Samurai sword accused wanted an Aramoana-like suicide by cop

Murder accused Antonie Ronnie Dixon wanted to "go out in a blaze of glory" like Aramoana killer David Gray, rather than go back to prison, a jury in the High Court at Auckland heard yesterday.

In his closing address, Auckland Crown Solicitor Simon Moore said Dixon was not, as the defence claimed, an insane man who did not know his actions were wrong.

Dixon was totally in control and everything he did was calculated, said Mr Moore.

The 36-year-old Dixon faces a number of charges, including attempting to murder Renee Gunbie and Simonne Butler with a samurai sword at Pipiroa on January 21, 2003, and later killing James Te Aute with a home-made submachine gun.

The Crown concedes that Dixon has a severe personality disorder and suffers from paranoia and delusions.

"But that doesn't mean he is insane," Mr Moore told the jury.

Legal insanity required a person to have a disease of the mind that prevented him knowing the nature and quality of his actions or that they were morally wrong.

Mr Moore said Dixon was a heavy user of P, which caused paranoia and violence in users.

Add in his grandiosity, or big-noting, and the events were no longer hard to understand but predictable.

Mr Moore said everything Dixon did had a frightening level of calculation and purpose.

His attack on the women was the result of a violent angry man, fired up on P, taking revenge against those he believed, in his methamphetamine-paranoia, had crossed him.

He thought Ms Butler was sleeping with a police officer, a belief for which there was some evidence, and that Ms Gunbie was an informer.

The women were subjected to a vicious, premeditated attack with a sword Dixon had hidden behind a door.

Mr Moore said that when Dixon thought about the consequences of the attack at Pipiroa, he realised he would go to jail for a long time, particularly if the women died. As he told one witness, he had nothing to lose.

Mr Moore said that in a call to Detective Sergeant Darryl Brazier, Dixon said: "I've gone too far. I've chopped them both and I'd have killed them if the sword hadn't broken.

"I'm not going back to jail. It's going to be another Aramoana. I'll go out in a blaze of glory - suicide by cop."

Mr Moore said Dixon preferred to be remembered as Auckland's answer to David Gray, who died in the Aramoana shootout with police.

Then the "grandiose", attention-seeking Dixon tried to orchestrate an armed confrontation with officers.

"He had to do something which would draw attention to himself in a way that the police could not ignore."

Dixon cruised quietly into Dunrobin Place in Highland Park, East Auckland, windows down and gun loaded, and engineered a confrontation with Mr Te Aute and his friends.

When they were just metres away, Dixon lifted the gun from the seat of his car and fired, putting 10 bullets into Mr Te Aute's back in just over half a second, said Mr Moore.

Dixon hung round the area making himself obvious, even driving past the scene of the killing, so that he could have his own Aramoana.

Eventually, after a cat-and-mouse game with police, Dixon went to a house in Inchinnam Rd, Flatbush, in search of a perfect spot for an ambush.

But when police would not play along, Dixon decided to take hostages. He held a man captive in his own home all night, before giving himself up.