Mother 'stunned' at murder case acquittal

The mother of dead Northland woman Katherine Sheffield says she is stunned the man accused of murdering her daughter has walked free.

Judith Garrett planned to bury her daughter's ashes on Christmas Day, believing the man charged with killing her daughter would be locked up. Instead, Noel Clement Rogers walked out of Auckland High Court on Friday night a free man.

"I can't believe it. I am stunned," Ms Garrett told the Herald on Sunday.

"He confessed to it, they had overwhelming evidence and now he is out - a free man.

"I really thought he would be serving a life sentence," she said. "That is what I was led to expect by police."

Ms Garrett had planned to bury her daughter's ashes at a church near her Mangonui home.

"We had planned it, thinking he would be behind bars and we could finally put Kathy to rest.

"Now I am going to have to go back to my other daughter to see what we will do."

Ms Garrett said the police investigation into her daughter's 1994 killing read like a murder mystery novel. But for her there was no mystery.

"I know who killed Kathy - there is no doubt in my mind."

In 1995 Roger's uncle, Lawrence Lloyd, was convicted of Ms Sheffield's manslaughter and served seven years of an 11-year sentence.

The Court of Appeal overturned his conviction last year after it found he had been wrongly convicted.

Lloyd had believed he had killed his friend after waking up next to her slashed and stabbed body after a night spent drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis.

But last year Rogers, 32, was charged with Ms Sheffield's murder.

He told police and friends he had a vivid dream he had killed Ms Sheffield and said he had put her bloody clothes in a long-drop toilet. Police found the clothes in the long-drop and Rogers was charged.

During the trial, Rogers' defence argued he had only dreamed that he killed Ms Sheffield.

Rogers told police he had stabbed Ms Sheffield in the stomach but there was no evidence of this.

Ms Garrett said she always believed Lawrence Lloyd was innocent. "The night Kathy was killed she had told me Noel had raped her the year before. Her and Lloyd were going to tell him that night they were going to police.

"That's why she was killed."

Ms Garrett believed her daughter was killed by someone who was young, strong and quick with a knife.

She said she was trying to move on from her daughter's murder, and knew she had done everything she could.

"We have done everything in our power to see that the right thing has been done by Kathy.

"There is nothing more we can do. I'm exhausted now."

Ms Garrett said the memories of her horse-mad daughter, a skilled athlete and swimmer, would help get her through the ordeal.

But she believed that her daughter's killer would never be brought to justice.

"He's been acquitted, so that's it. It's over - you can't be tried for the same crime twice so there's nothing more I can do."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY