Gotingco trial: Guilty verdict
The man accused of killing Blessie Gotingco has been found guilty of her rape and murder.
After three hours of deliberation the jury returned with their verdicts in the High Court at Auckland. The courtroom was full with standing room only as the jury’s foreperson said ‘‘guilty’’ to each charge.
The courtroom remained silent and the accused put his hood up while the foreperson announced the verdicts.
Outside court, a spokeswoman for the Gotingco family, Ruth Money, said the family was extremely relieved that the trial was over and the jury had ‘‘rightly found this defendant guilty of these heinous crimes’’.
‘‘The evidence was incredibly stressful as was the conduct of the offender,’’ Money said.
‘‘Approaching the one year anniversary of Blessie’s passing, the family wish to remember Blessie for who she was and not the evil that happened. Blessie was, and always will be, a much loved mother, wife, sister, aunty, daughter and friend. ‘‘Her smile would light up your heart and continue to do so.’’
Justice Brewer earlier told the court the announcement of the verdict was going to be a ‘‘tense occasion’’. The defendant was allowed back into the courtroom for the verdict, after earlier barging past security guards to get to the holding cells while the judge finished his address.
Justice Brewer lifted name sup- pression immediately the verdicts.
However, the accused’s lawyer, Chris Wilkinson-Smith, filed an
following immediate appeal.
While a suppression appeal is under way, media cannot publish his name.
Justice Brewer agreed with Crown prosecutor Kieran Raftery that there was ‘‘nothing so unusual about the case’’ that warranted continued suppression.
But Wilkinson-Smith opposed lifting name suppression because he said his client planned to appeal his conviction.
The accused was also given a first strike warning under the three strikes legislation and a sentencing date was given as August 6.
Crown prosecutors Michael Walker and Kieran Raftery alleged the accused purposely ran Gotingco down with his BMW on May 24 last year.
Gotingco, a mother of three who migrated to Auckland from the Philippines with her husband Antonio and their three children, worked at Tower Insurance at Auckland’s CBD.
She had worked a Saturday shift and had been driven to the city by a friend, but after opting to work some overtime, she took the bus home, getting off at Birkdale Rd, just hundreds of metres from her Salisbury Rd home.
After hitting Gotingco, the accused abducted her and took her back to his Birkdale apartment just streets away, where he raped and stabbed her in the back seat of his car.
Despite the defendant’s protestations that he thought Gotingco was dead after he hit her with his car, Raftery said evidence pointed to the fact that Gotingco was ‘‘very much alive’’, and Wigren said the injuries she received from the car could be survivable.