Ihaka case ‘the worst that it gets’
Troy Taylor has been convicted of the murder and assault of 14-month-old Ihaka Stokes, the son of his de facto partner. Michael Wright sat through the trial.
The thing acting Detective Inspector Mike Ford will remember most is the injuries. Fifty-nine of them.
That and Ihaka Stokes’ age – 14 months. Two numbers that will stick with him now that the killer in the hardest, most emotionally draining homicide case he has ever worked on is in jail.
Ford took a phone call from a detective at 11.30pm on July 3, 2015. Ihaka died of massive head injuries in Christchurch Hospital 10 minutes later. Ford would soon be running the investigation into the toddler’s death.
That investigation culminated on Thursday when Troy Taylor, the former partner of Ihaka’s mother Mikala Stokes, was convicted of the toddler’s murder.
Child homicides are dreaded, even among seasoned investigators. Ihaka Stokes, though, was ‘‘the worst that it gets’’, Ford said. ‘‘I think the main thing was the age of the victim himself. Only 14 months. A lot of us, especially in the investigation team, are parents [with] young children, and you see them growing up and all you want to do is protect them and all of a sudden you’ve got this poor wee blond curly-haired kid that’s been subjected to these horrendous injuries. That’s probably the biggest thing for me. Visualising what he’s gone through and the pain and the fear over that 24 hours that he must have been feeling towards Troy Taylor. He must have been absolutely terrified leading up to this.’’
Taylor was convicted of assaulting Ihaka the night before he killed him. The 59 injuries included swelling and bleeding in his brain and broken shoulder blades, forearm, jaw and vertebrae. A photo of Ihaka’s bruised, lifeless body elicited a gasp in court when it was first shown at Taylor’s trial. Many people cried.
Ford made sure investigators were privy to the horrific details of Ihaka’s death only where necessary. He urged members of his 12-strong team to seek counselling if things were tough. He went himself. ‘‘I had to. I was having these terrible dreams and I let the investigation team know that it was really important for them to do it.’’
The team worked long hours, especially in the days after Ihaka died. Sleep was tough for Ford. Every time he woke up, he thought about the case. ‘‘I looked like s . . . for the first week. I looked terrible. You think you’re fine but you don’t realise how tired you are until people start telling you.’’
Why was it so hard? Ford asked for the recording device be turned off. Tears formed in his eyes as he explained exactly how this case affected him. The recorder went back on. ‘‘Certain parts of my life kind of mirrored that of the small child that we were investigating,’’ he said.
Ihaka had an ear infection coming on when he died. Mikala Stokes said in court that her son was ‘‘horrible’’ to get to sleep. He would scream and scream. There is a message in the legacy of his needless death.
‘‘If [children] get an ear infection they don’t sleep,’’ Ford said. ‘‘And if they don’t sleep, you don’t sleep.’’
‘‘They talked during the trial about walking away. Yes, walk away, but if you’re feeling like this you need to ask for help as well. I think that’s what they don’t do. What Troy didn’t do. He might have walked away but he didn’t ask for any help.’’
The whispers were hard to hear, but they were there. A brief murmur in the back of a court room as members of the public gallery registered what they had heard.
Troy Kevin Taylor, 23, had just denied assaulting and murdering 14-month-old Ihaka Stokes, the son of his partner, Mikala Stokes.
But they knew he would say that. It was what came next that got them talking.
‘‘By his not guilty pleas Mr Taylor has told you that he did not assault Ihaka. That he did not harm, nor did he murder Ihaka,’’ defence counsel Phil Shamy told the jury.
‘‘The question is who killed Ihaka Stokes?’’ he continued.
‘‘There were no intruders. The injury that killed him was nonaccidental. Was it Miss Stokes or was it Mr Taylor? That’s the question but the case that you have to decide is that has the Crown proven to you, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it was Mr Taylor.’’
All of which was a roundabout way of saying: ‘‘Mikala did it’’.
That was what got people whispering. The defendant was blaming his former partner. The child’s mother. She was eight months pregnant when Ihaka died.
She had to have done it on the afternoon of July 3, 2015, he said, while he was out getting a tattoo, and then left Ihaka in his cot to die slowly over the next few hours.
The case that one of the investigating police officers had called the most serious attack on a child he had ever seen somehow just got more terrible.
Gasps, a crescendo of sobbing
It had already plumbed the depths during the Crown opening, when prosecutor Courtney Martyn detailed Ihaka’s injuries.
He suffered 59 in all, including a wretched catalogue of broken bones: arm, jaw, vertebrae and both shoulder blades – ‘‘seen with high-energy trauma such as highspeed motor vehicle accidents,’’ a paediatric radiologist would say.
A post mortem photograph – about the most appalling image most people there had ever seen – was displayed on monitors as Martyn itemised Ihaka’s injuries.
