A jealous newlywed husband who pleaded guilty to murder after a frenzied knife attack on a street preacher was sentenced to life imprisonment today, with the judge rejecting an argument that the circumstances leading to the stabbing are deserving of a sentence more akin to manslaughter.
“You had murderous intent ... and properly pleaded guilty to murder,” Justice Geoffrey Venning told Bradford Damian Kipa, pointing out that Favona resident John Tofu Ioane, 52, had been stabbed at least nine times with a large kitchen knife.
Kipa’s actions on the evening of August 23, 2021, “fall well short of exceptional circumstances” that would be needed under the law for the judge to order a finite sentence instead of life imprisonment, Venning said. He ordered a minimum term of imprisonment of 10 years.
Authorities say Kipa, 49, had been drinking for hours at his Panmure apartment during the first week of Auckland’s strict Covid-19 Delta variant lockdown when he got into an argument with Joelene Tarei, who he had married three months earlier following the pair’s decade-long courtship.
“Mr Kipa had been suspicious of Ms Tarei for some time, suspecting that she was being unfaithful,” court documents state. “This led to Mr Kipa asking Ms Tarei, ‘Have you ever lied to me?’”
Tarei conceded to her husband that she had kissed another man.
“You lied to me again,” the defendant said in the argument that ensued. “I loved you so much ... You went and did this to me ... You didn’t take your vows seriously ... Is this what you think of our marriage?”
The two violently struggled as Kipa pulled his wife’s phone from her, accusing her of hiding something on it before taking the phone outside and smashing it.
Later that evening, Tarei exchanged a series of messages with the victim on her work phone. The two had been work colleagues since the prior year but had also formed an intimate relationship, court documents state.
“Brad broke my fone ... Told him I cheated ... Got a hiding,” she texted.
Ioane responded: “Oh shit what happened ... You ok? Everything ok ... Wtf I’m coming over ... Shit wtf ... Want me to pick you up ... Should I come over or not the c*** shouldn’t lay a hand on you or any woman.”
Kipa’s wife told Ioane not to come over, but the defendant saw her sending the text and seized her work phone as well. He then used his wife’s phone to send Ioane an angry message.
“You got a cheek to talk c***,” he wrote. “You shouldn’t be f***ing with someone wife. Can’t you find your own.”
Ioane responded: “Ok let[’s] meet up dick I’m on my way.”
A short time later Ioane did show up at the Panmure apartment complex and texted back, telling Kipa to come out.
“When he arrived, rather than facing him man-to-man, you deliberately went back into your unit, armed yourself with that knife before going out there to confront him,” the judge recounted. “It must have been obvious to you before you started your murderous assault that he was unarmed.”
The knife, the judge noted, was 32 centimetres long with a 19.5cm blade. Ioane’s stab wounds included injuries to his back, his chest, his face and his abdomen - fatally piercing a lung and his aorta.
“Once back inside the address, Mr Kipa placed the knife in the kitchen sink,” court documents state. “The knife was bent and slightly broken at the handle from the force Mr Kipa used against Mr Ioane.”
As Kipa’s wife tried to administer first aid in the moments that followed, the defendant could be heard saying, “I f***ing told him I was gonna kill him if he comes here.”
He admitted the killing directly to police in an interview shortly after his arrest.
Kipa chose to plead guilty to the charge last September, just weeks after his murder trial was set to begin. His sentencing has been repeatedly postponed since then as potential psychological impairments were evaluated. Although he suffered a head injury in a car accident at age 19 and was hospitalised as a child with amoebic meningitis, there was no clear evidence of a disease of the mind or a finding that he was unaware what he was doing was wrong, the judge noted.
“Your attack was deliberate,” Justice Venning said today, pointing out that Kipa had 20 minutes to cool down between the initial text message exchange with Ioane and when he showed up. “The frenzied nature of your attack does not make you less culpable.”
Defence lawyer Terence Darby had asked the judge for a sentence of 12 or 13 years, noting his client’s remorse and suggesting that his client did not pose a threat to the community at large.
“These sad circumstances are very unique, and that situation would not occur again one would think,” he told the judge, suggesting that the case lay somewhere between murder and manslaughter.
“Mr Kipa is not a very bad person that did a very bad thing. He is a good person that did a very, very bad thing, which he acknowledged.”
Crown prosecutor Sam McMullan, however, argued that reducing a murder sentence due to infidelity would send the wrong message to the community. Kipa’s response, he said, was “extreme and grossly disproportionate”.
Justice Venning said he accepted the defence argument that it is unlikely Kipa would pose further risk to the general public. But that doesn’t make Kipa’s actions akin to manslaughter, he said.
Today’s hearing began with victim impact statements from Ioane’s family, who remembered him as a devout man known as “Tofu” to many who was a proud father, a giver of bear hugs, a pillar of his family and loyal friend. He had a “positive impact on so many people’s lives”, they recalled, pointing to his time spent as a street preacher and feeding the homeless.
“He loved to worship and evangelise,” a cousin told Kipa. “If he had lived he would have reached out to you - prayed for you to be saved.
“He would have cried for you ... That is the voice that you silenced that day.”
Ioane’s son agreed that had his father survived the attack he would have forgiven the defendant.
“I want to do the same in honour of my father,” he explained as his voice cracked. “I want to humble myself and let you know that I forgive you.”
Ioane’s cousin described the wails of pain coming from the victim’s home on the day he died, adding that his absence over the past two years has been “deafening”.
“He really thought he was going [to the apartment that night] to help somebody who was not worth the dirt on his boots,” she said, describing Kipa as “an insecure little man set up by a pathetic excuse for a wife”.
“Our lives have been forever impacted by your selfish act,” she said.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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