In 2022 Anthony John Wheble was sentenced to preventive detention after pleading guilty to a particularly brutal attempted murder.
Wheble was in prison at the time - his victim was a convicted sex offender in the same unit as him at Auckland Prison.
He was serving a sentence of seven years without parole for the attempted murder of another inmate in 2019 at Otago Corrections Facility.
His initial jail sentence was for aggravated robbery.
In the latest episode of Herald podcast A Moment In Crime, senior journalist and host Anna Leask looks back at Wheble’s crimes - what he did, to who, and why.
She also delves into Wheble’s personal life which numerous judges have ruled has a direct causal link to his awful crime.
In this episode of A Moment In Crime Leask speaks to Wheble’s mother and a prison staffer who worked closely with him.
For a much more in-depth explanation of this case, listen to A Moment In Crime: Sick or Twisted? Anthony Wheble’s story.
Wheble turns 30 this month. He has now been in prison for more than a decade and there is no end date to his current sentence.
The judge at his 2020 sentencing said preventive detention was the only way to keep the community safe from Wheble, who was considered at high risk of further violent offending and who refused to undertake any form of rehabilitation.
His mother and the prison staffer both agree that he needs to be in prison - to pay the price for his offending. They make no excuses for him and do not minimise his offending.
But they say preventive detention is too harsh a sentence.
Both women speak to Leask about Wheble’s extensive and severe mental health issues, from ADHD and schizophrenia to suggestions of psychosis, hallucinations and psychopathy.
His mother said in December a forensic mental health specialist assessed her son and it is now thought he has conduct disorder - which causes people to act aggressively and antisocially and usually without any remorse or guilt.
She believes Wheble cannot get the help he needs in prison and the possible life sentence hanging over him leaves him with no hope or desire to get better.
His mother hopes that by sharing her son’s story in this episode of A Moment In Crime, people will have a better understanding of why Wheble has offended so severely and why he will continue to do so unless he gets the help he needs.
Wheble’s mother said she felt “useless” and “guilty all the time” at not being able to help her son.
“When he calls, sometimes he’s fine, sometimes he’s aggro. He’s cut off his ear, and his toe recently, he’s taken a finger off. He’s tattooed himself, there’s stuff all over his face - and then he cut some of it out. I’m worried he is going to come out in a coffin,” she said.
“And people don’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with that - that is beyond me.
“He needs to be in a mental health unit - but they think it’s the right thing to just keep in locked up in there. He’s not an evil person but prison life has made him worse. He never did any of this crazy stuff when he was out - I don’t know what’s triggered it in there but … it’s just not fair to keep him locked up in a cage like an animal.”
The prison staffer said keeping Wheble in prison indefinitely was not the answer.
“He is wasting his life in prison and wishes to be with his family back in Christchurch, whom he keeps in daily phone contact with. He has a wonderful support network and just wishes to have a sentence end date to work towards,” she said.
“I feel the public have only read one side of his story. I want to get his story out there and help him. Mental health is not about locking someone for the rest of their life and without any foreseeable release for them.
“I know he has committed a crime, but I just don’t think it’s just for him to be in there for the rest of his life.”
The life and crimes of Anthony Wheble
After his parents split when he was a child he “bounced” between them, his grandparents and state care - where he was assaulted on numerous occasions.
His dad struggled with alcohol and substance abuse which contributed to serious mental health issues.
When Wheble was 8 years old - and living with him - he suffered a psychotic episode and was institutionalised for four months.
His father also spent time in prison.
His paternal grandfather’s death was also self-inflicted.
As a teen Wheble was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin. He was also diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
When he was 15 Wheble became involved in crime. At about the same time he became addicted to herbal highs, which were legal in New Zealand at the time but banned in 2014.
Wheble’s first prison lag came in March 2014 after he admitted charges of assault, demanding money with intent to steal it, theft, and shoplifting.
Soon after his release, he was charged with aggravated robbery after assaulting a pensioner on a Christchurch street.
Then 19, Wheble was sent back to prison for four years and six months.
In June 2019 he was finishing the last months of his sentence at Otago Corrections Facility.
Wheble attacked a fellow inmate with a shank: a modified plastic knife approximately 10 centimetres long with a metal razor-blade fused to one end.
He was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to seven years in jail.
In court the judge told Wheble:
“It would be an understatement to say that you have had a difficult life, and I accept that various factors have had a negative impact on your mental health. It has been difficult for me to assess the extent to which this might have led to you offending as you did.
