A prisoner arranged a threatening letter to his suicidal teenage cellmate because he thought it might help with a pardon, the Auckland District Court heard yesterday.
Former Mt Eden Prison inmate Buddy John Grey, aged 21, of Whangarei, appeared at a depositions hearing charged with inciting 18-year-old Eruera Maaka to commit suicide.
Maaka was found hanging in the cell about 6 am on February 1, 1998.
An inmate in the adjoining cell told the court that Grey had woken him at 5 am by banging on the wall. Through a matchbox-sized hole in the concrete wall Grey told him that Maaka was "doing it."
The inmate, who has interim name suppression, said Grey told him Maaka had been hanging for about five minutes and was no longer breathing.
"He told me he put Eru on his shoulders and pushed him off - that he held his legs so no noise would be made. By the sound of his voice he [Grey] was freaking out."
The inmate said that the day before the death, Grey had asked him to write a letter pretending to be from Maaka's co-accused in a South Auckland superette robbery and threatening to kill Maaka for "narking" on them.
From conversations through the hole, the inmate learned that Grey thought he (Grey) could get a Queen's pardon and get off his charges if Maaka committed suicide.
The inmate said Maaka had already spoken to a former cellmate about hanging himself, and had talked of it again the night before his death.
After he found the letter Grey had planted in his cell, giving the impression it had been pushed through the connecting hole, Maaka had "freaked out."
"He was saying he was going to do it. He did not want to go through this ....; all the hassles about his co-offenders," the inmate said.
Later that night, Maaka changed his mind and said he was not going through with it. Grey then "started threatening him by telling him that if he did not do it he [Grey] would do it himself."
The inmate said he also heard sheets being ripped in the adjoining cell, and Grey told him they had been plaited into the rope Maaka used.
Under cross-examination from Robert Kee (for Grey), the inmate said he had been in and out of jail in recent years on charges that included theft and demanding money with menaces.
He said he had not been approached by police or prison officers in the aftermath of Maaka's death. But seven or eight months later, he went to a detective and told him what happened because "it's been haunting me since the day; having bad dreams about it."
The depositions hearing, before Judge A. E. McAloon, is due to finish today.
Pardon 'aim of letter to suicidal cellmate'
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