Bloody bootprint
Mystery solved 25 years on
For nearly 25 years, police investigating the murder of pregnant Christchurch mother Angela Blackmoore had no idea who left a bloodied bootprint on her kitchen floor.
Now they have their answer. Jeremy Crinis James Powell, 45, confessed to the cold case killing when detectives, acting on a tipoff, brought him in for questioning in October last year.
In an interview that stunned veteran investigators, Powell told them he was offered $10,000 to murder Blackmoore, whom he knew through acquaintances.
As a 20-year-old, he seems to have been a reluctant hitman.
In the days before the murder, Powell, a nightclub bouncer, went to Blackmoore’s home to kill her but got cold feet.
However, he returned to the property in Vancouver Cres, Wainoni, about 9pm on August 17, 1995, with a bat and bowie knife hidden in his trench coat.
He bludgeoned and stabbed the 21-year-old to death.
Blackmoore, who was nine weeks pregnant, suffered 39 wounds to her head and neck.
Her 2-year-old son, who was asleep in his bed, was unharmed.
Police searches of the house found few clues pointing to the killer of the former prostitute, who was starting a new life with her partner of nine months, Laurie Anderson.
Anderson had been at work at the University of Canterbury on the night of the murder and returned home about 11.20pm to find the love of his life lying in a pool of drying blood.
The best pieces of evidence detectives found at the murder scene were a bloodied size-10 bootprint on the bare floorboards in the kitchen-dining area and a set of fingerprints. Both led them nowhere.
In an amazing coincidence, a man fell from a Christchurch hotel about a fortnight after the murder. He was found wearing a lone shoe with a similar sole pattern to the bootprint found at Blackmoore’s home. His other shoe was picked up by street cleaners and taken to landfill. It was found during a dump search, but inquiries, including forensic testing, revealed it was not the one worn by the killer.
If the fingerprints were Powell’s, police didn’t have them on file as he had no criminal history and lived a largely unblemished life after the murder.
Detectives spoke to him, along with many of Blackmoore’s associates, but he only emerged as a suspect last year after a Stuff investigation – Dark Secret – revealed new details about the case, and police offered a record $100,000 reward for information.
Powell’s former girlfriend Rebecca Wright-Meldrum and another man, whose identity cannot be reported for legal reasons, have also been charged with Blackmoore’s murder.
The pair denied any wrongdoing and are awaiting trial. Suppression orders prevent Stuff from reporting details of their alleged involvement.
Yesterday, in the High Court at Christchurch, Powell stood silently in the dock as he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 10 years.
Through his lawyer, Donald Matthews, he apologised to Blackmoore’s family, saying he was ‘‘terribly sorry’’ for what he’d done.
The murder had weighed heavily on Powell and ‘‘he feels a great sense of relief . . . the crime is now out in the open’’, Matthews told the court.
‘‘He knows the time has come to pay for his crime.’’
Powell was prepared to meet with Blackmoore’s family, a prospect that ‘‘terrifies him’’, Matthews said. ‘‘He knows that he owes that to them.’’
Justice Cameron Mander described the murder as ‘‘dreadful and monstrous’’.
It involved a high degree of planning and was a ‘‘cold-blooded execution of a defenceless woman in her own home’’.
Powell, the youngest of four siblings, grew up in the North Canterbury town of Oxford.
He was raised by a ‘‘supportive and loving family’’, Justice Mander said.
Friends and family regarded him as a hard-working, kind, supportive and gentle man. ‘‘They are shocked by your confession to a crime, which they view as being entirely out of character.’’
Powell was sentenced under 1995 law, which meant the judge had to jail him for a minimum of 10 years unless the circumstances were ‘‘exceptional’’.
Even if exceptional circumstances had existed, Justice Mander said, Powell’s ‘‘personal factors’’ including his guilty plea would have resulted in the ‘‘necessary reduction’’.
Anderson and two of Blackmoore’s cousins, Jillian Purvis and Leanne Keen, read victim impact statements to the court.
‘‘You broke our family, and we will never be complete,’’ Purvis said.
‘‘He feels a great sense of relief . . . the crime is now out in the open.’’ Donald Matthews lawyer for Jeremy Powell