“In short, I understand these things. You are a paradigm example of the historic failure of our welfare and criminal justice systems to help young offenders. Your living situation as a child was unstable.
“It would be an understatement to say that you have had a difficult life, and I accept that various factors have had a negative impact on your mental health. It has been difficult for me to assess the extent to which this might have led to you offending as you did.”
In 2020 Wheble admitted attempting to murder of a second inmate with a shank made from a toothbrush with a disposable razorblade inserted in the end.
His lawyer sought a finite sentence followed by a period of intensive supervision.
The Crown wanted a sentence of preventive detention - an indeterminate sentence, with no set end date.
The judge told Wheble:
“You grew up in difficult circumstances ... you witnessed your father assaulting your mother with a knife and threatening to kill her. He went to prison for these actions.
“The multiple forms of abuse you suffered whilst in care ... came on top of the trauma you suffered after witnessing your father assaulting your mother and undergoing psychotic episodes on several occasions.
“I have no doubt that [your] mental disorders, coupled with the traumatic events you were exposed to during your formative years, have led directly to your imprisonment and the fact that you have offended violently whilst in prison.
“I consider you present a very high risk of future violent offending upon your release from prison because your current disposition is to use violence, including serious violence, whenever you encounter what you perceive to be a threatening situation.
“A sentence of preventive detention provides the only effective means by which the community will be protected from the risk of future violent offending by you.”
Wheble appealed his conviction and in October 2024 his case went before three of New Zealand’s most experienced judges.
His lawyer Annabelle Cresswell argued expert advice was not obtained by Wheble’s lawyer on whether he was fit to enter a plea, or on the availability or otherwise of a defence of insanity - resulting in a miscarriage of justice.
The Court of Appeal judges heard that before he pleaded guilty Wheble had been suffering “significant psychotic symptoms” and a diagnosis of schizophrenia, with features of psychopathy, was recorded.
In mid-2022 he began to spiral again and his self-harm increased. He cut off parts of his ears and his eyelid and the day before he was sentenced he cut off his left ring finger.
In a pre-sentence report, a psychiatrist said Wheble’s history suggested that for a period of at least five years he had experienced delusions, hallucinations, formal thought disorder, odd and disorganised behaviour, characterised by episodes of irrational violence.
The specialist opined that Wheble met the threshold for mental impairment - namely schizophrenia disorder - under the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act 2003; as well as the criteria for a “mental disorder” under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992.
Justice Cheryl Gwyn ruled that while it was apparent Wheble suffered from schizophrenia which periodically manifested in paranoid delusion - his lawyer had not established that he was unfit to plead guilty.
She said:
“We find that Mr Wheble had sufficient capacity … We find he had an adequate understanding of the nature of the charges he was facing and the defences available to him.
“Ultimately, we are satisfied that Mr Wheble has not established that insanity was a tenable defence. There is no plausible evidence that Mr Wheble did not understand the nature and quality of his actions or that what he did was morally wrong. It is also unclear whether any disease of the mind was operative at the time of the offending.”
A Moment In Crime - the podcast
Episodes of A Moment In Crime are usually released monthly and, so far, Leask has covered 64 cases including the murders of Grace Millane, Scott Guy, Austin Hemmings, Carmen Thomas, Karen Aim; the deaths of the Kahui twins; the Christchurch mosque attack and the historic heavenly creatures murder; the case of Lauren Dickason who was jailed for murdering her three young daughters soon after emigrating to New Zealand and the massacres at Raurimu and Aramoana.
In 2023, the podcast published a three-part special covering the case of rich lister and philanthropist James Wallace, who was convicted of sexually assaulting three men.
He was jailed and had his knighthood stripped from him.
And to mark the 30th anniversary of the Bain family murders, Leask produced a two-part special reflecting on the atrocious loss of life and legal saga that followed.
A Moment in Crime is available on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are released monthly.
The series is hosted by senior journalist Anna Leask - who specialists in crime and justice reporting. She joined the Herald in 2008 and has worked as a journalist for 18 years. If you have a crime or case you would like to hear more about email anna.leask@nzme.co.nz.
Since 2019, A Moment in Crime has produced over 55 episodes, and has been downloaded over 1 million times, with listeners in over 170 countries. It was nominated for Best True Crime Podcast at the 2024 Radio and Podcast Awards.
