Murdered Napier mum
We will never forgive her killer
Karen talked to her 24-year-old daughter Victoria Foster on the phone two or three times a day and Labour Day 2015 was no different. That evening, Victoria told her mum her ex-partner, Chazz Hall, wouldn’t stop calling. After chatting for a while, Victoria said, “I’ve got to go – Chazz is at the door and I need to let him in.”
“That turned out to be a catastrophic decision,” says Karen, 52.
Victoria was a doting young mum and newly graduated nurse who only months earlier had begun her dream job at Plunket. She’d ended her six-year relationship with Hall two years earlier, but the pair
had remained in contact. That day, however, Victoria posted on Facebook, “It’s over.”
At 8.45pm, 30 minutes after last talking to Karen, Victoria called her mum back. “Chazz is in the house,” she sighed, “and now he’s refusing to leave.”
Her mum recalls, “The last thing I said to her was, ‘Tell him to p*** off’ – but then suddenly, the phone went dead.”
Karen – who has declined to use her surname – now knows her “kind, shy and gentle-hearted” girl died in that moment of silence – shot in the mouth by Hall as their five-year-old daughter slept in a nearby bedroom.
Although the police would tell Victoria’s family the little girl remained asleep and therefore missed the horror, Karen isn’t so sure that’s true. More than two years on, she still talks about “the night the walls went bang”.
Refusing to believe the relationship was over and desperate to reconcile, a drunken Hall had gone to the modern apartment he once shared with Victoria on The Esplanade in Napier, armed with a loaded shotgun and a bottle of wine. The drink was to be a celebration if she took him back, but the firearm was his second, and more lethal, option.
“In that moment he shot Victoria, he also shot me in the heart,” tells Karen, who is sharing her family’s deeply personal story of loss with
Woman’s Day for the first time. Now the legal guardian of Victoria’s cherubic blonde daughter, it was her job that night to tell the wee girl her daddy had killed her mummy.
“What we’ve been through, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” she declares.
Police chase
After murdering Victoria, Hall, now 30, fled the scene in his Toyota Corolla saloon, leaving his young daughter alone in the apartment with her mother’s body.
He called a cousin and his father, before leading the police on an hour-long car chase, firing shots in the air, threatening to kill anyone who came near him and to take his own life. Police put down road spikes, which blew two of his tyres at Clive, halfway between Napier and Hastings. Following an armed standoff just after 11pm, police shot Hall, who now has a permanent disability and walks with a limp.
About the time he took off from Victoria’s place that night, her mum Karen was also running out the door. Rattled by the phone going dead, she headed to the suburb of Westshore with her youngest daughter Sarah, now 23. “I never suspected the worst, but I knew something wasn’t right,” recalls Karen.
As a single mum, Karen had brought up her daughters on her own and the family was close. Sarah describes her big sister Victoria as her “best friend”, a sweet and caring soul.
Karen had stepped in when Victoria was juggling motherhood and nursing training, taking her granddaughter overnight and filling her freezer with meals.
But that fateful night, Karen and Sarah got within 100 metres of Victoria’s apartment before a roadblock stopped them.
“I could see the ambulance and a funny feeling came over me,” remembers Karen. “I got out and said, ‘That’s my daughter’s house – I need to come through,’ but they wouldn’t let me. I just headed down to the beach.”
It wasn’t until 10.15pm that the police confirmed the worst. Victoria was dead.
After that, it was a blur for Karen. She wasn’t allowed into Victoria’s house, but she did go to her neighbour’s to pick up her granddaughter. The police had found the little girl curled up under a blanket in her mother’s bed.
“She was quiet, confused – she wanted to know where her mum was.”
Looking back, Victoria’s family say there were few red flags with Hall. “What he did – that was the last thing we could have imagined he’d ever do to Victoria,” says Sarah. “Something must
have flipped his switch.”
Victoria was 17 when she met Hall through a mutual friend and for six years he’d been part of their family. Although it’s hard to admit now, Karen says they always liked him. “He was quiet and polite, and was always the first to leap up and do the dishes after dinner.”
The family was aware Hall’s childhood had been troubled and he had spent time at a mental health unit as a teen. They also knew he’d been imprisoned as a teenager for a bizarre crime – along with a woman, he’d been involved in kidnapping a man at gunpoint, gagging him and driving him to the Kaweka Range, northwest of Napier. The victim was found wandering around in his underpants.
The crime not only saw Hall jailed, but banned from carrying firearms. The shotgun he used to kill Victoria was acquired years earlier in breach of a court order.
Although the convictions were serious, Karen says Hall was young, naïve and easily manipulated. Her family had been prepared to give him a second chance.
During his six-year, on-off relationship with Victoria, there was no evidence of any abuse.
“No-one was worried about Chazz,” says Sarah. “He was like a big brother to me.”
Festivefears
But on Christmas Day 2014, everyone began to see a new side to Hall. He started drinking at 10.30am, then
refused to join the family for dinner, instead sitting sullenly on his own.
“After that, Victoria began to say he was beginning to twist her words around,” tells Karen.
That summer, Victoria had just graduated as a nurse and for the young mum, it was a dream come true.
“Her star was on the rise – a new job and new friends,” says Karen. “It was like a whole new life.”
But just as Victoria’s life was gaining momentum, Hall’s had stalled. Because of his convictions for the kidnapping, he struggled to find steady work.
Hall was becoming jealous and controlling. “He began to obsess about the fact that Victoria was going to move on with her life and leave him behind,” recalls Sarah.
Karen will always have the regret of not going around to see Victoria the day she died.
“I was going to surprise her that afternoon and just turn up – but I didn’t,” she says. Sarah was sick and she ended up taking her to hospital.
Karen tries not to live with regret, but she often thinks about her life and how she thought it would be.
As a single mother, who has dedicated everything to her daughters, she’d always dreamed of buying a bus when she retired and travelling the length of New Zealand.
Instead, she’s the legal guardian of Victoria’s daughter, now seven. Sarah and her three-year-old son also live with her in Hawke’s Bay. The blonde little girl – who
has agreed not to name – is the spitting
image of her beautiful mum, and both a source of joy and a reminder of loss.
“To hear her laugh, it’s like having Victoria in the room again,” smiles Karen.
Hall has written to his daughter from prison, but the family places little importance on his words. Karen claims he showed no remorse in court and dragged the case out unnecessarily through two Christmases, before finally pleading guilty to Victoria’s murder.
Last year, in the Napier High Court, he also pleaded guilty to threatening to kill police, dangerous driving, dangerous use of a firearm and unlawful use of a firearm. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a nonparole period of 15-and-ahalf years.
For Victoria’s family, the loss has been overwhelming. Karen says it’s the silly things she misses, like three phone calls a day, even if it was to say, “Mum, I have this piece of meat – how long do I need to cook it?”
She admits she still feels hatred for the man who stole her daughter and doubts she will ever forgive him.
“My hate is locked away in a big dark cupboard. It’s the only way I can focus on what really matters – like Victoria’s daughter.”
Despite what’s happened, she is a happy wee girl, who sleeps each night surrounded by photos of her doting mum.
“We love her, we tell her the truth and we keep it simple,” says Karen. “We say her dad hurt her mum. He’s in prison and her mum is in heaven.”