Marie Davis not an 'emo', mother tells murder trial

Papanui teenager Marie Davis was not an "emo" and had never indulged in self-harm, her mother told the trial of the man charged with murdering the schoolgirl.

The question was raised in cross-examination by defence counsel Frank Hogan at the trial of Dean Stewart Cameron who denies charges of rape and murder.

Mother Janet Davis described Marie as a quiet 15-year-old who loved reading and listening to music on the computer.

She was doing an art course at high school and her mother had put some of her works on display around the house. She had song lyrics printed from internet sites taped to the back of her bedroom door.

She had never been diagnosed as having any mental health issue. There had been no major disciplinary issues, and she had never discussed suicide, Mrs Davis told crown prosecutor Chris Lange.

Cross-examined, she said children used to say Marie was an "emo" because of the way she wore her hair.

Mr Hogan asked: "Is it your understanding that an emo-type person is one who wears their hair over their face and sometimes carries out self-inflicted wounds?"

Mrs Davis replied: "I have heard that. I knew she wasn't that type of a person. She used to wear short sleeves all the time. There was no evidence of anything like that."

It is understood that emos will wear long-sleeved clothing to cover wounds to their arms.

Marie was not obsessed about anything, but she could take up to an hour a day to straighten her long hair.

Mrs Davis was asked about finding a laundry basket at the house with Marie's washed clothes, after her disappearance in April last year.

She confirmed Marie would sometimes visit local parks but was not aware of her "chilling out" there after some issue had arisen.

The mother and daughter had a major argument in 2007, in which Marie had been grounded and had her cellphone taken away. She had barely spoken to her mother for two weeks.

Mrs Davis was also asked about a bottle of liqueur which had been left more than half full in the house when she left for a North Island visit before Marie's disappearance.

She learned later that the bottle had been found empty in Marie's room.

She said she heard that Marie had once got drunk at a friend's house, and she was shown a letter excusing Marie from school for the last period on the Friday afternoon - two days before her disappearance. Marie had apparently signed her mother's signature on the note.

Mrs Davis said she was a little bit surprised by that, but said she knew Marie had bunked school a couple of times, once when she was upset.

She acknowledged that Marie went through a period of having dizzy spells. It went on for several years, and she put it down to dehydration. It was not as frequent in the last year of her life, but she had been told of a dizzy spell a few weeks before her disappearance.

Cameron, a 40-year-old road worker, is on trial before Justice Lester Chisholm and a jury in the High Court at Christchurch. Today is the second day of the trial.

The Crown alleges Cameron broke into the Davis home where he raped and murdered the teenager before wrapping her body in bedding and dumping her in the Waimakariri River, north of Christchurch.

The defence has raised the possibility that she had gone to the river with the bedding for an encounter on the riverbank, and had fallen in accidentally, during a dizzy spell, through suicide, or while trying to get away.

- NZPA