Manukura McLeod was sentenced today for the murder of Dayne Rademakers (inset). Photo / Facebook
Manukura McLeod was sentenced today for the murder of Dayne Rademakers (inset). Photo / Facebook
“Will they come for me next?” a 10-year-old girl asked her family after her father Dayne Rademakers was stabbed to death as he lay sleeping in a garage.
“Because someone killed my dad, will they want to kill me?”
Rademakers was murdered by Manukura McLeod, the ex-partner of a womanhe’d been seeing who was apparently jealous of her new lover.
After being stood up for a late-night meeting with that woman, McLeod walked to an address where she was sleeping on a fold-out camp bed with Rademakers. He entered the house, armed himself with a knife and stabbed him three times through a blanket, then fled the scene.
“Look at me,” Rademakers’ sister Whitney Rademakers said to McLeod, which he did.
“I hate you for what you did,” she said.
Manukura McLeod was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Dayne Rademakers. Photo / Facebook
“You didn’t just kill my brother, you stole a piece of me ... he was my twin, my other half.”
“We shared everything, even a heartbeat. A heartbeat that you took.”
Whitney told the court that McLeod had not just destroyed one life, but their entire family.
“I watched you during the trial and I searched for a flicker of humanity, or guilt or remorse … there was nothing,” she said.
“Just a blank stare, like none of this mattered.”
A victim impact statement was also read on behalf of Rademakers’ now 12-year-old daughter.
“I will think about you every day, you will always be my daddy ... you will always be in my heart,” an excerpt from a letter the girl had written to her father and was placed in his coffin, read.
Family speaking on behalf of the girl said Rademakers would not be there for all his daughter’s important milestones.
“At each milestone in her life, she will revisit her loss and revisit her trauma. At each parole hearing she will revisit her trauma and revisit this fight,” they said in a statement.
“Not only has Dayne’s life been cut short, but it has forever altered the life of his daughter.”
The family said that they’d had to answer difficult questions from the girl about how and why her father had been murdered, and she was afraid that she would be targeted next.
“To her, she doesn’t understand, as it’s not her fault her dad was so handsome.
“She wishes that man who took her dad from her goes to jail for the rest of his life.”
‘Overcome with jealousy’
Crown Prosecutor Guy Carter sought a minimum non-parole period of 17 years for McLeod.
“It’s the how that stands out,” he said, “…the fact that he was asleep in the middle of the night…there is nothing that could be levelled at him in terms of blame.”
“He stabbed a sleeping man, at least three times.”
Dayne Rademakers. Photo / Facebook
McLeod’s lawyer, Paul Surridge, said he had no previous convictions for violence, and was on good terms with his former partners despite having led a hard life.
Justice Paul Radich said McLeod had evidently been “overcome with jealousy” upon seeing Rademakers and Chapman in bed together.
“You attacked a vulnerable sleeping man,” Justice Radich said, “You have not accepted responsibility for what happened.”
“When a person is asleep, they’re just as vulnerable as someone who is very young, old, or disabled.”
Justice Radich said while he acknowledged McLeod had a history of substance abuse and a difficult upbringing, he didn’t consider those mitigating factors that could warrant a discount.
“I hope that you can, with time, come to acknowledge what you did and embrace change.”
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū, covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
