Murder trial jury taken to key sites

Gowns were left on their hangers and sunglasses replaced specs as a High Court murder trial left the confines of the courtroom.

The five men accused of murdering Codi Wilkinson weren’t present, but the jury, Crown and defence lawyers, court staff and Justice Helen Cull yesterday visited key sites in the case being heard in Palmerston North.

Quentin Joseph Moananui, Dean Arthur Jennings, Mariota and Jeremiah Su’a, and Jason David Signal deny murdering Wilkinson while kicking him and his friend Kyle Rowe out of the Mongrelmob on September 12, 2019.

The fourth and final site visited was in Bunnythorpe. Wilkinson’s body was found in a garden 15 days after he went missing in what the court has heard was an area thick with vegetation.

The corner property’s growth has since been chopped back and a small vase with decorative flowers sits where Wilkinson lay. Plastic flowers are fastened to the outside fence.

Some jurors were visibly emotional when they visited the spot.

They also saw a gap in a fence next to a railway line through which an injured Rowe ran, before he was taken to Palmerston North Hospital the night the Crown says he and Wilkinson were kidnapped and attacked.

The court did not have access to Barry Long’s property. Wilkinson and Rowe’s robbery of this property led to the pair having their Mongrel Mob patches taken from them, the Crown says.

The court convoy moved between sites with jurors in a grey bus with tinted windows, the judge and other staff in a grey vehicle, as were the Crown lawyers, and the defence lawyers in a hired van.

Security officers and, at some sites, police were present.

Jurors also visited the Mulgrave St, Ashhurst, property from which the Crown says Wilkinson was kidnapped.

There, a red bandanna sat among what appeared to be a memorial at the gate.

At a Palmerston North house visited earlier in the morning, a mystery drone flew over the party.

Back in the courtroom in the afternoon, police scene of crime officer Ross Peat said he examined the front gates of the Mulgrave St property in the police forensics lab.

He said he found blood on one gate and on two bits of Perspex.

In the car allegedly used for the kidnapping, there was blood on the passenger door and in the boot.

Peat lifted three fingerprints from the car, two from the passenger seat glass and one from the rear-vision mirror.

The trial continues.