News Review: A natural born killer at 15

By TONY WALL

"I was just hard-out stabbing him. I felt evil. The place went cold like a freezer, and I knew I had killed him."

These are the chilling words of a very young murderer, spoken to police just days after she took part in a frenzied killing.

In an ideal world, Natalie Fenton would be at the movies with her friends, or sitting round gossiping about boys.

Instead, the Otara girl has begun a life sentence at the age of just 15 after a jury yesterday found her guilty of murdering Raymond Mullins on April 1 last year.

Her sister Katrina, 19 at the time of the murder, was also found guilty, along with their friend Daniella Bowman, who was 17.

Natalie Roselyn Fenton was never going to be a typical teenager.

Sexually abused as a child, a primary school dropout, prostitute and drug user at 11, armed robber at 13 - it was no surprise to police when she graduated to murder.

Fenton was born on March 19, 1984, to a Niuean father, Lewis, and Maori mother, Charlotte.

She told a psychiatrist commissioned by the defence that three friends of her father had sexually abused her between the ages of 5 and 7.

Mr Fenton died in 1993, leaving his wife to bring up seven children on her own.

Natalie Fenton was well and truly off the rails by the age of 11, when she gave school away and hit the streets.

With ties to the Crips gang, she came before the Family Court and Youth Court often, acquiring by the age of 14 convictions for aggravated robbery, aggravated assault, theft and stealing motor vehicles.

She was also part of the Otahuhu sex worker scene, hanging out with young girls and transsexuals selling their bodies to make money for drugs and alcohol.

In October 1998, she was picked up by a man in Sturges Ave and they went to a nearby park. Instead of the oral sex he expected, she robbed him of his wallet at knifepoint. Fenton then drove off in his car.

In another incident, she and some friends approached a man in a car and got in uninvited. They demanded the keys, hit him on the head, then dragged him out of the vehicle and repeatedly punched him about the head and body.

Fenton was on bail for a knifepoint robbery of a girl for her leather jacket at the time of the Mullins killing.

Older sister Katrina Fenton had managed to stay out of trouble, while Bowman, who was staying at the Fenton home in Bairds Rd, Otara, had only a minor shoplifting conviction.

It was Mrs Fenton who first met Ray Mullins - in 1996.

She and a son were collecting scrap metal at a dump in South Auckland when she spotted an old battery. Mr Mullins, who had an engineering business, also had his eye on it and they argued..

But the minor dispute blossomed into a friendship.

"I liked him, even though I had heard about him."

Natalie Fenton met Mr Mullins separately, while he was out cruising. She was just 12.

"I asked him if he could buy me a tinnie [cannabis]," Fenton told police. "He got me it, and he was cool. He supplied me everything I wanted, but I didn't give him anything, you know ... I'm not a ho [whore]."

In fact, Fenton did sleep with Mr Mullins. She told the psychiatrist he paid to have sex with her five times, and claims she became pregnant to him in 1998 but miscarried.

She introduced her sister Katrina to him, and he promptly fell for the older Fenton.

But Katrina dismissed him as a "dirty old man" and used him for money, never sleeping with him.

On April 1 last year, the sisters and Bowman went to the factory in Plunket Ave, Papatoetoe, where Mr Mullins was living and working, looking for $500 to travel to a 21st birthday in Northland.

They left after he refused them cash, but returned about 5 pm to try again. Bowman, who took her 2-year-old boy, Jakeem, with her, told police the trio discussed killing Mr Mullins.

He was watching television when the attack started. The defence claimed the girls were defending themselves against his sexual advances. The Crown said they took him by surprise.

Natalie Fenton stabbed him repeatedly in the stomach with a Ginzu steak knife, bending the blade and going to the kitchen to get another.

Katrina Fenton held him down and hit him continuously on the head with a hammer, while Bowman fetched more weapons and hit him with a cooking pot.

Other weapons included an ashtray and a table leg - anything the attackers could get their hands on.

When a hard blow to the head and a deep gash to the neck finally killed Mr Mullins, he had 19 stab wounds, including the letter W or N carved into his chest with a knife.

Natalie Fenton told the psychiatrist that a "dark spirit" had come over her.

She also claimed she saw the faces of the men who had abused her as a child - the psychiatrist said she was suffering a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The crime scene was horrific. There was blood everywhere, and paint had been splashed around in a juvenile attempt to mask evidence.

The girls also used the paint to write messages about Mr Mullins' predilection for young girls on the walls of his bedroom.

They tried to throw blame for the murder on to rival street gang Bloods For Life by scrawling BFL on the walls.

Police were not fooled. It took just five days to gather enough evidence for three arrests after they found Mr Mullins' body, bound hand and foot and wrapped in a sheet, in the boot of his car.

The girls had dragged his body downstairs, his head hitting each step and his false teeth popping out.

Even after their arrest, the girls could not stay out of trouble. There was a suggestion at her depositions hearing that Natalie Fenton had threatened a witness and tried to dissuade her from giving evidence.

Bowman, released on bail to Kaikohe, was part of a group that attacked a security guard in the grounds of a school and fought with police who came to investigate.

The High Court at Auckland was introduced to terms such as "gangsta rap" and "Otara style" during the two-week trial, while Justice Chambers was told to "f... off" by a 14-year-old female witness.

Mrs Fenton attended the trial most days, but declined to be interviewed. Sources say she genuinely loves her children.

As for Natalie Fenton, police say it would be wrong to blame her actions entirely on her background.

"I believe Natalie is a career criminal who was climbing the ladder," says the officer in charge of the case, Detective Senior Sergeant Dayle Candy.

"I think she had a thirst for violence and needed to see how far she could go. I think she was always going to kill someone at some stage ... It was a challenge to her."