Found guilty
Colin Jack Mitchell’s unravelling began with two misplaced gloves and ended with six guilty verdicts on his 60th birthday. Although over the past three weeks Stuff has been able to report on his trial, a large portion was suppressed.
It can now be revealed Colin Jack Mitchell faced charges for the rape of another woman as well as the Riverhead quarry attack at his recent trial. Tommy Livingston details the part of the trial that could not be reported at the time.
Colin Jack Mitchell’s unravelling began with two misplaced gloves and ended with six guilty verdicts on his 60th birthday.
While over the past three weeks Stuff has been able to report on his trial for an attack on a woman at a quarry in Riverhead in north Auckland, there was a large portion of the trial which was suppressed.
What the jury knew and the public didn’t was that Mitchell was also being tried for a range of other charges relating to a rape from 1992, and that he had other rape convictions. Mitchell was found guilty of all the charges he faced – including those relating to the 1992 rape – on Thursday.
The court heard that when police began DNA testing of the evidence found at the Riverhead quarry last year, two black gloves produced a match with DNA collected from the unsolved 1992 rape.
At trial, Mitchell fought the allegations relating to the 1992 rape and the more recent Riverhead attack.
He claimed that in 1992 he had consensual sex with the woman. For the Riverhead charges he went further – arguing he was not the attacker at all – despite his DNA being at the scene.
It was also revealed that in 1985 he was charged with raping a prostitute. He was convicted of rape, sodomy and indecent assault at the time.
Attacker confronted
Last week, the 1992 victim came face to face with Mitchell.
She waived her right to be hidden from the accused’s sight – instead choosing to stare her attacker straight in the eyes when she came to give evidence.
While 25 years had passed since the ordeal, she recalled it in great clarity. On the night of her rape she had been drinking at Ponsonby’s Glue Pot bar at a Blues Brothers review.
Afterwards she began to walk home along Great North Rd. She accepted a man’s offer of a ride.
‘‘...He looked very harmless, and I was cold.’’
The man behind the wheel was Mitchell.
‘‘I remember he looked like he was in his thirties and forties, kind of dishevelled, but not grubby.
‘‘Very non-descript, just very very average. I thought he looked safe.’’
The woman could not remember which route they took, but recalled they chatted a bit before he dropped her off.
The man turned around at the end of the road and drove back past her. The woman began walking towards a main road when she thought she saw a man in the distance.
‘‘I blinked and he was not there. ‘‘I walked a little bit more. He was there again. He punched me in the face and in the head.’’
The woman told the court that after the man hit her, he tried to put her in a headlock.
‘‘He started to walk me. I told him to let go and f .... off and all this sort of thing. I think I may have bit him.’’
That man was Mitchell. Mitchell walked the woman behind a factory where he assaulted and raped her.
Following the rape, Mitchell tied and gagged the woman.
‘‘He said to stay there for 20 minutes. He said: Don’t scream, don’t make a noise, if you do I will find you.
The woman managed to untie herself. She sat where the attack took place, fearful Mitchell would find her again.
‘‘I was grateful to be alive but I was really scared, really scared I might make a noise and he could come back.
‘‘There was a long way left to go home.’’
She eventually called police from a payphone. She was taken to a station and questioned by officers.
It was here the waters began to muddy.
The woman told police she had been picked up by a woman and dropped off in Avondale.
She was unsure if the man who had given her a ride was the attacker, and didn’t want to come across as an idiot. ‘‘I was embarrassed because I was a victim and I had never ever been a victim.
‘‘I was used to going where I wanted, walking where I wanted.’’
The woman said that at the time she believed the police did not take her complaint seriously.
Last year, police told the woman her attacker had been found.
At trial, Mitchell told the jury he had consensual sex with the woman in the back of his car.
However, on Thursday, Mitchell was found guilty of the abduction, assault and intended sexual assault of a young woman at the Riverhead quarry last year.
He was also found guilty of the rape and abduction of the woman in 1992.
Mitchell will be sentenced for the Riverhead attack and the 1992 rape in May.
The Crown indicated it would likely seek a sentence of preventative detention.