Fleets murder trial: 'Don't call the police, we will all get killed, gran'

Zen Pulemoana, 27 (left) and Mikaere James Hura, 21 are on trial for the murders of Raymond and James Fleet. Photo / File

"Don't call the police, we will all get killed, gran."

That was the testimony given by the Fleet family matriarch, Georgina Fleet, when she took the witness stand in the High Court at Rotorua on Tuesday at the trial of two men accused of murdering her son Raymond Fleet and grandson James.

The jury trying Mikaere James Hura, 21, and Zen Pulemoana, 27, the men accused of murdering both Fleets, learned the distraught instruction not to call the police came from Darius Fleet, another of Georgina Fleet's grandsons.

Hura and Pulemoana have denied murdering the men at Mamaku on August 7 last year.

They are charged jointly with Martin Hone who earlier pleaded guilty to the charge.

A second man, Richard Te Kani, has admitted manslaughter charges relating to the two Fleets.

Georgina Fleet told how on the morning of August 7 Darius had asked her to care for his infant daughter while he helped Raymond do something.

"When he returned I heard Ray say to Darius 'have you done the job?' He said 'yes', I didn't know what he was talking about."

A clean cut looking man came to her door looking for James. The next day James' boss rang looking for him because he hadn't turned up for work.

James Fleet's workmate Kane Houghton gave evidence of James saying he had seen Raymond Fleet being "out the gate".

Asked by prosecutor Duncan McWilliam to clarify the expression, Houghton's interpretation was "wasted on drugs".

He said James Fleet told him when he'd gone to his uncle's shed on August 6 he had seen someone tied up but hadn't a clue who it was.

Another Fleet family member, Paul Fleet, told of going to Darius Fleet's home on August 7 where he found him in a mess.

"I couldn't make sense of anything he was saying ... He wouldn't tell me what was going on."

He heard the names Richy (Te Kani) Marty (Hone) and Zany (Pulemoana) mentioned.

He went to Raymond Fleet's home but no one was there, "just a dog roaming in the yard".

Before his grandfather called the police, Darius Fleet had been a "blithering idiot yelling and screaming but when he got on the phone [to the police] he was normal saying Ray had disappeared".

In evidence read to the court by prosecution team member Charles Harvey, Hayden Payne claimed he'd seen Hura and Pulemoana as passengers in a car Raymond Fleet was driving on August 7.

The Crown has indicated it will be calling 36 witnesses.

The trial is set to resume tomorrow.