Fleets murder trial: Witnesses tell of threatening screams from bush

Zen Pulemoana, 27 (left) and Mikaere James Hura, 21 on trial for the murders of Raymond and James Fleet. Photo / File

"F*** you, someone is going to be killed" and "you are lucky I didn't shoot you, you c***, were words two female farm workers are adamant they heard separately coming from the edge of bush at Mamaku on August 7 last year.

The two were testifying in the High Court at Rotorua today where Mikaere James Hura, 21, and Zen Pulemoana, 27, are on trial charged with murdering James and Raymond Fleet on the day the women maintain they heard the phrase they quoted.

The defendants are jointly charged with Martin Hone who has pleaded guilty to both charges. A second man, Richard Te Kani, has admitted manslaughter in relation to the uncle and nephew.

This morning Samantha Olney and Hayley Forster recounted to the jury how they had mounted a quad bike and gone to investigate the source of the words.

Olney opened her evidence by telling how, on the way to work on the Cecil Rd farm about 3pm on the day the Fleets died, she'd seen a Bighorn 4WD with four people hanging out of it looking as if they were going to have some fun in the bush. There was a van behind it.

It wasn't long after this she heard the words "F*** you, someone is going to be killed," she alerted Forster.

When they arrived at the end of Cecil Rd the vehicles she had seen earlier were parked there. A man got out of the Bighorn "staunching himself up'" as if he was trying to intimidate the two of them. His actions left her feeling uneasy.

As she was leaving work about 9pm the Bighorn came screaming around a corner, nearly clipping her, she said.

Forster said when she heard the words, "you are lucky I don't shoot you, c***" she'd gone to the milking shed telling her partner Ben Redpath something was going on.

Questioned by Crown prosecutor Duncan McWilliam about the Cecil Rd encounter, she described it as being told to "f**k off as nicely as it could be"

Around 8pm that night she had been at her home on the farm when she heard squealing as if a dog was attacking someone. "They [the squeals] didn't belong to a pig."

She told Hura's lawyer Harry Edward when she had been shown photographs by police she had picked out Te Kani as the man who talked to her and Olney, saying she'd known him when she was younger and he seemed familiar.

She agreed with Pulemoana's lawyer Max Simpkins when she had heard voices coming from the bush she was at least 1.5km away but hotly disputed her memory of what was said was inaccurate.

Pressed further about this by McWilliam, she said the words were "pretty much screamed".

"I live in a remote area next to the bush line, when these threatening words were said they hit home because I live there, right there. If you hear someone say you are lucky I didn't shoot you you don't forget that, my memory is vivid."

Redpath also compared the screams coming from the bush as being similar to a person being bitten by dogs, estimating they lasted a couple of minutes.

Descriptions of two bodies being found in bush some distance from the end of Cecil Rd ten days after the Fleets' disappearance were given by Detective John Nicholls.

One was covered in scrub, the second was near a natural opening reached "with some difficulty" through scrub, bracken and blackberry. A knife was under the body.

Plastic bags near the first body had been dug into a hole, when they were opened they revealed items similar to those found in a clan lab (clandestine methamphetamine laboratory).