A probation officer’s report says that the 48-year-old’s offending has now “changed in its sexual nature and escalating seriousness” but Murfitt denies his sexual crimes.
Murfitt was found guilty after a jury trial in 2022 of rape and attempted rape, and stealing the second woman’s property, after contracting the women for their services and driving them separately to Puhinui Reserve at Wiri, Auckland, in 2019.
He silenced one of the women by pushing her underwear into her mouth and pinned the other down and dragged her along a gravel road.
The District Court judge, Jonathan Moses, noticed that the offending bore “very strong similarities” to an encounter with a third woman in 2005.
In that case, a rape charge was dismissed because she could not be recalled to complete her evidence at trial.
Judge Moses referred Murfitt to the High Court at Auckland for sentencing in December, so that an open-ended jail term of preventive detention could be considered.
High Court Justice Pheroze Jagose instead sentenced Murfitt to 10 years in prison, with no parole for five years.
But he warned Murfitt that if he offended again, preventive detention would be a “real prospect”.
“That is my formal warning to you,” he said in a recently published decision.
Justice Jagose said both the 2019 incidents were violent beyond the violence inherent in the rape and attempted rape, with the second woman noticing a change in Murfitt after he took methamphetamine.
“In both instances, you abandoned the women partly clothed on the side of the road and drove away,” he said.
This was “particularly cruel” as it happened in a relatively isolated place, from which they had to make their own way to get help.
“And you pleaded guilty to stealing the second woman’s property.”
Justice Jagose said he had a statement from the woman who was raped, who said she was “used and abused, shamed, disrespected and taken advantage of in a way that should never have ever happened”.
“You hurt her and undermined her trust in people in ways she considers will always be with her, affecting her own wellbeing and her relationship with her children,” the judge said.
Murfitt’s criminal history includes convictions for theft and other dishonesty offending, and one each of robbery by assault and injuring with intent to injure.
“Judge Moses helpfully summarised your history ... as bearing the consistent detail of your offending against sex workers you had engaged and later drove off with their possessions, sometimes leaving them injured behind,” Justice Jagose said.
A psychiatrist had assessed Murfitt as having a high risk of sexual offending in future.
A psychologist said separately that Murfitt was resistant to receiving sexual offender treatment.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.
