A country killing
The jury in the Kim Richmond murder trial retired for the weekend and will return on Monday to consider their verdict.
The seven women and five men began deliberations about 11am yesterday after Justice Sally Fitzgerald summed up. They retired at 4.30pm.
It is not a whodunnit. Richmond’s partner of 26 years has admitted responsibility for her death. What the jury is weighing up is whether it was murder.
It was a wet July night when Cory Jefferies ditched his ute in Lake Arapuni.
He and partner Kim Richmond spent the earlier part of the night at the Arohena community hall in the South Waikato backblocks, socialising, drinking, laughing, watching rugby.
Just after 3.30am, the pair helped Grant Hawkes load his ute before he made the trip home.
Jefferies and Richmond then left the hall, too.
The journey home from Pukewhau Road to their home in Mangare Road should have been an easy seven-minute drive.
Instead, whatever happened in those seven minutes would leave three children without a mother and a family in mourning.
Because at the bottom of the lake, in the silver ute, was Richmond’s body, her head and torso covered in a plastic shopping bag and her clothing tied tightly across the back of her neck.
Jefferies made the trek home from Lake Arapuni that night wet, cold and without his partner.
He arrived to his children sleeping and went about his day, tending to the animals on the farm.
He sent a text message to Richmond’s mother, asking whether she’d heard from her daughter. And then he slept.
For the next 11 months, the couple’s children asked repeatedly after their mother.
Jefferies told them everyone was looking for her.
But the lake would eventually give up its secret.
In 2017, police divers found the Ford Ranger six metres below the surface.
The silver paint job could be seen through the algae when a crane hoisted it out.
Police draped a grey tarpaulin over the windows to conceal the inside of the double cab.
But the ute’s registration, HKD553 – information echoed in every police media release about Richmond’s disappearance – was clearly visible.
The story of those 11 months would be played out in the High Court at Hamilton this week. The jury members were told of the desperation of a man trying to save his relationship.
Jefferies and Richmond met when they were teenagers. She was about 15 and he was two years older.
They moved to Arohena close to a decade ago.
Everybody knows everybody in Arohena. It’s that sort of town. The couple were farmers and had three children. Both immersed themselves in the community and were actively involved in different sporting events with other townspeople.
Once a sawmilling district, the rural Waikato town is now a productive farming area.
There’s a large community hall, a church and a Playcentre, and down on Pukewhau Road, there’s a three-classroom school. And everybody knows everybody’s business in Arohena. It’s that sort of town.
The court heard that Jefferies’ confrontation with his partner’s love interest, Alfons Te Brake, became heated when a photograph of the pair emerged.
‘‘Neville the bus driver’’ allegedly took the photo of Te Brake and Richmond at the end of the Jefferies/Richmond driveway.
The photographs were not produced as evidence in the trial, but Te Brake testified that’s what his confrontation with Jefferies was about.
The week before she went missing, Richmond confided in her friend Barbara Cottingham.
Richmond showed her friend a picture of the letter written by Jefferies apologising for his wrongdoings and asking for another shot at their relationship.
Richmond had ended the relationship earlier that month. Whether or not she decided to give it another go will never be known.
As the jury members entered their deliberations and then retired for the weekend, the conclusion of the trial that began on July 23 reeked of a man trying to salvage his relationship.
The evidence produced was the result of a two-year police investigation.
GPS data from Jefferies’ cellphone pinged at two spots on Te Ana Road on July 31 – near the couple’s home and near the boat ramp at Lake Arapuni.
It showed Jefferies travelled at a driving pace toward the boat ramp.
His trip home to Mangare Road was slower, possibly a running or walking pace.
And information from Richmond’s Fitbit device recorded an elevated heartbeat on the morning of July 31.
Her last heartbeat was recorded at 3.43am, Crown prosecutor Ross Douch said.
A broken Fitbit strap was found inside the Ford Ranger that was pulled from the lake.
Expert witness forensic pathologist Dr Rexson Tse said he was not able to identify Richmond’s cause of death because her body had been in the water too long. He recorded the official cause as undetermined.
He was not able to identify any obvious external or internal injuries or any fractures or broken bones.
He said Richmond could have suffered a head injury in an assault or from a sudden impact to the head or compression to the neck.
Jefferies never took the stand during the trial.
It was his right, Justice Sally Fitzgerald said.
He admitted to causing his partner’s death, but he never spoke of how.
The only other person who knows what happened at Lake Arapuni in the early hours of that wet July night is now a memory.