with no visible emotion. Moments later he seemed to realise what he was doing and got off of her, she said. He sat on the side of the same bed where the woman and the officer were sitting and began crying, apologising, the woman recalled.
The brief interview, which was filmed, gave jurors in the High Court at Auckland today a rare opportunity to hear an alleged murder victim in her own words.
Neither the woman nor the man, who is facing charges for both the April 2024 strangulation accusation and for the woman’s June 2024 death, can yet be named.
Interim suppression for both had been set to lapse at the start of the trial, but defence lawyer Ian Brookie has asked for it to continue. Justice Simon Mount has not yet issued his decision.
The defendant has pleaded not guilty to both sets of charges. His lawyer has suggested the woman lied about the first incident and died from a fall two months later due to either her epilepsy, her extreme intoxication or a combination of the two.
In the interview, the woman said she was “quite calm” after the alleged attack ended. The two had been arguing intensely about the defendant’s alleged infidelity before he lost it, she said.
“Don’t get me in trouble, I’m sorry,” she recalled him saying as he cried on the side of the bed.
She stood in the corner, not looking at him but turned around about three minutes later after noticing the silence and saw that he had slumped over asleep, she said, describing him as incoherently drunk. She manoeuvred him into her bed and went to sleep in another room, she told the officer.
She recalled waiting until he woke up late the next morning to confront him.
“This is - we’re done now,” she told him, according to her police statement. “You can either call your mother and get her to come over, or I will be calling the police.”
She called 111 a short time later.
“It’s too late,” she could be heard telling the defendant while on the call, which was also recorded. “I told you. It’s too late.”
In another exchange, a short time late,r while still on the 111 call, she told the defendant: “You can’t put your hands on me.”
He responded: “You can’t trap me in the room.”
“You can’t touch me,” the woman added.
The 111 operator suggested the woman not engage with the defendant any more and wait for officers to arrive.
Defence lawyers have been quick to point out that the woman retracted her statements almost as quickly as she made them. At the time of her death, she was actively trying to get the charges dropped.
She had acted rashly, angry about the defendant’s alleged infidelity, Brookie suggested in his opening statement yesterday.
“We know that [she] has modified her complaint to the point it is unrecognisable,” he said.
But the Crown said during their own opening address that the woman’s recanting needed to be viewed in light of previous domestic violence accusations in recent years. The defendant had pleaded guilty to assaulting her in 2020.
It’s not unusual for a domestic violence victim to try to protect her abuser, prosecutor Ruby van Boheemen said.
Jurors spent the final half of the day listening to text and Facebook messages between the couple in the hours leading up to the strangulation allegations and the days that followed. Van Boheemen and Detective Lee Bigelow took turns reading them aloud.
The defendant repeatedly referred to her as “baby girl” and they expressed their renewed love for each other. But things turned sour after that night when the defendant took a call from another woman.
“I really don’t want to fight,” the defendant told his partner.
“Too f***ing late,” she replied.
“F***, you piss me off,” the defendant said.
They arranged to meet in person at the woman’s home.
The messages resumed days later, after the police interview. The defendant had been arrested.
“I didn’t mean for it to go this way, okay,” the woman wrote.
They discussed staying in each other’s lives even if they were no longer in a relationship.
“I never meant to call the cops,” the woman said. “I was jealous of the girl and I was still drunk a bit.”
She urged the defendant to contact her even though a protection order was in place.
“They only will know if you or me narc on each other,” she wrote.
The defendant said he was scared. But he also said it was his fault.
“I never wanted to do that to you ... and I’m honestly sorry,” he wrote.
The woman responded: “You did what you did... but I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. Get a lawyer ASAP.”
She promised to help him in any way she could.
Jurors ended the day by viewing the help that resulted, in the form of another video. Taken selfie-style on her phone, the woman read aloud a letter of support for the defendant that she urged the defendant to give to his lawyer.
“The whole situation occurred because of me,” she said. “I verbally assaulted him for at least two hours. I was very jealous and wanted to hurt him.”
She didn’t want her police statement used at all, she said. But at the very least, she added, it should be amended to say the whole interaction lasted about 30 seconds and the physical contact was only two to three seconds.
Jurors will not sit tomorrow. Evidence is expected to resume on Thursday.
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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