Emotions run high as Liberty's parents flee courtroom

Liberty Templeman. Photo / Supplied

Emotions are escalating in the trial against the teenaged boy accused of the murder of Kerikeri schoolgirl Liberty Templeman.

As the High Court in Whangarei was shown video footage of police interviews with the 16-year-old boy, Liberty's distressed mother left the courtroom, her cries audible as she fled.

She was followed by her husband, Andrew Templeman.

Upset supporters who have been sitting with the family throughout the trial wiped their eyes but stayed to watch the footage.

The boy, who had been watching the videos, began looking away from the television for longer periods, his eyes cast down to the ground in front of him.

A jury of six men and six women was being shown the second of three video tapes, in which the boy denied he had done anything to Liberty, when Mrs Templeman left the room.

In the video, the detective sergeant interviewing the boy told him there were a "hell of a lot of inconsistencies" in his story.

He said he did not believe him because he had given police a different shirt from the one he said he was wearing the night 15-year-old Liberty died.

The boy also told police he had not gone into the supermarket with Liberty and some friends, but security footage showed him going inside.

The interview contained the boy's late revelation that Liberty had suffered a bleeding nose as a group of teenagers walked towards the Kerikeri New World supermarket across the school field.

Asked why he had not mentioned it before, the boy said he "probably forgot".

Mrs Templeman left the room after descriptions of the bleeding nose the boy said Liberty had, and as the video interview showed a police officer asking the boy: "Is it too much of a horrid thing, to think about, to consider what you've done?

The boy replied: "I haven't done, done anything."

Earlier, the court heard that the boy had been wearing a green shirt but gave police a blue shirt when they asked for the clothes he was wearing when Liberty went missing.

The boy maintained the same emotionless expression he has held since the trial began last Monday.

His parents sat behind him in the courtroom, also watching the videos - beginning with an hour-long exchange recorded just three hours after Liberty's body was found in Kerikeri on November 2, 2008.

The boy, who was then aged 14 and who cannot be named for legal reasons, appears in the videos with his father.

The boy told police he had been at a Kerikeri swimming hole with a group of teenagers before they moved onto the driveway of a property where a barbecue was taking place about 5pm on November 1, 2008.

About half an hour later, as the group was standing around the driveway, Liberty walked around the corner with three teenaged boys and remained with the group when her friends departed, he said.

The boy told police one of the boys with Liberty was "pretty dodgy" and had been caught with drugs a year earlier.

Several members of the group went to New World about five minutes later.

Liberty had been seated on the boy's bicycle handlebars as the group cycled and walked together to the supermarket to buy some drinks.

They returned to the driveway and a short time later, Liberty said she wanted to return to the supermarket.

The boy said he would walk with her and told police he left her at an entrance to Kerikeri High School, which he said was the last time her saw her.

He said he returned home and was home by just after 7pm.

Soon after, the boy received text messages and phone calls from Liberty's friends and mother because Liberty hadn't arrived at New World as planned by 9pm.

The boy said he had been helping to search for Liberty with her friends at a gala the afternoon before his first video interview.

In the video the boy is asked what he was wearing, and tells police he was wearing a green shirt.

But a detective, whose name is suppressed, told the court the boy gave police "a totally different shirt to the one he'd described in his video
interview".

Officers had a surveillance camera image of the boy wearing the green shirt, the detective said.

When confronted with this information, the boy said he didn't know where the green shirt was.

Police allege the night before the first video was recorded, the boy attacked Liberty by striking her, strangling her and dragging her while she was unconscious, leaving her face down in a creek to drown.

They also allege the boy indecently assaulted Liberty by moving some of her clothing to make it appear as if she had been attacked by someone else.

The trial, before Justice Raynor Asher, is expected to take until at least Friday.