Constable’s hunch runs down killers
The torture and murder of teen Dimetrius Pairama might have gone undetected had it not been for a fight, a four-word accusation, and a young constable’s instincts. Edward Gay reports.
Constable Kelsey Morgan and a colleague were driving down Auckland’s Queen St in a patrol car when their radio crackled into life. There had been a fight at the Britomart McDonald’s and officers were needed at the scene. They headed downtown.
It was a standard call-out but when Morgan spoke to a 14-yearold girl involved in the fight, and heard the words ‘‘she murdered my friend’’, the incident led to a homicide investigation.
‘‘She stated, ‘she murdered my friend’,’’ Morgan later told a jury. ‘‘She pointed to a female in green.’’
The fight could have ended in a formal warning. But the three teenagers and the woman in green – Toko (Ashley) Shane Winter – were taken back to the Auckland central police station for questioning.
Winter initially told police she had been threatened by the girls who believed she was responsible for their friend’s death. Winter tried to explain it away as a case of mistaken identity. The teenagers were also interviewed. The police were told they would find a body wrapped in sheets at 308 Buckland Rd, Ma¯ ngere.
Senior Sergeant Matthew Child and two constables searched the house and surrounding rubbish-strewn property. The initial search found nothing, so they headed next door to 310, another vacant Housing New Zealand property. Again, they came up empty handed. But something didn’t seem right.
Child told the High Court at Auckland the information they had was so ‘‘out there’’ he didn’t want to give up just yet. He called the station to see if there was any more detail. There was. The latest was that the body was hidden in a barrel.
One of the constables found it, covered in weeds. Child found rubbish bags inside. The first was full of garden waste but the second had a slight tear in it and he could see a small patch of cloth.
When he moved the fabric aside, he could see skin and hair follicles. The police had a body.
Detective Sergeant Tom Gollan would end up leading the investigation. He told the Sunday Star-Times that detectives set about calling in forensics and locating footage from CCTV cameras from nearby businesses. Forensic scientists tested items in the house for DNA and fingerprints.
They continued interviewing
witnesses, whose stories flipflopped, then flipped again. But despite the changing narratives, a picture of what happened to 17 year-old Dimetrius Pairama was coming into view. Staffing numbers were ramped up.
Statements and interviews were analysed to cross-reference claims and counter-claims, to test if the information could be corroborated or discounted.
Eventually a picture would emerge that showed Pairama had endured hours of torture and beatings that included being tied to a chair, having her hair hacked off with a pair of scissors and a razor and her genitals burned with a makeshift flame-thrower before being given the choice of death by stabbing or hanging.
A huge amount of preparation goes into police interviews with suspects and witnesses.
‘‘It’s probably a highlight, or a career goal, of a detective to speak to a person who has done a very serious crime and get a good result out of that,’’ Gollan says now.
Interviewing is a skill and has to be carried out under strict guidelines and laws.
‘‘It’s bloody important to treat them fairly, so if you get good stuff in an interview, it doesn’t get chucked out in a pre-trial admissibility [court hearing]. Murders happen for a whole raft of reasons and people’s motivations behind them are all different … and in this particular case, it’s really difficult to get any sort of sense around the ‘why’ bit,’’ Gollan says.
‘‘You wonder to yourself – how the hell did it get to that? There were so many opportunities for people to pull out and not do things, and even stop while something reasonably bad, but not fatal, had happened.’’
Winter and another suspect, Kerry Te Amo, each blamed the other, or a third person, for the beatings, torture and hanging. They minimised their own roles. Te Amo told a detective he had his back to Pairama when she was hanged and even managed to walk out of the room backwards so he didn’t have to see her body.
‘‘Probably the hardest thing to do for someone is to admit that they’ve done something wrong,’’ Gollan says, ‘‘and once they’ve done that, it makes it easier to tell more of the story, because we all know, it’s like sitting in the principal’s office when you’ve done something naughty.’’
Despite the changing stories, police had a pretty firm idea of what happened to Pairama.
‘‘In a perfect world, you’d have all the investigation done and everyone would tell the truth from the start … But we’re not in a perfect world and people tell the police lies.’’
They also had the statements of the teenager whose accusation at McDonald’s had spearheaded the whole inquiry. She would later be given immunity from prosecution by the Solicitor General and go on to become the Crown’s star witness at trial.
Gollan said the case was not without its challenges, one of which was keeping Pairama’s wha¯ nau informed.
‘‘That’s not a particularly pleasant job, telling the wha¯ nau what’s actually happened to their loved one and that it’s going to be talked about in court and talked about in the media.’’
It’s hard for Gollan to imagine going through what the Pairama wha¯ nau did but the way they conducted themselves in court was ‘‘unbelievable’’.
‘‘They were very controlled. To be honest, I can’t imagine how I’d react in the same circumstances. They deserve so much credit.’’
The case was a good lesson about following gut instincts – not just for police officers, but the public too.
‘‘It just proves that when people get an instinct about something being a bit dodgy or off, just take the time to call us … There’s been so many cases where the one little snippet can break things wide open and that can get us closer to the truth or even prevent something that’s about to happen.’’
Gollan is full of praise for the young constables who acted when they heard those words. Things could have been different had they dismissed the statement as a throw-away comment, or an attempt to divert attention.
The house on Buckland Rd was demolished by Housing New Zealand four months after Pairama’s murder, in November 2018. A new housing development is being built on the site. Had Pairama’s body been discovered once the bulldozers moved in, the police investigation would have had a limited scene to work with.
But he’s philosophical. There’s no substitute for hard work and New Zealand has an enviable record with its rates of solved homicides.
‘‘You can’t change the circumstances you’re dealt and it’s a case of just rolling with it and working out the best solutions and getting on with it. We solve murders without bodies.’’
‘‘There’s been so many cases where the one little snippet can break things wide open.’’
Detective Sergeant Tom Gollan