Family and friends gathered as the bodies of Mona Tuwhangai, 82, and Maurice O'Donnell,72, were removed from their home in the tiny coastal community of Kinohaku.
The daughter of an elderly couple killed at their Kawhia bach by a man facing mental health problems says she has forgiven their killer because "there's enough hatred in the world".
The body of Ross Bremner was found alongside the those of Mona Tuwhangai, 82, and Maurice O'Donnell, 72, at their property in Kinohaku, in Waikato, three days after he attacked his parents last month.
Bremner's mother Clare, 60, was killed and his father, Keith, 64, critically injured after the attack at their Otorohanga home.
Tonight, Jo Kukutai, the daughter of Tuwhangai and O'Donnell, told RNZ's Checkpoint programme her family had made the decision to forgive Bremner.
"Having anger and resentment does not bring them back, having anger and resentment doesn't fix anything. So we've chosen forgiveness and that's helped us get through this."
It came nine days after she published a letter in the Herald saying she bore no ill-feeling towards the Bremner family, and that she had attended Ross and Clare's joint funeral.
"This is a time for grace, forgiveness, love and unity, rather than recriminations on whanau and community members," she said in her open letter.
Ross Bremner. Photo / Supplied
She told Checkpoint she penned the letter so people would have a better understanding of what her parents were like.
"Prior to all this, my parents were people, and I wanted the rest of New Zealand to know that they were people," she said.
"I wanted the rest of New Zealand to know who they were, not what they became, once they were killed.
"To just give them an identity where the tragedy kind of masked that, it covered it, shadowed it, and my parents were pretty much forgotten about who they were."
But she said people should also not forget that Bremner was "a real person".
"So was his mum and so was Keith. And I guess I wanted that to be seen by the people," she said.
"It's not the person that murdered my parents or the person that did what he did, he was a person that had an illness and I just wanted people to know that that's where we were coming at it from.
"He had an illness, we weren't angry at him, we weren't angry at the family. We just wanted to express that we were at a loss as well, and so were they and we wanted to acknowledge that."
They made the decision to attend the Bremner funerals to "honour them and their lives", she said.
"The Bremner family are a lovely family and they are suffering just like we are," she told the national broadcaster.
"It's a sad situation. But having anger and resentment does not bring them back, having anger and resentment doesn't fix anything. So we've chosen forgiveness and that's helped us get through this.
"And we've just had a lot of prayer, not just for us but for the Bremners as well, particularly for Keith, who's still going through this, and who we actually see as one of the biggest victims in this whole thing because he suffered through it.
"There's enough hatred in the world, and that wasn't going to help us to have that perspective on the situation, the best way was to forgive and forgive quickly."
Going to the funeral was a part of the process of forgiveness, she said.
She spoke to Bremner's family at the funeral she said, and told them the family did not hold any resentment towards him and had forgiven his actions, she said.
It will be four weeks on Saturday since Kukutai's parents were killed by Bremner who was an outpatient of the Waikato District Health Board's mental health services at the time of his rampage.
His family had reportedly tried to seek further help for him in the weeks leading up to the tragic events.
