A woman was forced by her boyfriend to strip naked and lie down in a grave she had dug, the High Court at Hamilton heard yesterday.
The Crown alleges Lindsay John Arnold stood over Sandra Thomas with a pump-action shotgun as she dug between two rotting cattle carcasses.
Arnold, 34,has denied kidnapping, threatening to kill, assaulting her with a firearm and stealing her motorbike.
Crown prosecutor Louella Dunn described the short but strained relationship between the two, who were living together under the same roof as Ms Thomas and her then-husband, Brian Redgate, on their Coromandel farm.
An at-times tearful Ms Thomas testified how her relationship with Arnold quickly soured when, in October, he refused her demand that he leave, and became aggressive.
She threatened to shoot herself, and he gave her a bullet, but she could not make the gun work.
Arnold then snapped, dragging her down the hallway by the hair and forcing her to dig the grave at gunpoint, at times naked except for her gumboots.
This ended in a muted reconciliation, with a frightened Thomas making love to Arnold and then milking the cows. But when he became threatening again, she escaped.
The Crown alleges that Arnold then stole her Suzuki motorcycle and went to stay with friends, telling them she had committed suicide. Police found him in Palmerston North Hospital recovering from a drug overdose.
The case, before Justice Grant Hammond, is expected to take two more days.
