Crucial tip-off reveals terrible secret

Christine King told police she snapped one night when her former husband came home drunk. Picture / Amos Chapple

Locals call it the murder house.

A basic three-bedroom family home, north-east of Hamilton, with magnificent views towards Mt Te Aroha.

In November 1988, Christine King dug a shallow grave - just outside the french doors with their sweeping views - and buried the man she had killed.

But such secrets don't normally remain buried forever.

In the High Court at Hamilton this week Christine King was found guilty of the manslaughter of her former husband, Wayne Roycroft, by feeding him an overdose of sleeping pills.

The couple met in 1980. King already had two daughters from a previous relationship, and the four began living together. The couple had their own daughter in 1980, and two years later a son.

They never settled anywhere for long; Hamilton, as well as Manaia (South Taranaki), New Plymouth, Taupiri, and Te Aroha. By the time they went to live in Waihou, they had scraped together enough money to buy a house.

He was meticulous about housework, but according to his daughters and King, he rarely did any himself. That was for his wife and children.

Observers, mainly Roycroft's own family, said the couple had their ups and downs, but believed they were generally happy.

But there were undercurrents.

There was evidence that Roycroft was a gambler and a heavy drinker. There was also a background of physical and psychological violence inside the family, although a veil of silence ensured it was not the business of the outside world.

Roycroft had few friends. He was frustrated, moody, gruff.

He had lost the use of an arm and could not work (Roycroft told his family that while living in Australia he had been in a car accident, but King said he had in fact badly injured it while committing a burglary). He was also asthmatic.

Then he disappeared.

He was 35. His wife was 34. The eldest of their four children was barely of high school age.

King told Roycroft's brothers that he had become fed up. He had gone on a tiki-tour and was heading to Australia. The story seemed believable enough.

But by May 1989 Roycroft's mother, Aileen, was concerned. If he was on a tiki-tour, why had he not called on her at her Kaikoura home? He regularly rang or wrote, but she had not heard a squeak out of him.

Aileen asked the youngest of her 10 children, Aaron, to report him missing to the police.

In Te Aroha, policeman Anthony Grieg met concerned family members. One day he went to the Campbell Rd house to speak to King, who had been at a 21st and was hung-over.

King said her husband had phoned several times from Australia. He had told her to drop an insurance claim on a car, and he talked of debts owed from dealing cannabis at the Riverina Hotel in Hamilton.

Police called in the Crimewatch TV show, which broadcast in August 1989, a few metres from where Wayne Roycroft was buried.

Police tried to reconstruct what happened the night he disappeared.

King said they had a heated argument that week. She had said their two younger children were not his.

He said he had had a gutsful. He was leaving. King went to work the following 6am, taking the children with her. When she returned, Roycroft was gone.

Nobody came forward.

Rumours were rife around Waihou and Te Aroha and King's children were taunted. In the playground, some children told them their mother had cut their father's throat, and stuck the body in a freezer "out the back of Morrinsville".

Police kept the missing persons file open. Five years later police interviewed King again. "I know he loved me and the kids and I loved him, even though he had many faults."

Police returned just two days later and this time their intentions were clear. According to Detective Robert Bevege: "We took steel rods and walked the section looking for any site where a body may have been buried."

They found nothing. But fate was stirring in the figure of Paul Baxendale. He and King had a relationship for about a year until he decided to leave for Australia.

King had found someone to whom she could share her secret.

She told him her husband came home drunk one night and something inside her snapped. She mashed three-quarters of a bottle of sleeping pills into his meal and as his breathing became laboured, she went outside for a cigarette.

Baxendale helped her by digging up the body and putting it on a bonfire to get rid of the remains.

For 10 more years the secret held.

But one day last year his conscience got the better of him. Police going over old leads contacted him in Australia and this time he unloaded.

After 16 years of fruitless interviews and frustrating inquiries, police had their critical tip.

After an extraordinary 3-hour videotaped interview with Detective Peter Hikaka of Waihi police, King was finally arrested for causing Roycroft's death.

Mr Hikaka was hand-picked for the job. He read her body language. When she clammed up, he went easy. When she opened up, he pressed.

King admitted she was a hard, bitter woman. When Mr Hikaka landed the Baxendale bombshell, King was stunned. First she denied it, then she blamed someone else.

But as Mr Hikaka pressed, her shoulders wilted, her head drooped low into her chest.

Finally, she began to talk. She told the detective about the sleeping pills, noticing his breathing pattern changing, and going outside.

"And then I just remember thinking 'oh my God what am I going to do, he smells' and it was then when I smelt that smell, that his bowels had moved and I knew."

"He was dead?" asked the detective.

"I knew he wouldn't do that if he was alive," she replied.

It took her hours to dig the hole outside the french doors, she said.

The trial ended in a manslaughter conviction after the jury deliberated for 7 hours, and King is now in Mt Eden Prison awaiting sentencing.

But Dave King, her present husband, is standing by his wife.

"She had to lie. If she hadn't told a lie this would have all been fixed up 18 years ago."