Paige Tutemahurangi death: Killer apologised as he tried to clean her body after throwing punches

Richard Matthew Coburn of Hamilton in the dock at the Hamilton High Court on trial for the murder of his "on-and-off" partner Paige Tutemahurangi (inset) at their home on Kahikatea Dr, Hamilton in July 2023. Photo / Belinda Feek

A man hugged his unconscious partner and told her she was “going to be all right” as he wiped blood from her face after punching her in the head and face multiple times.

Richard Mathew Coburn’s police interview was this afternoon played to the jury in the High Court at Hamilton, as it will determine whether he is guilty of murdering Paige Tutemahurangi on July 1, 2023.

Coburn punched Tutemahurangi “three or four times” before cleaning her up, changing her out of her bloodied clothes and into a dressing gown.

He then put her to bed before ringing 111 at 8.38pm and administering CPR until emergency services arrived 17 minutes later.

Coburn denies the murder charge. His lawyer Roger Laybourn told the jury his client admitted assaulting Tutemahurangi, but he was instead guilty of manslaughter.

Coburn gave a statement to police at 10.10pm that same evening and talked through the events of that day, which included doing chores and laundry.

After returning from the laundromat, Paige and their son were asleep and he joined them for a nap.

They then watched a movie together before he headed off to his brother Robert’s house nearby around 5.30pm to have a few beers.

Coburn texted Tutemahurangi at 7.04pm, saying: ‘Hi babe just gonna finish my beer then I’ll come back did you want me to get anything? [sic]”

She replied, “Cool as babe our dinner should be done by the time you come home and no thank you darling i thought i better not be lazy. Me and son have already been to supermarket to go get some fizzys for us xx [sic]”.

He got home to find the front door locked, so he walked around the back and knocked.

“She opened the door, and we sort of started arguing because I knocked on the door.”

She asked if he was all right because he’d been knocking on the door “rough”, and he replied that he’d been waiting at the front “for quite a while”.

The court heard their son was getting tired and restless so Tutemahurangi went to put him to bed. Coburn grabbed their son off her and put him in the cot in the hope he’d stop crying.

He turned around and said Tutemahurangi “was still on me”, so he pushed her. She lost balance and fell into the toilet door.

“I struck her maybe three or four times, then she fell over ... I regretted it straight away.”

Coburn said he tried to get her to stand up by grabbing her under her armpits, and although she could move her limbs, she couldn’t stand.

He dragged her into the adjacent bedroom, laid her down and began “cleaning her up”.

“I wiped her face, apologising, just hugging her, telling her she was going to be all right.

Richard Coburn admits killing his "on-and-off" partner Paige Tutemahurangi, but says it's manslaughter, not murder. Photo / LinkedIn

“Then I just panicked a little bit because she wasn’t responding to me. I thought, ‘I’d better ring the ambulance’.”

Asked by Detective Ware how long he spent cleaning her up, Coburn replied, “Five or 10 minutes.”

Tutemahurangi didn’t make any noises and wasn’t responding but was breathing heavily.

Her eyes were closed “the whole time” after he first pushed her, he said.

When asked how hard he punched her, Coburn said, “They were hard enough ... hard enough to hurt her.”

Detective Ware asked him what he was thinking when he threw his first punch.

“I wasn’t,” Coburn replied. “I was just angry because we were arguing, but she was angry and telling me to leave.”

He wasn’t sure why he lifted her up on to the spare bed before calling 111 and then beginning to perform CPR.

Ware asked if there had been violence between the pair before.

“Not bad violence ... calling each other this, that and the other and pushing is still violence, but not bad violence,” Coburn said.

“What’s bad violence?” Ware asked.

“This. What’s happening now,” he replied.

‘Alive for at least 30 minutes’

Earlier today, pathologist Dr Kilak Kesha told the jury testing of neural (brain) tissue revealed Tutemahurangi was alive for “at least” 30 minutes after the assault.

Asked by Justice Mary Peters what causes brain death, Kesha replied, “A lack of blood supply.”

“It’s not getting the nutrients, oxygen ... and that just causes the death.”

Kesha found there were “at least” five different impact sites around Tutemahurangi’s head; both eyes, her forehead and both sides of her scalp.

But he was unable to determine if the same area was struck more than once.

Tutemahurangi’s nose was also fractured, but Kesha was not able to conclusively say if it was a separate injury or caused at the same time as a blow to her eye.

Officer-in-charge Detective Ayla Pritchard detailed Coburn’s movements and phone calls that night, and confirmed he arrived at the house at 7.44pm.

There was one call - from Facebook - made from Coburn’s phone to a woman at 8.32pm, which did not connect. That person was also unable to be identified.

The first of three calls to 111 were made at 8.37pm. The next two were both made at 8.38pm.

Detective Rowan Ware was the first to speak to Coburn at the scene, and when Ware asked him what happened, Coburn said, “I did everything.”

Asked what that meant, Coburn said he didn’t “want to talk about it right now”.

‘She was completely in a flatline’

Hato Hone St John critical care paramedic Tracy Garratt arrived at the scene to find Tutemahurangi lying unconscious on the ground with “substantial bruising and swelling across the face”.

“Her heart was not beating. She was completely in a flatline.”

The flatline status meant she was “very critical and unlikely to survive, was my first thought”.

Tutemahurangi’s right eye was completely swollen over, and her left eye was also bruised but “basically dilated and unreactive to light, which means there’s no brain activity”.

“Basically brain-dead ... and that is why her heart stopped working, because of the brain injury.”

Asked by Mann how substantial her injuries were, Garratt replied, “It appeared that she had been beaten substantially to cause that kind of head injury.”

There was no fresh blood on Tutemahurangi – only dried blood.

However, she was unable to indicate a specific time frame regarding long it could have taken for the blood to dry.

Senior ESR forensic scientist Fiona Matheson said three different types of blood stains were found in their scene examination; transfer, drip, and “spatter”, a 1-2mm stain usually caused by force or an impact.

Blood stains were found on the toilet and bedroom doors, the doorframes of the toilet and an adjacent bedroom, wall and clothing rack in the room where Tutemahurangi was put to bed.

There was also blood on the carpet and the bottom corner of a set of drawers, which likely ended up there after being coughed or sneezed out of the victim’s mouth or nasal cavity, or came from a wound at a close range.

Blood was also found on clothing worn by Tutemahurangi in a laundry basket.

The Crown and defence will deliver their closing submissions tomorrow morning before Justice Mary Peters summarises the case and sends the jury out to begin their deliberations.

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for eight years and been a journalist for 19.