Axe-killer's mother wanted him committed

File photo / NZ Herald

A mother wanted her schizophrenic son - who believed he was suffering from a Maori curse - committed to a psychiatric ward three weeks before he killed her partner with an axe blow to the face.

Tina Rameka's son, Preston Cole Rameka, told doctors that voices told him "do it now" when he swung an axe and killed Terrance Finch, 55, on April 15 last year.

Rameka, 28, was yesterday found not guilty of the murder by reason of insanity.

The High Court at Auckland heard he was in the grip of schizophrenia that left him unable to control his actions or realise what he was doing was morally wrong.

Mrs Rameka told the Herald how she came home and found her son "in a trance" and her partner dead.

"It had been a happy day, a lovely day ... full of love. We were waiting for him to come back from Kawhia and Terry had got some of the boys to fix my BMW."

Rameka was in the Waikato researching his Maori genealogy, with which he'd recently become obsessed.

When he returned he was greeted warmly by his stepfather.

"He said 'I love you Dad and he said I love you son'."

She left for some time and when she returned, "I saw my baby - it was like he was in a trance, his eyes were nearly popping out of his head".

She put him into the recovery position because he was lying on the ground and began "looking around for my honey".

Ms Rameka said she and her daughter had talked about having him committed three weeks before the killing. "But we didn't know how to approach him about it."

Although she "missed my darling heaps" she still loved her son and visited him at the Mason Clinic often.

The day of the murder Rameka drove to Auckland. He stopped at the roadside and saw a log in the Waikato River he thought was a taniwha so left a half-eaten Easter egg as an offering.

He told doctors that as he drove towards home, "it felt like I was making love to the spirits, it was bliss".

Rameka was convinced he had powers enabling him to read people's minds and see into the future.

When he arrived he was haunted by voices, and thought a bath would cleanse him.

Defence witness Dr Rhys Tapsell said that after the bath Rameka smoked cannabis and fell asleep on a couch with Mr Finch on a bed opposite him.

The next thing he knew he had something in his hands and heard Mr Finch saying in a frightened tone, "What are you doing, Preston."

He hit him twice.

"He told me the first blow caused minimal damage but the second blow did extensive damage and caused his face to separate from his head."

Mr Finch was found partially covered with a blanket with the blood-stained axe nearby. Rameka said "the voices" told him he could "bring people back to life" by turning his head.

Justice Graham Lang told the court Rameka now understood it was his condition that caused him to do what he did, although he clung to the notion it was partly attributable to a curse being placed on him.

The judge said Rameka should be detained in a secure hospital until doctors were satisfied he wasn't a danger to the community.