Tears for murdered Kim OUR HEARTS BREAK FOR HER KIDS
The slain mum’ s grieving sisters share their pain
For two long years, every morning for Tracey and Tina Richmond has begun with a tear shed for their murdered sister Kim. The trio grew up close on a kiwifruit orchard in Te Puke and theirs was a bond they believed would never break.
“Kim was my big sis – I looked up to her and that will never change,” says Tracey, tracing a finger across the name ‘Kimmy’ in one of the matching tattoos she and Tina have emblazoned on the insides of their wrists.
“She was my cool, fun big sister and she was just taken way too soon.”
For Tracey and Tina, the pain of losing 42-year-old Kim has been amplified by realising the man who killed her was someone they’d known since they were kids and once loved like a brother.
“What this situation has really taught me is that you never truly know someone even when you think you do,” says Tracey quietly.
Cory Jefferies, their so-called “perfect” brother-in-law, was last month found guilty in the Hamilton High Court of murdering Kim, his partner of 26 years.
On a wet winter’s morning on July 31, 2016, Kim drew her last breath somewhere in the remote settlement of Arohena, southeast of Te Awamutu, just a few kilometres from where the couple’s three children lay peacefully sleeping in their beds at the farm.
Jefferies then went home and tried to pretend the doting mum had taken off.
“After Kim went missing, I walked into their house and knew two things – she wasn’t coming home and something was wrong, very wrong with him,” recalls Tracey, 39.
For the next 11 months,
his baffled children mourned their mum, but Jefferies just worked the farm and carried on with life as normal.
“There were no tears and no remorse. We all wanted to believe it wasn’t him, but deep down we began to think it was,” admits Tracey.
“What broke my heart the most was that he spent the next year telling his kids he didn’t know where their mum was – and all along he knew she was at the bottom of the lake just up the road.”
Lookingback
Growing up, the Richmond sisters were inseparable. “There was only 18 months between me and Kim, and some of my happiest early memories are of her towing me around in a little trailer behind her trike,” recalls Tina, 42, who lives in Tauranga with her partner.
Of the trio, Kim excelled at everything she tried her hand at – and her little sisters looked up to her.
Naturally athletic, Kim
played netball, touch, volley ball and represented New Zealand in table tennis. It was through the local table tennis club that she met local farm boy Jefferies when she was just 15.
“At first we thought Cory was a bit of a dork,” laughs Tracey. “He had a funny nose and strange walk, but we came to really like him. We were like the tag-along little sisters – he took us to Rainbow’s End, and when we were older, parties and concerts.”
As soon as she left Te Puke High School, Kim moved in with Jefferies and the couple went sharemilking around the Waikato, eventually settling in Arohena. They had three children, who are now 15, 13 and 10.
Jefferies was hard-working, a committed dad and appeared to treat Kim well. “We never saw anything physical and we never heard him yell,” says Tracey. “For a long time, we all loved him. They were the picture-perfect couple – we all wanted to be just like them.”
But on August 3, 2016, Tracey’s mum Raywynne, told her that no-one had heard from Kim for three days. Jefferies’ explanation was that they’d had a fight and Kim had run away.
“I knew Kim would never leave her kids,” says Tracey. “She was an amazing mum and they were her world. It was so out of character, I knew straight away that something was wrong.”
She now knows Kim and Jefferies spent their last night together watching rugby, and enjoying a pot-luck dinner and a few drinks with some of the locals at the Arohena Community Hall.