Seventeen years after Queenie Dunn buried her daughter Mairina - murdered by Nathan Fenton - she will be petitioning the Parole Board later this month not to release him from his life sentence in jail.
Seventeen years after Queenie Dunn buried her daughter Mairina - murdered by Nathan Fenton - she will be petitioning the Parole Board later this month not to release him from his life sentence in jail.
A man who brutally murdered his 17-year-old girlfriend in Whangārei 17 years ago in a drug-fuelled, jealous rage, will front the Parole Board to ask for release for the first time next week.
Nathan Charles Fenton, then aged 31 and a Black Power member, admitted beating girlfriend Mairina Dunn, in a Holmes Ave, Ōtangarei, house on August 27, 2006, and was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years, in the High Court at Whangārei on April 30, 2007.
Fenton killed Mairina during a vicious 90-minute attack with a sawn-off shotgun, believing she had been unfaithful to him. The beating left the shotgun barrel bent and the butt splintered.
The Parole Board has confirmed that Fenton will make his first appearance before it on Monday, September 25 in Wellington, where Mairina’s mother Queenie Dunn will be petitioning the Parole Board members not to let Fenton out from his life sentence.
She told the Northern Advocate that her life, and that of her other daughter, who was only 4 at the time of Mairina’s death, had fallen apart since the murder.
Dunn said she had to move away from Whangārei as the trauma was too much and having to front the Parole Board to oppose Fenton’s release was retraumatising them.
She has been gathering letters of support from others backing her claim that Fenton should not be let back into the community after the “horrid abuse” he inflicted on Mairina.
Nathan Fenton in the dock at the High Court at Whangārei in 2007 where he was sent to jail for a minimum of 17 years for the murder of Mairina Dunn
‘’I want him, honestly, never to be free again. I would never want this man free to hurt another woman or put another family through such pain and hurt.’’
Dunn said she was disappointed that the Parole Board had given her only 30 minutes to present her opposition, which was not enough to “explain the hell I’ve been through”.
“I think you should be allowed to take as long as you can to get everything out as to how this man’s actions have changed my life in so many ways,” Dunn said.
She said she was not aware at the time that Mairina had been having a relationship with Fenton, and if she did things would have been different. Dunn said several people knew they were in a relationship, but did not tell her about it.
“I didn’t know him in person, he was just someone known by his name, nothing else.”
Dunn said she will fight Fenton’s release in Mairina’s memory and will do everything in her power to ensure her killer never saw the light of day again.
At Fenton’s 2007 sentencing Justice Tony Randerson said Fenton had carried out a “brutal, cruel, merciless and callous beating” in front of three sisters, two of whom had children with them. He had threatened them with the gun, warning they would be killed if they told anyone.
Fenton went on the run for 10 days after the murder with his former partner, Eileen Verna Everitt, sparking a region-wide police hunt, with widespread publicity both in Northland and nationally, before he was caught in September 2006.
The sentencing court heard Fenton had been drinking, smoking methamphetamine and cannabis at a party in a neighbouring house on August 26. He had returned early the next day and flown into a rage, accusing a man at the house of having an affair with Mairina and beating him. He had then turned on Mairina, dragging her out of bed, at times by the hair, leaving her blood spattered throughout the home. He had left her unconscious but alive on her bed for four hours while he tried to clean up the house.
