A forensic investigation is under way following the discovery of the body of a 77-year-old woman inside her Onehunga home shortly after 10am. Video / Hayden Woodward
WARNING: Graphic content
An Auckland man who stabbed his mother to death while in a psychotic state also had a history of attacking strangers due to his mental health issues, a judge noted today as the man was ordered to stay at a lockdown psychiatric facility for an indefinite period.
Ōnehunga resident Maria Brown was found dead in her home on June 5, 2022 - on what would have been her 77th birthday.
Her 50-year-old son, Matamua Leatioo, had approached her bedroom with a kitchen knife a day earlier and stabbed her multiple times in the head and torso “with extreme force”, Justice Geoffrey Venning noted today during a hearing in the High Court at Auckland to determine whether he should receive the most restrictive treatment plan allowed under the law.
“It will be in his best interests, as well as ensuring the maximum protection for the public,” Venning said.
Leatioo has spent the past year in the Mason Clinic awaiting trial for murder. He remained at the facility today, watching the hearing via an audio-visual feed.
At a brief hearing earlier this month, another judge deemed Leatioo not criminally responsible by reason of insanity after both the Crown and the defence agreed with two psychological reports indicating he was in such deep psychosis during the attack that he was incapable of knowing his actions were morally wrong.
Today’s more substantive disposition hearing had several potential outcomes, including an order that he remains at the Mason Clinic as a “special patient”, ineligible for release unless authorised by the national director of mental health; a less restrictive “special care recipient” designation in which he would be released only when his clinicians think it is safe; or an order allowing him to be released immediately.
But there was no real debate about the matter, with Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock and defence lawyer Maria Dyhrberg KC both in agreement with psychological assessments that his best option is as a special patient.
Maria Brown, 77, was found dead in her home in June 2022. Photo / Supplied
Justice Venning noted that Leatioo had mental health issues dating back to at least 2009 and a propensity for related violent offending, including the assault of his niece in 2015 during which he was suffering “persecutory delusions” and “repeated acts of physical violence against strangers” in 2020.
He at one point received in-patient psychiatric care but was later released and began to “progressively disengage” from community-based care in 2021, leading to the acute relapse of schizophrenic psychosis that resulted in his mother’s death.
Venning described the fatal attack on Brown as “violent and apparently unprovoked”.
After the attack, “the defendant started a fire on the stovetop of the property and walked to Auckland City, where he attempted to light other fires” before he was taken into custody by police. It would be over a month, however, before he was charged with murder.
Without long-term treatment in a controlled environment, Leatioo may pose a further risk of significant violent offending if a mental health relapse was to occur, the judge said.
Police investigate after Maria Brown was found dead in her Onehunga home. Photo / Hayden Woodward
Another son and a granddaughter of Brown’s sat in the courtroom today to observe the hearing but did not provide victim impact statements. A grandson of Brown’s provided a written victim impact statement to the judge but he wasn’t in attendance and did not want it read aloud.
It was a family member who found Brown’s body on her birthday, concerned that she hadn’t been answering calls.
“It was... a day where we should have been celebrating her life,” one of her daughters said on a Givealittle post last year that raised over $6500 to transport her body back to Samoa and for services in New Zealand and abroad. “Instead, we find ourselves grieving and devastated [over] the loss of a treasured loved one from our lives.”
A widow, Brown was described by her family as a treasured grandmother who “helped so many people”, including funding the education of many children. She volunteered with Onehunga Primary School culture groups.
“She had so much to give to those around her, even though she didn’t have much,” her family said. “She was a selfless person who would do the utmost for anyone in need.”
Brown was raised in Samoa but had lived in New Zealand for 27 years. She is survived by a twin sister, who lives in American Samoa, as well as five children and many grandchildren.
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.
