Our son, the killer
Dennis Powell thought it was a hoax when police called and said his son had been charged with murder, Blair Ensor reports.
It was about 8.30am on Saturday, October 26 last year when Dennis Powell answered what he thought was a hoax phone call. ‘‘Your son Jeremy has been arrested for murder,’’ the caller, who identified himself as a police officer, said.
He would be appearing in the Christchurch District Court at 10am. There was no mention of the victim’s name, but it was apparently an historic case.
Powell, who lives in Oxford, North Canterbury, didn’t believe what he’d been told – he knew his son as a kind, gentle, caring and safety-conscious man.
He contacted his local cop to see if they could help, but he knew nothing.
With time pressing on towards 10am, Powell jumped in his car and began the 45-minute drive to Christchurch for the scheduled court appearance.
About halfway there, he got a call from a senior police officer who confirmed the call he had received was no hoax.
A short time later, Powell found himself sitting in the public gallery at the back of a courtroom as his son – 45-year-old Jeremy Crinis James Powell – appeared via videolink.
He and a 47-year-old woman had been charged with the cold-case murder of pregnant mother Angela Blackmoore.
Blackmoore , 21, was beaten with a bat and stabbed 39 times in her home in the east Christchurch suburb of Wainoni on August 17, 1995.
Her 2-year-old son was asleep in bed unharmed when her partner, Laurie Anderson, returned home about 11.20pm and found her lying on the floor in a pool of drying blood.
Powell was spoken to by police, along with many of Blackmoore’s associates, in the weeks and months after the killing, but not as a suspect.
It was 24 years later – after a Stuff investigation revealed new information about the cold case, and police offered a record $100,000 reward – that detectives received a tip he might have been involved.
On October 25, Powell woke unaware police were looking into him. By nightfall he had confessed to killing Blackmoore.
In February, he admitted the crime and was scheduled for sentencing on April 1. That hearing was adjourned because of Covid-19.
The 47-year-old woman, whose name is suppressed, maintains her innocence and is due in court again on May 7.
The Crown’s summary of facts says Powell went to the Vancouver Cres home armed with a bat and a large knife, which he hid under the trench coat he was wearing. He struck Blackmoore numerous times.
Powell told police he was to be paid $10,000 for the killing. It is unclear who offered him the money, whether they paid him and what their motive was. Police have previously hinted at further arrests.
Powell’s parents have struggled to rationalise the fact their son is a killer. The name Angela Blackmoore meant nothing to them before his arrest.
‘‘We just don’t want to believe it. It’s so out of character,’’ his mother, Judith Powell, says.
Judith and Dennis Powell, who are retired, live in a cottage on a large section on the fringe of Oxford township.
Their son, the youngest of four children (he has three older sisters), lived there for more than a decade until his arrest.
Now the couple are in the process of clearing out the self-contained space in a garage that he had called home, resigned to the fact he is going to be behind bars for many years.
‘‘It’s terrible,’’ Dennis Powell, who used to work as a sawyer at the local sawmill, says of what his son has done. ‘‘It’s just so unlike him. It’s like it’s a different person that’s appeared and disappeared again.’’
Jeremy Powell grew up in Oxford and attended Oxford Area School before moving to Christchurch in search of work. Like his father, he was a jack of all trades, good with his hands, and secured a roofing job. He lived with a group of people in a flat, but that disbanded in early 1995 and he moved into a property on Linwood Ave.
Powell was 20 when he killed Blackmoore. In the months that followed, he gave no hint to his parents about what he had done.
On September 26, 1995, six weeks after the murder, he turned 21.
The occasion was marked with a small medieval-themed party at a family member’s home in Christchurch. He chose the theme.
Photos in family albums show Powell smiling for the camera wearing what appears to be a prince costume.
In the early 2000s, he spent a couple of years in Australia, where a friend secured him a job working in a factory. He returned home to New Zealand a couple of years later and moved into the garage at his parents’ property.
For about a decade, until his arrest, he worked for a Canterbury heating company, where he was regarded as a hard worker, and a good colleague. His employer would have given him a glowing reference if he had ever asked for one.
After finishing work about 4pm on October 25, Powell went to visit a friend who lived in Christchurch and the pair shared a few drinks.
Police had earlier been in touch and arranged to speak to him about Blackmoore’s murder the next morning, but it wasn’t meant to be anything too formal.
He was surprised to get a call from a detective asking if he could come in that evening. Police said they could pick him up.
Several hours later, Powell admitted his involvement in the infamous cold case, and implicated others, during an interview that left investigators stunned.
Dennis and Judith Powell say they are supporting their son and ‘‘we still love him’’.
They have visited him regularly in prison since his arrest.
He has told them police have asked him not to discuss the background to the case with anyone, including them.
‘‘He [the person who killed Angela] is not the person we know,’’ says Dennis Powell, describing his son as ‘‘helpful, kind and respectful’’.
They believe he got mixed up in drugs and someone threatened to kill him or someone he cared about if he didn’t commit the murder.
It is their understanding that he was never paid by the person who contracted the hit on Blackmoore.
Powell says his children were always told to take responsibility for their actions.
He and his wife have taken some solace from the fact their son confessed to the murder, even if it took nearly quarter of a century.
They are very sorry for what he did and hope his admission will bring peace to Blackmoore’s family.
‘‘I’d like all those involved to face justice.’’