Remark shows the true Dixon says policeman

Antonie Ronnie Dixon told the mother of a woman he mutilated with a samurai sword: "It won't get you the hand back".

Dixon made the remark as he was led from the dock after being found guilty of the murder of James Te Aute with a home-made sub-machine gun in Highland Park, east Auckland, during a P-fuelled crime spree on January 22, 2003.

The jury in the High Court at Auckland on Thursday acquitted him on four charges of attempted murder, including the attempted murder of Renee Gunbie and Simonne Butler at Pipiroa in the Hauraki Plains on the same day as the shooting.

But the jury convicted him of causing the women grievous bodily harm with the samurai sword.

Dixon was found guilty on a number of other charges, including holding a man hostage overnight during an armed stand-off with the police.

The jury rejected the defence claim that Dixon was insane.

Justice Judith Potter remanded him in custody and ordered a psychiatric report to assist her in sentencing him at the end of May.

As guards led Dixon away, Ms Gunbie's mother, Kathie Hills, said sarcastically: "See you, Tony".

He replied: "See you next time, but it won't get you the hand back."

Outside the court, the officer in charge of the case, Detective Inspector Bernie Hollewand, said the remark was tasteless.

"I think that shows the kind of man that he is - callous and disregarding of anyone else."

Mr Hollewand said the jury rejected Dixon's wide-eyed look during the seven-week trial as "constructed insanity".

"Anyone who saw him out of the sight of the jury saw that he was a markedly different man, even in court, when the jury was gone. It clearly was a constructed situation."

Mr Hollewand said the case showed that P was just another intoxicant and users would be held accountable for their actions.

Simon Moore, the Crown solicitor for Auckland, said that the case was very important in relation to P.

"It is probably the first major trial where P has been involved and a judge has said that the consumption of P on its own, even if it might induce a psychosis, is not enough to amount to insanity for the purposes of our Crimes Act."

Mr Moore said that P "loomed very large" over the trial.

"It is a very frightening drug but what we saw in terms of the symptoms that this man exhibited - of the paranoia and violence - those sort of things are all consistent with P and certainly this jury concluded that they weren't consistent with insanity."

He never believed that insanity as a defence would work.

"It is one thing to say that someone's behaviour is crazy, irrational and paranoid, but it is a whole different thing to say that it is insane for the purposes of the law and this jury obviously accepted that."

Like Mr Hollewand, Mr Moore dismissed Dixon's courtroom antics as "playing it up to the jury".

"When you tie them into a general picture of malingering and a general picture of feigning symptoms, then you can assess them against that kind of background," he said.

The jury had evidence to justify finding Dixon not guilty of attempting to murder Ms Gunbie and Ms Butler. The attack stopped after the sword broke, and the jury may well have decided that Dixon did not intend to kill the women.

Dixon's lawyer, Barry Hart, said there would be an appeal.