Real-life reads Grieving daughters: The quiet abuse that killed Mum; From strangers to parents: Radio couple’s baby miracle; ‘My mother was a serial killer’; Fairy steps: Ella’s chance to walk
The sisters explain how her every move was controlled
Casey Drummond was in her bedroom the night her mum and stepdad had the argument that changed everything. Even with the door closed, the 14-year-old schoolgirl heard Martin Schofield yell at her mother Katrina Drummond, “I’m going to kill him!”
It was a cool April evening in Taupo nearly three years ago and 46-year-old Katrina had been peeling potatoes in the kitchen when Schofield confronted her, convinced she was seeing another man.
“Martin started yelling and it all escalated from there,” recalls Casey, now 17.
Her mum Katrina and Schofield – who met and married as teenagers – had a relationship based on fear.
But until that night, noone had heard him raise his voice or seen him lift a hand. The domestic abuse in their relationship was quiet yet insidious.
Schofield was a possum trapper and ex-soldier who allegedly controlled every minute detail of his wife’s life, right down to the brand of biscuits she bought at the supermarket. At home, Katrina’s daughters claim he followed her from room to room and if she went out, he sulked and would text or call up to 20 times a day.
“She hated him – you could see it radiating off her,” says Casey, the youngest of Katrina’s three daughters.
“Mum would roll her eyes when Martin walked past and shudder when she heard his scooter pull into the driveway after work,” remembers Casey.
The couple had separated before and Schofield wasn’t going to let it happen again. Katrina told her daughters he’d threatened to shoot her if she left him.
“He used to say to Mum that if he couldn’t have her, no-one could,” tells Casey.
And that chilling prophecy would eventually come true for Katrina.
As the argument continued to rage on into the night of April 14, 2015, Casey sent a text to her big sister Lana, now 31, at work. “She told me to either call the police or get out,” Casey recalls.
And not long after the terrified teen left the family home in the humble Taupo suburb of Tauhara, Schofield, then 50, amped things up. He stormed into the garage and used a Stanley knife to slash the seats of the family’s Holden Commodore, then carved “bitch” and “slag” into the roof.
Picking up a claw hammer, he went back into the house and bashed Katrina in the head as she stood with her back to him at the end of their bed. She fell forward on her face and he continued to rain down at least seven blows, caving in nearly half of her skull and leaving her brain exposed. Her little finger on her left hand was also broken.
Schofield then washed his hands, turned off the oven and walked out the back door, locking it behind him. He then drove to the police station at Taupo and confessed.
Katrina’s oldest daughters Lana and Zara, 28, grew up at Burnham and Linton army camps. “Martin was a soldier and was OCD about everything,” explains Lana. “If we moved an ornament a centimetre on the dressing
table, table he would walk back into the room and move it back. If Mum fluffed up a cushion, he would go and do it again afterwards.”
The couple separated when Lana was eight and Zara was four. After the split, Schofield became vindictive, burning all his family photos, and auctioning off furniture and precious mementos.
For the next 17 years, Lana and Zara say they had no contact with their father bar a couple of birthday cards.
In time, Katrina went on to t have another relationship and a her third daughter Casey. Martin M also had a son.
When those relationships ended, e Katrina let Schofield back b into her life, little by little. And second time around, Schofield was trying hard to woo her.
“He always said, ‘I will find ways to make you love me again,’” recalls Lana.
Schofield arrived at the house with a giant hamper of Katrina’s favourite food.
“And for Christmas, he bought her a brand-new Holden Commodore.”
Bit by bit, he eventually moved Katrina’s late mother’s furniture out of the home and replaced it. “He was putting his stamp on our house,” believes Lana. Determined to reconcile his family, he hung red hearts around the house and a sign in the hallway that read, “This house is full of love.” Within a year, he’d moved back in. Zara says, “We saw through him. We knew what he was like.”
Once he was back in the family home, life for Schofield was all about keeping up appearances. Outside the house, he obsessively kept an immaculate garden and edges. Inside the home, it is alleged he tried to orchestrate Katrina’s every move.
“He was clever at keeping Mum emotionally down to keep her there,” tells Lana. “Nothing she did was good enough. He controlled and criticised until she started to doubt herself.”
The year before she was murdered, things went downhill. Katrina told Schofield she wanted out, but he refused to go. She sought solace in socialising with friends, which only fuelled his jealousy and obsession.
And after working so hard to buy her girls a family home, Katrina fretted about carving it up. “She couldn’t afford to pay him out and she didn’t want to walk away with nothing,” shares Lana. “In a way, she was trapped.
We always told her to go to Australia and get away y from him, but she’d say, ‘It’s not that easy.’
“We asked her to go to o the police, but she would say, ‘What for? I don’t have bruises. They can’t arrest him on empty threats.’”
Katrina’s greatest legacy is the three strong daughters she left behind.
“I think she would be proud of us,” says Lana, smiling across at her sisters, who have gathered for the day at Zara’s home in Cambridge in the Waikato. They describe their mum as their “best friend” and “go-to person for everything”.
Not long after her murder, the sisters had “KR” tattooed on their wrists as a daily reminder of their mum, Katrina Rose.
“We made Casey wait until her 17th birthday to get hers done or Mum wouldn’t approve,” laughs Lana. “We get a bit bossy with her, but it’s just to keep her on the right path.”
In hindsight, Katrina’s daughters wish they’d called the police that night.
“The thing is, we didn’t even really understand at the time that it was domestic abuse,” says Zara. “It was all behind closed doors.”
Adds Casey, “You can see the physical abuse but not the emotional abuse.”
In 2015, Schofield pleaded guilty to the murder of Katrina Drummond and was later sentenced to life imprisonment with a nonparole period of 11 years.
From behind bars, he has written to his daughters, ironically telling them he misses their mum.
According to his daughters, Schofield also says that he’s enjoying the prison food and thinks life inside is like a “Top 10 holiday park”.
Schofield keeps a photo of Katrina next to his bed and says they will be together again one day. He still hasn’t apologised for leaving three young women without a mother. “He’s deluded,” declares Zara.
And while the gap left by their mother’s murder has been devastating, the sisters have continued to do what they know she would want them to – get on with their lives.
After losing her mum at 14, Casey moved in with Lana and her partner Thomas Menefy, and continued working hard at school. Last year, she successfully completed NCEA level 2.
“Apart from going through far too many towels and spending too long in the bathroom, she’s been good,” teases Lana, a beauty therapist.
Zara and her partner
Keith Shine have just bought bough their first home in Cambridge, Camb but as much as they the can, the girls get together toget to remember their mum. In September last year, they celebrated her 50th with wine and a picnic around her gravesite in Taupo.
However, the void is most painful for the big milestones. Just days after Katrina’s funeral, Zara discovered she was pregnant with her first baby Regan, who is now two.
“Mum would have been over the moon to be a grandmother,” says Zara, who works as a chef. “She was always saying, ‘Come on, hurry up!’
“Some days, Mum’s death sinks in more than others. Regan only has one grandma and that’s hard. I don’t just miss her as a mum but also as a grandmother.”
Now her big sister Lana is engaged and expecting her first baby in May.
The three women are determined to keep their mother’s memory alive for their children. They remember Katrina as a devoted parent, who always put them first.
“Mum wasn’t that good at protecting herself, but she was fierce when it came to us,” says Casey. “She would battle anyone and anything for her three girls.”