‘Beautiful Nina’ thought she could ‘fix’ her killer
Nina Thompson thought all her killer needed was the love of a good woman. Her whanau knew better.
The relationship her family never felt comfortable with cost the 41-year-old Tokoroa woman her life.
‘‘Beautiful Nina’’, as her family knew her, took her final breath in April last year inside the bedroom of a rundown house on a forestry road near Kinleith. Jamie Te Hiko had pleaded not guilty to murder, claiming he never meant to kill Queenie Selena Thompson when he inflicted a prolonged beating on the ‘‘only woman he ever loved’’.
After a week-long trial, the family never wants to utter his name again.
‘‘He’s been named a murderer now and that will stick with him for the rest of his life,’’ said Thompson’s first cousin Charlie Tepana from their hometown this week.
Hearing the murder verdict was the strangest thing, he said. ‘‘We were relieved we got what we wanted. He’s still here – [his family] can see him, they can touch him, they can talk to him. Nina is gone forever.’’
From the start, family felt uncomfortable about their relationship.
‘‘There was always a bad element about him. I never really trusted him,’’ Tepana said of Te Hiko – a man he knew well from his logging days in the South Waikato.
Both families grew up in the area and regularly crossed paths.
‘‘We know some of the Te Hiko whanau, and are close friends with some of them. It’s hard. But there’s only one person to blame for this and that person is in jail.’’
The relationship between the fun-loving mother and the rough 44-year-old scaffolder was a surprise to family.
They were off and on for years, Tepana said. Yet Thompson never brought him around the whanau or invited him to family functions.
‘‘Even then you could tell the whanau weren’t happy about it.’’
As a probation officer, Thompson was well respected around town. ‘‘Fellas she worked with loved and supported her,’’ Tepana said.
‘‘If someone was struggling, she would go out of her way to help them.
‘‘And that’s what went wrong in this case – she thought she could turn this guy around.
‘‘She was trying to fix him and trying to help him. ‘‘Tragically, it was her demise.’’ When Thompson left Tepana’s house in April last year, after staying to celebrate her cousin’s 40th birthday, he thought she was headed to her sister’s home in Ruatoki.
‘‘Last time I saw her, when she left that day, I said if you need me to help you with anything, you know we’re always here. She knew what I was talking about. We thought she had made a clean cut and we could get back to getting her life on track. I never thought she would end up back there.’’
That phone call on April 20, 2016, will never leave him.
‘‘It was Nina’s mother, Teena. She just said, ‘She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s been killed.’
‘‘I knew straight away what had happened and I couldn’t breathe.’’
The court would hear later how Te Hiko and Thompson were at a house on the road to Mangakino when Te Hiko, claiming to be high on P, became enraged at the idea she might be seeing someone else.
He attacked her, knocking her off the table and, according to a pathologist’s report, delivering an estimated 70 blows to her head and body, some with a metal pipe.
‘‘When he gave his statement,’’ Tepana said, ‘‘there was no remorse. For me, it seemed, he was proud of what he did and the way he spoke of each strike was so graphic – as if he was getting off on it.’’
‘‘We were beside ourselves.’’ Nina was 60 kilograms and Te Hiko was a big, tough coward who kept knocking her over, he said.