Siblings' burning hatred

By MONIQUE DEVEREUX

They say revenge is a dish best served cold but for Canterbury siblings Christine and Nathan Akkerman, flaming infernos were the preferred method.

For months the pair travelled across the region, from rural town to rural town, on a spree of theft and arson. When they were finally caught, the cost of their crimes had exceeded $750,000. All because, they claimed, people had not treated them nicely.

This revelation and their method of criminal behaviour have prompted much head-scratching.

Their victims say they never even knew the pair. Psychologists say their joint efforts at arson, at their age, are in the rarer-than-rare category of human behaviour.

There is little research in New Zealand on siblings who commit crime together. Case numbers are not part of the myriad statistics kept by police.

Auckland clinical psychologist Ian Lambie says it would be more common for siblings of the same gender to commit crime together, but even then it was very unusual.

"If they were in a gang like would attract like, they would be there for the same purpose and the criminal element may go with it and you might expect it. But where they are not associated with a gang it's quite unusual, it's quite rare."

Even rarer is the arson aspect.

"This is a crime associated with lots of shame so usually one would do that in isolation."

Two derelict houses were the first to be torched by Nathan Akkerman, 22, and Christine, 25.

They had already been stealing from farm yards and houses at night but one night they progressed to arson.

Before long they had upped the ante and hit other buildings - a hay shed, the Hororata Scout Den, the historic Hakatere Marae, near Ashburton.

They targeted the Boys' Brigade Lodge near Coalgate, an hour west of Christchurch. To impede the Fire Service, Christine padlocked the access gate, keeping the fire trucks at bay until it was too late.

Two nights later the 70-year-old Glentunnel Community Hall was ablaze. It was after the hall fire that residents in the Glentunnel area began to worry that they were being targeted by an arsonist.

The pair were finally caught due to "good police work", said the officer in charge of the investigation, Senior Sergeant Stu Munro.

They had been under close watch for weeks before police swooped. The raid on the Akkerman family home in Leeston, just southeast of Christchurch, yielded a plentiful booty.

Weeks later, when Coalgate-Glentunnel locals discovered the names of their persecutors, they were surprised to hear the family had at one time belonged to their community.

And even more surprised to hear the Akkermans had set out to seek revenge against them.

Betty Joyce is on the committee rebuilding the Glentunnel Community Hall. She hopes work will start early in the new year. Without the hall the community of 170 people has lost its meeting house, its funeral hall, wedding reception, line-dancing, tai chi and indoor bowls venue.

At first mention of the Akkermans, Mrs Joyce bristles.

"Oh yes, lovely people. What annoys me the most is that they said it was because we weren't nice - but I didn't even know the people. In Glentunnel they lived not far from the hall, but we never ever saw them.

"How could we not be nice?"

A few kilometres away in Coalgate, Colleen Hynam is still angry.

"I resented the fact that they said people were nasty to them. Anyone I've spoken to don't even know them. I feel very hurt and angry - how can people be like that?"

One resident who was probably lucky not to be targeted for revenge is Coalgate mechanic Preston Smith. He admits it was probably he who coined the nicknames Fatgirl and Fatboy for Christine and Nathan. He can also reel off a long list of reasons he formed the impression that these were "unsavoury people".

The Akkerman family were often on the move. They lived in Oxford, north Canterbury, for a while, and in Coalgate - population 300 - in 1999. They then moved to Glentunnel and now live in Killinchy, near Leeston.

When in Coalgate father Henry, mother Margaret, Christine, Nathan and another sister rented the old grocery shop, next door to the sole service station.

Henry Akkerman did not work often. He was missing several fingers on a hand and was mainly on a sickness benefit.

For part of the time he did make a small living foraging for scrap metal from derelict cars and selling it to a Christchurch scrapyard. Nathan often helped him.

Their house was kept relatively tidy, the gardens well kept. But Mr Smith said this was all Margaret Akkerman's doing. The rest of the family, he said, "were just plain lazy".

Mr Smith said he was disgusted when he heard the Akkerman siblings had been charged with the arsons. He also felt relieved. "All I'd have had to do was to upset them and they would come and burn down the garage. Looking back now, if I had upset them too much they would have."

Betty Joyce and Colleen Hynam may not have known the people who have tainted their communities, but Mr Munro has a theory on how those communities felt having the Akkermans living in their midst.

The family were obviously loners but they were usually "up to something".

"Their behaviour and criminal activity wasn't accepted by that community and so they weren't accepted and eventually it became difficult for them to live there."

Ian Lambie has not been involved in the case but he believes sibling crime of this nature may have roots in an unhappy family situation.

"Generally people do these things for boredom, revenge, misdirected anger, experimentation and just for the real hell of the excitment of it.

"But what you find typically with these people that do this sort of behaviour is they don't generally come from happy homes. There is going to be some level of family disruption, family trauma, family dysfunction," he said.

Neither Henry nor Margaret Akkerman faced any charges.

Christine and Nathan Akkerman pleaded guilty to their crime spree. They were sentenced to six years and eight years' jail respectively.

At sentence the judge said he believed the pair were genuinely remorseful.

Earlier this year Betty Joyce went on a trip to France and Ireland with her daughters. "I am still just so devastated. I went away on this trip and I kept on thinking about this hall.

"My daughters told me it's done, there's nothing we can do about it so just forget it. I can't. And I hope those people don't ever forget what they have done."