In the past decade hundreds of thousands of Kiwis have fallen victim to crimes across the country.
The Herald has reported on many of those cases, but some have been much more high profile and shocking than others.
There have been murders both violent and vile, kidnappings, drug busts, child abuse and torture, dramatic prison escapes, sieges and shootings - and brave survivors living to tell their story in court and beyond.
Today we look back at some of the most infamous and terrible crimes that have occurred in New Zealand over the past decade.
These are the cases that have captured, captivated and devastated the nation and left the entire community reeling and rallying.
The murder of Carmen Thomas
On October 1 2010 Auckland mum Carmen Thomas' dismembered body was found inside containers of concrete buried in the Waitakere Ranges.
It later emerged she had been died from multiple blows to the head on the morning of June 29.
Thomas had been
by her ex partner Brad Callaghan after they fought over their young son.
Callaghan then cleaned the scene and
in a large 240-litre recycling bin.
Over the next few days he hatched a plan to dispose of the body and cover up the death.
Part of the plan was to make it seem as though Thomas had travelled to Hamilton and not returned home.
Using a meat cleaver, Callaghan cut her body into eight parts and put them into plastic bags that were then encased in concrete in plastic paint buckets and a 120-litre bin.
After several failed attempts at dumping her body, he hid Thomas' remains in the Waitakere Ranges.
He was eventually charged and admitted killing the 33-year-old.
Callaghan was sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 13 years and 8 months for murder and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Murder in the driveway
It was in the early hours of July 8, 2010 that Scott Guy was shot and killed in the driveway of his home near Feilding when he stopped to open a gate.
The 31-year-old's young son and pregnant wife were asleep in the house just metres away from where he was gunned down.
After a lengthy and exhaustive police investigation, Guy's brother-in-law was charged with murder.
Ewen Macdonald was married to Guy's sister Anna and father to their four children.
After a highly publicised trial in the High Court at Wellington in 2012, Macdonald was found not guilty of murder.
However, he was convicted of other offences relating including vandalising the farmhouse where Guy and his wife Kylee lived, killing 19 calves and burning down a 110 year-old building.
He was jailed for five years for that offending.
In 2016 the Herald revealed that Macdonald had been released from prison on parole - after being denied four times previously.
He has moved to Canterbury and remarried in 2017.
Anna Guy relocated to Auckland and had two more children with her new partner.
Following her husband's murder, Kylee Guy left Feilding and returned to her hometown in the Hawke's Bay with their two sons.
She later moved to the South Island and in late 2015 she gave birth to her third son with her new partner.
The killing of Christie Marceau
Eighteen-year-old Christie Alexis Lesley Marceau died on November 7, 2011 in her mother Tracey's arms on the deck of their family home.
She was stabbed to death by a youth who was facing charges of kidnapping and assaulting her.
He had been released on bail and despite being banned from going near Marceau or her family home, forced his way into the Hillcrest property early in the morning and took to his victim with a large kitchen knife.
Marceau tried to run as her terrified mother called 111, but Akshay Chand, 18, chased her to the deck and stabbed her repeatedly in the head.
Chand only stopped the frenzied attack when the knife bent to such an angle that he could no longer use it.
In October 2012 Chand was found not guilty of murdering Marceau by reason of insanity.
It was a case that gripped New Zealand and the outrage over Chand being released on bail was far reaching.
An inquest was held in June 2017 and looked at the administrative process at the North Shore District Court in the lead up to Chand being bailed; police bail-checking processes and protocols and whether they were adequate; what Chand's mental health was before
Marceau's death and what information Judge McNaughton had available to him when he made the bail decision.
Coroner Katharine Greig later made a number of recommendations in a bid to prevent similar incidents in future.
The 2014 WINZ shooting
Russell John Tully barged into the Ashburton WINZ office on a Monday morning waving a shotgun, his face covered with a balaclava.
Within minutes, two women were dead and another critically wounded.
First, Tully shot receptionist Peggy Noble, 67, from point blank range.
He then fired three times at case manager Susan Leigh Cleveland, 55, as she pleaded for her life.
The 50-year-old also shot case manager Lindy Curtis in the leg, leaving her badly injured while hiding under a desk.
Tully denied the offending but was found guilty by a jury after a trial in the High Court at Christchurch.
He was later sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 27 years - the second highest non-parole period ever handed down in New Zealand history.
After he was sentenced police interviewed Tully in prison over the unsolved 1998 murder of Ashburton schoolgirl Kirsty Bentley.
Cowardly and evil: the murder of Blessie Gotingco
In August 2015, Tony Robertson was jailed for life with a minimum non-parole period of 24 years for the rape and murder of North Shore woman Blessie Gotingco.