There was an audible gasp when it appeared, then a crescendo of sobbing as more and more members of the public and jury succumbed to tears.
Martyn interrupted her address less than a minute later to ask for it to be taken down.
Was it Miss Stokes or was it Mr Taylor?
It made for a hell of a showdown when Mikala Stokes strode past Troy Taylor, eyes straight ahead, to the witness box on the second morning.
There was no high theatre. Stokes talked too quietly and too quickly for that.
She was skittish and laughed nervously as she was asked to repeat numerous answers.
Whether it was Ihaka’s sleeping habits, her predilection for text bombs, her first interview with police, pretty much anything except denying she hurt her son, it was a struggle.
She was 21 years old and seemed younger.
Only two could have known
The trial hinged on two witnesses: Mikala and Troy.
With a couple of minor exceptions, they were the only ones who could shed any light on what happened in the house at 46 Truman Rd the night Ihaka died.
They were the only other people there. In their opening, the Crown and defence agreed the toddler’s injuries were non-accidental. Before any witness uttered a word we knew it had to be one of them.
Stokes did not deliver a knockout blow for the prosecution. It was strange.
One might imagine the mother of a child beaten to death, having just said it wasn’t me, might then want to accuse the only other person in the house. Nothing.
She told Crown prosecutor Mark Zarifeh she and Taylor had an ‘‘amazing’’ relationship.
She told defence counsel Phil Shamy that Taylor and Ihaka adored each other, and that she had never seen Taylor lose his temper at her son.
They were engaged and Taylor had offered to adopt Ihaka and her unborn child. She had been thinking of adopting it out.
‘‘It’s still not real for me,’’ she said.
Shamy went for the jugular: ‘‘[The] police asked you in an interview, ‘Did you cause injuries to your son?’ You said to him, ‘I don’t know’. You laughed, ‘Not that I know of.’
‘‘I’d suggest that the question whether you caused harm to your boy is the worst question that could be asked to a mother and you said you didn’t know.’’
Stokes said, ‘‘I said that because I love Troy . . . that was me protecting him.’’
Shamy asked: ‘‘Did you harm Ihaka, Miss Stokes?
‘‘No.’’
‘‘This is important. This is about Ihaka.’’
‘‘No, no.’’
‘‘Did you harm Ihaka when Troy was out?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘Did you kill this boy?’’ ‘‘No. I didn’t hurt him. I don’t hurt my children.’’
Finally, Stokes retreated from the witness box to the gallery, fondling the tiki around her neck.
She spent most of the rest of the trial there with her parents. Every time the court was shown the post mortem photograph of her son, she cried.
Ihaka’s stream of ailments
The Crown case went like this: Troy Taylor was a loving parent.
After an online courtship, he met Stokes when Ihaka was not quite 1-year-old and she was three months pregnant with her second child.
A couple of months later they moved in together at 46 Truman Rd in Bryndwr. Ihaka began to call Taylor ‘Dad’.
Stokes, worried about money, had considered giving her second child up for adoption, but decided not to when Taylor offered to adopt Ihaka and her unborn son. They became engaged. Taylor disrupted this idyllic setting on the night of Thursday, July 2, 2015 when he hit Ihaka.
This left bruises on the boy’s face, most notably one on the right side of his jaw.
A GP who saw Ihaka on the Friday morning considered it ‘‘moderate’’, but was unconcerned about the head injury. He diagnosed Ihaka with an oncoming ear infection.
Ihaka had a steady stream of coughs, colds and other ailments.
The ear infection was just the latest, and it made him grizzly. This was important, because a central tenet of the Crown case was Taylor’s history of concussion.
One witness said Taylor told her he had had nine of them.
A physiotherapist who treated him in late 2014 recorded the symptoms: headaches, dizziness, nausea, increased frustration, irritability and a ‘‘shorter fuse’’.
Taylor was a hands-on dad and often put Ihaka to bed. On Ihaka’s last night he checked on the boy, once even climbing into his cot to comfort him.
He did that sometimes. Stokes got out of bed and saw Taylor wedged in with Ihaka. How would he extricate himself?
He said, ‘‘I haven’t thought about that yet.’’
About two hours later the fuse ran out. Forensic investigators found blood on the bedclothes and drops on the curtain, window frame and wall.
Everyone agreed he’d been beaten
The prosecution waded through a host of procedural witnesses. Taylor called 111 at 10.43pm and said he found his son in his cot unresponsive and gasping for air (this was a lie).
He was instructed to do CPR until paramedics arrived. Ambulance officer Nigel French took over the resuscitation effort. He took one look at Ihaka and told his colleagues to call the police.
It was appalling to hear but it was mostly box-ticking – everyone agreed Ihaka had been beaten. Three firefighters explained how they had brought portable lights into the living room where Ihaka was being treated because the bulb had blown.
