Seventeen-year-old Dimetrius Pairama was found dead in a vacant state house in Mangere five years ago. Photo / Supplied
Seventeen-year-old Dimetrius Pairama was found dead in a vacant state house in Mangere five years ago. Photo / Supplied
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Although four other people were present on the morning that 17-year-old Dimetrius “Precious” Pairama was beaten, tortured and forced to hang herself, there was one clear ringleader acting so “unhinged” that the others feared for their own safety if they didn’t follow her lead.
That was thetestimony today from the now-adult woman who, at the age of 14, was the youngest participant inside the derelict South Auckland home five years ago.
That ringleader, she testified, wasn’t the woman currently on trial for murder. It was then-27-year-old Ashley Winter, the oldest, most menacing and largest-framed person there that day, she said.
Winter and co-defendant Kerry Te Amo, then 24, were both convicted by another jury in 2019 of Pairama’s murder. The current and final defendant, who was 16 when she and the others were arrested, cannot yet be identified by court order. She is now 21 and has been on trial in the High Court at Auckland since last week.
The witness, who has permanent name suppression and immunity from prosecution, has been in the witness box since Thursday, but most of that time has been spent either watching her previous interviews with police or answering questions from prosecutors. Today marked the first time she was cross-examined at length by the defence.
“Ashely was a bully, wasn’t she?” defence lawyer David Niven asked the witness, describing Winter as someone who wanted the others to do her dirty work. The witness agreed.
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
Police found Pairama’s body inside a rusty steel drum in the overgrown backyard of a Māngere state home in July 2018.
Police began searching the area after responding to a fight at a McDonald’s in central Auckland’s Britomart where the witness, the defendant and one other underage girl were fighting with Winter, accusing her of killing their friend. The witness said she had had enough with Winter after she started “praising herself about what had just happened”.
But even with the fight outside the restaurant being three-on-one, Winter was holding her own, she said.
During a series of interviews with police in the weeks that followed the killing, the 14-year-old admitted that she was present as 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 Janola poured in her eyes and was ultimately forced to choose the method of her murder: via hanging or stabbing.
Prosecutors have said Winter and the current defendant each had different motives for the killing. Winter, an associate of the Mongrel Mob, blamed Pairama - who she had never before met - of matching the description of someone who had fed Black Power members information that resulted in Winter being attacked, the witness agreed.
The current defendant, meanwhile, was angry over “Facebook drama” supposedly caused by Pairama, the witness previously told police. But the witness’ testimony on that point has wavered repeatedly over the course of the current trial.
Pairama denied either of the allegations from her attackers, the witness recalled.
“It’s a pretty minor thing [Facebook drama] by comparison [to Winter’s claim of a gang attack],” Niven suggested, to which the witness agreed.
“[The current defendant] didn’t have any reason to want to hurt Dimetrius, did she?” Niven also asked.
“No,” the witness said.
Ashley Winter, left, and Kerry Te Amo were both convicted in 2019 of murdering Dimetrius Pairama. Photos / NZME
While the defendant and the witness both hit Pairama at the direction of Winter, neither of their attacks were at the same level of ferocity as the beating Winter administered, the witness agreed.
“If it’s not her [who is attacked] it will be you,” the witness recalled Winter telling her and the current defendant, explaining that they feared Winter’s threats of getting gang members to come after them if they didn’t comply.
“Did Ashley give the appearance of being slightly crazy?” Niven asked.
“At times,” the witness said.
“Was that something that made you afraid of her, the idea she could lose control and do something crazy?” the lawyer continued. The witness agreed.
Niven pointed out that Winter is transgender, identifying as female but with a body frame that made her “significantly bigger and stronger” than the witness and the current defendant. The witness agreed that neither she nor the defendant would have been able to physically prevent Winter had they tried to fight her at the house.
Despite the torture, there had been no discussion about killing Pairama until Winter called a meeting in front of the victim and asked her how she wanted to die, the witness agreed. The killing had been Winter’s idea, and it was shocking, the witness also agreed.
“[The current defendant] was questioning whether or not to go through with it, wasn’t she?” Niven asked. “At that point, [the current defendant] is not agreeing with Ashley, is she?”
The witness again agreed with the defence lawyer’s statements.
During testimony yesterday, the witness agreed with the defence that the current defendant had learning disabilities and was overly trusting, which sometimes made her vulnerable of being taken advantage of. While the witness barely knew Te Amo and had only met Winter the night before the killing, that wasn’t the case with the current defendant, who looked after her when they both lived on the street, she said.
Today’s testimony followed a long day of questioning from prosecutors on Monday during which the witness agreed that she had previously characterised the current defendant as “keen” to participate in the killing and “careless” when the witness tried to talk her out of it.
Most of the witness’ answers over the course of her four days in the witness box were either one word - yes or no in response to longer questions put by lawyers - or were to state she couldn’t remember. Prosecutor Claire Robertson observed as much today as she put the last set of questions to the witness before her testimony finally came to a close.
Her memory as a 14-year-old in the immediate aftermath of the killing would have been “good”, the witness acknowledged.
“How would you describe your memory now?” Robertson asked.
“Not as good,” she responded, giving one of her longest - albeit still relatively short - answers of the day. “You have to understand it has been a long time.”
The trial is set to continue 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.
