Dimetrius Pairama was found dead at a derelict house in July 2018.
Dimetrius Pairama was found dead at a derelict house in July 2018.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Josiah Rolleston said when he first heard it, he didn’t believe it - it sounded too diabolical, like something out of a crime documentary.
The 15-year-old was getting a feed with two of his buddies at McDonald’s in Manurewa’s Southmall one afternoon five years ago and had decided to also buy food for two girls, aged 16 and 14, he didn’t know well but recognised as frequently hanging out there.
As he approached the pair to give them their Big Mac and a cheeseburger, he recalled catching the tail end of a conversation they were having with his friend: “Do you know Demitri? Yeah, we killed that bitch.”
The person he recalled having spoken those words is now on trial for the murder of Dimetrius Pairama, who was 17 years old in July 2018 when she was tortured and killed. Jurors returned to the High Court at Auckland today as testimony in the murder trial continued for a third week.
“The way they said it was ugly,” Rolleston recalled of the conversation, which he said took place just one day before news of Pairama’s death “went viral” on social media. “That’s evil.”
Prosecutors allege four people were present in an abandoned Māngere state home when Pairama was repeatedly punched and stomped, forced to disrobe and tied naked to a chair with soiled underwear stuffed into her mouth, burned on sensitive areas of her body with a makeshift blowtorch, had household chemicals poured on top of her, burning her eyes, and was ultimately forced to choose the method of her murder: via hanging or stabbing.
Ashley Winter, then 27, and co-defendant Kerry Te Amo, 24, were both found guilty by a jury the following year. The current and final defendant, who was 16 at the time, did not join the others at that trial. She continues to have name suppression, as does a 14-year-old who also hit Pairama and served as a lookout during her hanging but was given immunity in exchange for her co-operation with police.
A woman with name suppression is on trial in the High Court at Auckland, accused of having helped kidnap and murder 17-year-old Dimetrius Pairama in July 2018. Photo / Michael Craig
The current defendant, now 21, has acknowledged through her lawyer that she was present when Pairama was killed and she did participate in some of the torture beforehand. But she was not on board with killing Pairama, going along with it only under duress because she was fearful of dominant, older co-defendant Winter, her lawyer has suggested.
But Rolleston insisted in the witness box today his interaction with the defendant and the 14-year-old witness did not leave him with an impression they were reluctant or fearful about what happened.
“They didn’t have no remorse or anything,” he said. “They knew they’d done something wrong. It wasn’t right.”
Defence lawyer Philip Hamlin pointed to the witness’ police statement from five years ago, in which Rolleston’s recollection of the conversation appeared less slightly charged. “Oh, she’s dead. We killed her,” Rolleston previously recalled the defendant saying, rather than, “We killed the bitch.”
Rolleston reviewed the statement and agreed that his recollection was slightly different today, but insisted that his memory has gotten better over time because he’s had more time to think about it.
“It’s all coming back now,” he said. “I was freaked out about it because we ran into murderers.”
He said it struck him as especially cold that “they had the balls to say it to random people” - him and his mates.
“I’m 100 per cent sure [they said ‘that bitch’] because they had no remorse when they said it,” he testified. “No guilt, no nothing.”
Ashley Winter and Kerry Te Amo were both found guilty of murdering Dimetrius Pairama.
Multiple other witnesses, including police officers and youth workers, also testified today about conversations they had with the defendant in the hours and days following Pairama’s death.
Detective Peter Mortimer, who was on duty the night the search for Pairama’s body began, recalled an informal, un-recorded conversation with the defendant in which she described Pairama as having voluntarily killed herself. She tried to convince Pairama not to do it but the 17-year-old insisted she wanted to be with her father, who had died sometime earlier, the detective recalled the teen telling him.
After Pairama killed herself, the defendant said she cut down her long-time friend from the noose and concealed the body in a steel drum behind the house, he recalled her saying.
Later that night, the defendant gave an official, signed statement to Detective Jonathon Wylde. She again described Pairama insisting she wanted to kill herself before stripping naked and preparing a noose.
“She told me that she loved me and thanked me for being there for her and being a good friend,” the defendant said, recalling that around the same time, Winter came into the room and said: “Go kill yourself, bitch. You don’t deserve to live.”
After Pairama went through with it, Winter hugged the 16-year-old and told her, “Sorry for your loss”, she told the detective.
Just days later, after the defendant ran away from an Oranga Tamariki group home, Detective James Mapp had found her and was driving with her to the police station when she said “she had not said the truth in her earlier statement because she was afraid of Ashley”.
“She told me Ashley had set up the hanging and had got Dimetrius to go along with it,” Mapp testified. “She told me Ashley made Dimetrius undress and [the defendant] gave Dimetrius a sheet to cover herself. She said the sheet was later used as a ligature.
“[She] told me she had tried to stop Ashley,” the defendant said in the statement, describing Winter as forcing her to help hide the body and threatening to have the Mongrel Mob kill her and the 14-year-old if they didn’t assist her.
But less than a week later, Mapp said he was again in a car with the defendant after she had run away again from a group home and her story changed again.
“[She] told me that she had done some bad things - in her words,” the detective recalled. “She said she had been involved in the tying up of Dimetrius, had cut her hair and had poured things on her. But she said [through] the whole incident, it was mainly Ashley who was instigating everything.
“[She] accepts that she could have stopped Ashley if she wanted to.”
The property on Buckland Rd, in South Auckland, where the body of 17-year-old Demetrius Pairama was discovered. Photo / Doug Sherring
Detective Mapp said he didn’t feel he could ask the teen follow-up questions because she had a short time earlier declined to give an official statement while accompanied by her mother. He instead let her talk without interruption, he said.
Youth worker Dawn Sands recalled her interactions with both Pairama and the defendant at Lighthouse, an emergency placement facility where both girls stayed at one point.
“She was quite young and very naive,” Sands said of Pairama. “She was gullible.”
Sands also recalled that Pairama often talked about her deceased grandfather, whom she referred to as her father. She had talked about suicide and had self-harmed on one occasion months earlier, leading Sands to have concerns about her mental wellness, she said.
Sands said the defendant’s voice was “flat” and “emotionless” as she recounted the killing of Pairama after arriving at Lighthouse several days after the incident. But at one point, it looked like she had been crying in private as she came back from the toilet, the youth worker said.
Both Sands and fellow youth worker Tuileisu Taotua, who worked at Whakatakapokai, said the defendant described to them seeing Pairama’s ghost. She described the 17-year-old as her best friend in her late-night discussions with both women and said the ghost looked angry.
In her discussion with Taotua, the defendant said she was caught by surprise when Winter first started attacking Pairama inside the abandoned home.
“[She] said she had a reason to smash her [Pairama] because she had been talking shit,” the youth worker recalled being told. “She said she didn’t expect it to go that far. She said it went on for two hours.”
The 16-year-old told Taotua that all she could do was cry as Pairama struggled in the noose.
“She was reaching for the chair with her feet,” the defendant is alleged to have recalled to the youth worker, insisting that she “told Ashley to put it [the chair] closer, but Ashley said, ‘No, let her die’”.
The defendant was in tears at times as she recalled the incident, the witness said.
The trial resumes tomorrow before Justice Kiri Tahana and the jury.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
