Intruder ‘intended harm’
Finger chop farmer: ‘I wouldn’t have done anything different’
William Bruce Burr – Bill to his mates – is all smiles as he gets out of his car on the gravel road that leads to his farmhouse near Piopio.
It is a well-known property in this corner of South Waikato because of the tattered American flag and Donald Trump signs that have flown from a pole by the main road for many years.
Burr is chuffed because he has just discovered a home security system in his letterbox that someone sent, unsolicited, after reading about his court case.
Hundreds of people around the country have reached out in support or to say ‘‘well done’’, he says, although he does not put much stock in security systems. ‘‘It doesn’t make any difference.’’
Burr was the victim of a home invasion on the night of October 1, 2020, when a 17-year-old youth and his girlfriend broke into his home, intent on getting the keys to Burr’s Holden car.
They entered Burr’s bedroom and woke him up, hitting him over the head with a wine bottle.
Burr managed to get hold of his shotgun.
He then became the alleged offender – charged by police with multiple counts each carrying penalties of up to 14 years of imprisonment – for what he and his son, Shaun Burr, did to the intruders.
After holding the pair at gunpoint and badly beating the male, Burr ordered his son – who had come to the house after his dad phoned him – to cut off the 17-year-old’s pinky finger, which Shaun did by hammering a butter knife with a piece of wood.
Burr says it was self-defence – the youth refused to let go of a knife he was clutching and admitted in court he wanted to stab them.
The Crown argued that it was a pure case of retribution – an attending paramedic told the court Burr was taking photos of the boy on the floor, and said ‘‘that will teach you’’ and said that everyone would know he was a thief because of his missing finger.
Following a trial in May, the father and son emerged triumphant from the High Court at Hamilton, found not guilty on all charges.
The verdict was met with outrage in some parts, where some saw it as a case of a white, privileged farmer getting away with wounding and mutilating a brown youth (the intruder is Mā ori).
‘‘I have had that thrown at me, white privilege and all that, the race card,’’ says Burr, speaking for the first time since the verdict.
‘‘But it is nonsense. My grandsons [are Mā ori].’’
He denies a claim made in court by an ambulance officer that he told them they were ‘‘too PC’’ and were ‘‘dealing with black people’’.
Burr is 66 and owns or co-owns millions of dollars worth of farm properties but he does not flash his wealth, living in a rundown weatherboard home (he has moved to one of his other farmhouses since the invasion).
On this day, he is wearing a blazer, sneakers and a pair of slacks held up with a belt made from a shoelace.
At a cafe in Te Kuiti, he orders a flat white and is greeted warmly by a group of elderly women.
Lost among all the headlines about the finger chopping is that Burr knew the male intruder well – he had stolen his car three times previously. Not only that, Burr says, but he had tried to help him, offering him a job on his farm and a place to live after one of the previous break-ins.
A relative of the youth previously told Stuff that he had the mental age of a 10-year-old, had ADHD and was medicated for most of his childhood. Describing the not guilty verdicts as an ‘‘injustice’’, she said that while breaking into the house was wrong, and there should have been consequences, the teen did not deserve the ‘‘horrific’’ violence that followed.
Burr is unrepentant. Yes, the boy is ‘‘simple’’, he says, but he is also large and dangerous. Testifying in court, he described
the youth as ‘‘animalistic’’ that night. Does he feel any sympathy for him? ‘‘He is still [his mother’s] kid. He just went off the rails. If you have a dog, and you don’t train it and no discipline – they need education and discipline.’’
And he says the system failed the boy because he never learned there had to be consequences for his actions.
Burr rejects the argument that the finger chopping was over the top, that he had the situation under control by then. The teen kept trying to get up, he says, and would have stabbed him. He reveals that he actually told his son to ‘‘cut his hand off’’.
His lawyer, Philip Morgan QC, told the jury that Burr had taken the ‘‘softer option’’, by not shooting the intruder, and was being ‘‘persecuted’’ for that.
Burr: ‘‘People say I should have shot him. The thing is though, taking a life, I wouldn’t do that. You can’t take a life. But if we had let him get up, we would have had to.’’
He is scathing of the way police and ambulance staff handled the incident, treating him as the offender and the intruders as victims.
A Mongrel Mob member who turned up and spoke to the intruder as he was taken away on a stretcher was left alone, he says. ‘‘Why didn’t they arrest him?’’
Burr believes Police Commissioner Andrew Coster should follow his minister, Poto Williams, out the door. Rural people are vulnerable, he says, and have been let down by politicians on the left and right.
He is still a Trump man and believes Trump will stand at the 2024 American election, although ‘‘he is getting a bit old’’.
Although the home invasion plays on his mind a bit – ‘‘I take it to bed with me’’ – he says he is not traumatised by it.
‘‘You could be in Ukraine, you could have cancer. Life is good.’’
He claims to have never doubted the jury would find in his favour. He had followed other self-defence cases, including that of Orren Scott Williams, acquitted of a murder charge after shooting dead a man who had come to his home to steal cannabis.
‘‘The law is about intent. I intend to go to bed and get up in the morning.
‘‘He [the intruder] intended to come down and do us harm.’’
The case cost him a lot of money – well over $150,000. He agrees that could be seen as a case of white privilege – it is unlikely a poor Mā ori offender could afford a QC.
In hindsight, would he have handled things differently that night? ‘‘No. Wouldn’t have done anything different. Perfect.’’