Woman found guilty in burglary case

Gisborne Courthouse. File picture by Rebecca Grunwell

A WOMAN accused of luring a Te Karaka man away from his house so accomplices could burgle it was yesterday found guilty by a jury in Gisborne District Court.

Jammie Vera Rigby, 31, went on trial on Wednesday. She had pleaded not guilty to a jointly-laid charge of burglary, arising out of the incident on October 23 last year.

Judge Warren Cathcart remanded her in custody for sentence via AV link on January 16.

The woman had initially turned up at the property with two others in a car. The man was housesitting the house. He gave her directions to the local store.

Soon after, she arrived back at the house alone and said someone she came to Te Karaka to see was not home and that the people she paid to give her a lift had gone.

She appealed to the man to take her to Gisborne in his car. He initially refused but agreed after she persisted.

Prosecutor Jo Rielly told jurors that in law, someone who acted as an accomplice in the way the Crown believed Rigby had, was equally culpable as those who carried out the burglary.

Jurors had to decide whether Rigby intended to assist those who burgled the Te Karaka house and whether she knew they intended to burgle that house.

The Crown relied on evidence that included Rigby’s admitted involvement in a burglary in Gisborne the next day. She and another female, Karma Cripps, were videoed fleeing the scene and found together in a car later that night with an item taken from the Te Karaka burglary.

There was no dispute that Cripps was involved in the Te Karaka burglary and that Rigby was involved in the Gisborne one.