Dark concealed every woman's nightmare

By SCOTT INGLIS and TONY WALL

Journalist Kylie Jones got off her bus and briskly walked on her thick platform-heeled shoes along Line Rd towards her Glen Innes home.

It was about 6 pm on June 6, and she had just finished her day at Eye magazine.

But two worlds were about to collide. Lying in wait in the darkness of a reserve 80 paces from her home was rapist Taffy Herbert Hotene.





The 29-year-old had been released from jail two months earlier. He had a record of rape and other sex crimes, had a problem with women and trouble controlling his anger.

In a vicious attack, he belted Kylie in the head, a king-hit which probably stunned her. He repeatedly stabbed her and rummaged through her handbag, stealing three ATM cards, $10 cash, an AA card, her watch and keys.

Neighbours reported hearing a single, high-pitched scream about the same time but, when they could not see anything in the reserve, they did nothing about it.

Afterwards, Hotene went to a party at a flat in Maybury St, Glen Innes, where he met his brother, George.

He told George that he had lots of money and to follow him. They went to the Pak 'N Save car park in Glen Innes and Taffy asked George to take his knife.

George Hotene told the Herald: "I opened up his jacket and put my hand in and pulled out this knife. I thought, 'Hell, that's a big butcher's knife' and put it under my jacket."

The blade was clean.

He said the knife exchange incident was caught on surveillance camera videotape which the police seized. Taffy had a sore hand, which George assumed he had got from being in a fight with a group of Samoans down the road.

He had told him earlier he planned fighting the Samoans.

About the same time, at Kylie's home, partner Aaron Stenbeck had become worried. Police were called and later in the night they found her naked body in a shallow creek inside the reserve. Detectives launched a murder inquiry and five days later they arrested Hotene.

He had a childhood which could be best described as terrible.

He was born in Murupara on June 16, 1970, and was named after a neighbour, an old Welsh sailor named Taffy Herbert, who is still alive but remembers little of him.

Hotene was one of 13 brothers and sisters, but all were fostered out.

George, who lives in Auckland, recalls: "About seven of us wanted to stay with dad, but the Government says, 'Your parents are getting a divorce,' and they put us under social welfare care."

All the siblings stayed in touch, except Taffy. The next time George saw him was at their father's 60th birthday in the mid-1980s.

George said he had no idea what became of their mother. "I don't give a shit about her."

The Herald understands she remarried and is living under a different surname in Auckland.

Taffy Hotene claims that he was sexually abused during those tumultuous years growing up.

Kylie Jones' life was another world. She grew up like thousands of other, normal New Zealand girls - loved, supported and wanted.

Born on July 17, 1977, in Warkworth, she attended Matakana Primary and later Mahurangi College. She played netball, rode horses with her elder sister, Donna, and went on an exchange to Sweden.

By the time Kylie was 8, the teenage Hotene was already slipping into a life of crime.

On July 12, 1985, at age 15, he appeared in the Youth Court at Otahuhu and notched up his first conviction, for theft. He was put into social welfare care.

The following March he stole again, and was fined $30.

But in the following year Hotene graduated to serious crime. He tried to rape a woman while armed with a knife, and was jailed for 15 months.

During sentencing, his lawyer, Marie Dyhrberg, said Hotene could not comprehend why he had attacked. He had low intelligence and had suffered deprivation and extreme violence as a child.

Marie Dyhrberg also said it was to be hoped that Hotene would receive intensive counselling while in prison and that his personal and sexual problems would be overcome.

But they were not.

After gaining parole 10 months later, he attacked a Mangere woman. He did not rape her, but later told police he had been wandering around Mangere looking for a woman to rape.

In April, he pleaded guilty to assault with intent to commit sexual violation and was sent for two years to the Legionnaires Academy, a South Auckland military-style boot camp for wayward youths.

His lawyer at the time, Josephine Baddeley, said the academy could provide support in a secure environment and was more culturally appropriate.

A probation officer agreed. The judge, Justice Sir Muir Chilwell, also agreed, but in July the Court of Appeal replaced the sentence with four years in prison.

Delivering the decision, Justice Sir Ivor Richardson said the court was not satisfied that Hotene's case warranted departing from the normal, mandatory jail term.

The court was concerned about public safety, and the academy did not have the immediate coercive sanctions of jail.

In that judgment it was also revealed that Hotene suffered from paranoia. But the man who ran the Legionnaires Academy, Dan Davis, told the Herald that had Hotene stayed there, he would have turned out a better man, because he would have been nurtured in the Maori way. He said Hotene was simply "unloved" and unwanted.

"He had a bloody miserable lot. No one wanted to know him. He never had no bloody love. He was trashed."

In January 1992, Hotene was released from New Plymouth Prison, but struck again three weeks later.

He attacked three female shop workers over five days in Wanganui. In one attack, he raped and repeatedly bashed a woman in a video store in daylight; in another, he attacked a woman in a stabbing frenzy.

Justice Neazor imposed a jail term of 12 years, but Hotene was released after serving the mandatory two-thirds. He has always passed psychiatric examinations.

After the murder of Kylie Jones, Justice Richard Heron, chairman of the Parole Board, wrote to the Herald emphasising that the board had had no power to hold Hotene in jail under the Criminal Justice Act 1985 and could only impose conditions on his release.

Herald sources say Hotene did not want to leave the maximum-security Paremoremo prison, and had tried to kill himself. The only life he knew was on the inside, and it has been suggested that his committing a murder would mean he would be returned to jail for the rest of his days.