Son gets life for mum’s brutal killing
As Martin Marinovich was jailed for life for murdering his mother after years of caring for her, family and friends were overcome with emotion that two lives had been lost.
On February 7 last year, the young man murdered his mother, Noeleen Ann Marinovich, in the small West Auckland home the pair shared.
It was a frenzied attack that involved strangulation and hammer blows to the head.
Yesterday Justice Tracey Walker sentenced him in the High Court at Auckland to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 14 years.
“She was dependent on you, she trusted you.”
There was no reason for her to have felt a need to guard herself, Justice Walker said.
“She was in all respects defenceless.”
The defence case during the trial had been that Marinovich fatally strangled his mother in an instance of manslaughter and then he later hit her with the hammer.
But Justice Walker said it was reasonable to conclude the jury believed the cause of death had been the hammer blows to her head, due to defensive wounds.
While it was a brutal attack on a vulnerable person there were several personal factors the judge considered when sentencing Marinovich.
Justice Walker said Marinovich had no prior convictions, he had not planned the attack and was genuinely remorseful.
Also, it was only after his arrest that he was diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and its particular characteristics had played a “significant role”.
His thinking was rigid and linear without cognitive flexibility, the court heard.
Marinovich had been struggling to manage as a carer in the time leading up to the murder.
His mother, who had bipolar disorder, was incontinent, suffered from angina and was unsteady on her feet — often collapsing.
Janet Daniel told the court that over the course of a 40-year friendship she had become a close confidante to Noeleen. Her friend had struggled when she became pregnant, overcome by troubles when the Catholic Church sent the father to Canada, she said.
“Noeleen loved Martin, she truly loved and worshipped the ground he walked on as a child.”
The last time she saw her friend was in the hospital and she noticed the many bruises she had suffered from falls.
Living in her Oratia home, Marinovich and his mother had been dependent on her sickness benefit. He would do the shopping, pay the bills, help her in the bathroom and even dyed her hair.
At the hospital, he had confided in Daniel that he was not coping with the heavy burden of caring for his mother.
“I knew he couldn’t care for her,” Daniel said. “I believe the hospital didn’t care . . . she should have been sent to a rest home.”
Daniel, who said she felt like a grandmother to Marinovich, feared that when he was eventually released from prison there would be nobody to help him.
“He will be alone in this world. He will have no one else in this world.
“This is the true tragedy of what happened. Two people who truly loved each other, who were devoted to each other, have lost their lives.”
Noeleen’s brother, Mate Marinovich, who lived on the same Carter Rd property as his sister and nephew, told the court the emotional harm he had suffered was indescribable.
“It has been harrowing. My life has been turned upside down from the minute the police officer knocked on my door.”
“We were the best of mates,” he said of his sister.
They were going to grow old together and had joked she would take flowers to his grave. “Now I do that for her.”
Mate said he felt a sense of betrayal but did not want his nephew condemned to a long jail term and would have been happy with electronic monitoring instead.