In May 2014 Robertson hit Gotingco, 56, with his car before he took her to his home, where she was raped and then stabbed to death.
Gotingco's murder came only months after Robertson was released from prison for similarly depraved offending against children.
At the time he was being monitored by Corrections via a GPS anklet and subject to an Extended Supervision Order.
Early the following morning, he wrapped Gotingco's body in a sheet and took her to the nearby cemetery in Eskdale Rd where he dumped her body in thick bush.
In December 2005, Robertson kidnapped and molested a 5-year-old girl and attempted to abduct two other children in Tauranga. He served almost eight years in jail and was released in December 2013.
After Robertson was sentenced the Gotingco family said his "unbelievably violent, cruel, depraved and vicious attack" had destroyed their lives.
They described the murderer as a "cowardly and evil offender".
Moko Rangitoheriri - death by caregiver
When 3-year-old Moko Rangitoheriri was taken to hospital in August 2015 his eyes were so swollen that the nurse could not lift the lids to check his pupils.
His little body was cold - so cold that devices used for measuring body temperature
would not take a reading.
He had bite marks on his face, his tummy was protruding unnaturally and he was covered from head to toe in bruises and abrasions.
The little boy was so badly brutalised that he did not survive.
A post-mortem examination was carried out and established that the Tokoroa toddler died as a result of "multiple blunt force traumas".
David Haerewa and Tania Shailer - friends of his mother who had left him in their care - were charged over the little boy's death.
It later emerged that the pair deliberately and systematically hurt, tortured and abused Moko.
Then, when his little body could take no more, they left him to die.
Both pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were jailed for 17 years each - the highest sentence imposed in New Zealand for that kind of offence against a child.
From Springhill to Brazil - the great prison escape
It was like the plot of a movie when Phillip John Smith escaped from prison and fled overseas.
It was November 2014 when the convicted murderer and child sex offender skipped the country and travelled to South America while on a 74-hour temporary release from Spring Hill prison.
He was serving a life term at the time for the 1995 stabbing murder of the father of a boy he had sexually abused.
His escape sparked an international manhunt that led police to a backpackers in Rio de Janeiro on November 13 - a week after he left New Zealand.
Smith was convicted of escaping lawful custody and making a false statement to renew a passport.
Attack at the quarry - serial rapist unmasked
In February 2017 a woman was kidnapped as she walked home down a busy Auckland road after the annual pride parade in Ponsonby.
She was driven to an isolated quarry in West Auckland and seriously assaulted, awaking to find a man standing over her brandishing a bat-like weapon.
She scrambled away from him and miraculously managed to escape.
For 14 days police worked tirelessly to find the man responsible - and finally made an arrest.
Colin Jack Mitchell was apprehended at his Onehunga home and charged with abduction, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and assault with intent to commit sexual violation.
After a high profile trial in the High Court at Auckland Mitchell was found guilty of
kidnapping and assaulting the woman, with intent to sexually violate her.
That jury also found Mitchell guilty of raping a woman in May 1992 - a crime that he was tried for after DNA evidence found in the quarry attack linked him to a historic sex crime.
The Herald was later able to report that Mitchell was a recidivist rapist.
In 1985 he was sentenced to five years in prison after he raped, sodomised and indecently assaulted a teenager in central Auckland.
That was soon after he served time for raping another woman in her home in March 1973.
At the time he was 15.
At his most recent sentencing Mitchell was jailed indefinitely.
Justice Sally Fitzgerald said a sentence of preventive detention was the only appropriate course of action for the repeat offender.
Preventive detention is an indeterminate prison sentence where, even if prisoners are released on parole, they remain under the management and monitoring of Corrections for the rest of their life.
"Your offending and its aftermath… have been an understandingly harrowing ordeal," she said.
"Over decades… your sexual deviancy has not diminished over time and escalated in seriousness.
"There is no basis for me to conclude that it will stop."
Terror at the mosque - New Zealand's darkest day
On March 15 2019 New Zealand changed forever when a gunman stormed into two Christchurch mosques, shooting indiscriminately at people gathered to pray.
Within minutes - and broadcast to thousands of people via a live stream filmed on a camera attached to him - he had fatally wounded 51 people and injured dozens more men, women and children.
About 18 minutes later police arrested Australian national Brenton Tarrant.
He is the only person charged in relation to the alleged terror attack.
Tarrant has pleaded not guilty to murdering 51 people during the attacks at two city mosques on March 15.
He has also denied 40 charges of attempted murder and one charge laid under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002.
In October the officers who arrested the alleged gunman were honoured at the annual Police Association conference.
Senior Constable Jim Manning and Senior Constable Scott Carmody said they were just doing their jobs but were proud they were able to prevent the possibility of further casualties.