An intensive care specialist, Dr Tony Smith, said there was no way any of Ihaka’s head injuries or bone fractures could have been caused by resuscitation efforts. Christchurch Hospital emergency department staff detailed the futile final efforts to save Ihaka’s life.
The ESR evidence
The defence got going again when ESR forensic scientist Gary Gillespie gave evidence.
He recounted the painstaking examination of Ihaka’s cot and a search for blood in every room of the house.
Other than Ihaka’s bedroom and some baby clothes found in the master bedroom, there was no sign of it anywhere.
He did find some blood with a mixed DNA profile (most of it Ihaka’s) on Taylor’s T-shirt, but Taylor had administered CPR to the boy.
It sounded comprehensive but Shamy burrowed away.
What was the nature of the bloodstains on the wall? ‘‘[None] that I would classify as impact.’’ Therefore, nothing to prove he was assaulted in his bedroom.
Was it true that a sheet with multiple blood stains only had one stain tested? Yes (this was standard procedure, Gillespie said later).
Did you receive any clothing from Miss Stokes for testing? No. No further questions, your honour.
Nothing devastating against his client and a hint of investigative bias by police to return to later.
The afternoon v the night
Now things were moving. Paediatric radiologist Dr Philippa Depree got them travelling even quicker.
She performed post mortem X-rays on Ihaka and delivered her findings to the court at record pace.
Zarifeh frequently told her to slow down but her words were sharp, loud and clear. She was not here to muck around.
Ihaka’s fractured jaw, shoulder blades, vertebrae and forearm were not his first bone breaks, she said. X-rays showed he had historical rib and finger breaks.
They showed signs of new bone formation, which indicated healing. That meant the injuries were at least a week, and up to several months, old, Depree said.
The rib injury, in particular, was unlikely to be accidental, she said.
‘‘[It] is a highly suspicious injury for inflicted trauma and is unlikely to have occurred from any other cause in the absence of a history of prior trauma.
‘‘The pattern of findings . . . in conjunction with the history provided to me leads me to believe that the injuries were most likely caused by inflicted trauma.’’
Again, nothing unequivocal against Taylor, but the prosecution was building.
Enter Professor Colin Smith, neuropathologist, live via satellite from Britain.
He was a crucial witness. Not just because his crossexamination divulged Taylor’s plans to give evidence in his own defence but there was some hard evidence against the defendant.
Taylor’s defence was well signposted: Stokes had hurt Ihaka on the afternoon of July 3, while he was out. Smith said no way.
‘‘In my opinion the pathology … absolutely points towards this child going into cardiac arrest very close to the point at which the injury has been inflicted.
‘‘There is nothing that could support the suggestion that this was an injury inflicted at some point earlier in the day and this child has deteriorated over a period of time.’’
Ihaka’s brain showed no sign of the nerve damage that would have occurred in several hours with a head injury, Smith said. It had to have been hours.
Shamy probed Smith on the idea of a ‘‘lucid interval’’.
People with severe head injuries could sometimes appear well for several hours before deteriorating.
Taylor would testify Ihaka was floppy with ‘‘raspy’’ breathing when he clambered into the cot. Was it possible?
Smith wasn’t buying it. Lucid intervals, he said, were more common with blood clots in the brain rather than the hemorrhaging and swelling that Ihaka suffered.
And while adults might appear normal in such intervals, ‘‘lucid’’ wasn’t really the right word for a toddler. Ihaka would have been ‘‘moribund’’, he said, and clearly unwell.
The final Crown witness of consequence was forensic pathologist Dr Amy Spark.
In brutal, impenetrable detail, she painted a picture of precisely how Ihaka Stokes was beaten to death. She described his symptoms in clinical terms but the layman’s version was that Ihaka died because his brain was bruised, bleeding and swollen.
Troy Taylor’s impassioned, rehearsed speech
Troy Taylor took the stand on a Wednesday afternoon, nine days after his only other words in court – not guilty times two.
The only other animation he’d shown was to turn his head, like Stokes, when the post mortem photos of Ihaka appeared on the court screens.
On the stand he looked his inquisitors dead in the eye. He was heavier than in the 2015 photos, maybe a little balder.
He looked calm. He was ready. He was ready to tell the court he had lied. He had lied about hearing two ‘‘bangs’’ from Ihaka’s room before calling 111, he said, and he had lied when he said Ihaka appeared well up until then.
His son was in bad shape, he said, but he didn’t know what to do because it must have been Stokes who made him that way and he didn’t want to get her into trouble.
He launched into an impassioned, rehearsed-sounding, speech:
‘‘This is not about me, this about Ihaka and he deserves the truth. This is why I’m up on the stand today. To tell the full truth for my son. It’s the last thing I can do for him. I’m not going to fail him again.
‘‘I would have gone to prison for Mikala if she told me she’d done this.’’
He will go to prison, for himself. On Thursday, Taylor was found guilty of murder and assault.
He will be sentenced on June 9.