Slain mum Kim Richmond's texts reveal the breakdown of relationship with Cory Jefferies

Cory Jefferies has today been found guilty of murdering his partner Kim Richmond. Natalie Akoorie and Belinda Feek investigate the months leading up to the Waikato mother's death.

The cracks were beginning to show months before Kim Richmond was killed by her partner.

An unhappy relationship with Cory Jefferies was coming to a head, detailed in text messages to best friend, Barbara Cottingham.

"Long story short," Richmond wrote on June 1, 2016, two months before her death. "He [Jefferies] ended up at Alfons and Heather's pissed as f***. He was an a**hole to me and said a whole lot of stuff after I left which Alfons [Te Brake] has told me about.

"He [Te Brake] saw a whole different side to Cory which I don't think he was very impressed with."

The Te Brake property neighboured the farm Richmond and Jefferies were sharemilkers on at Arohena, a tiny Waikato farming settlement.

For a long time, the two couples were close.

They regularly socialised at each other's homes and together, at the Arohena Hall, as part of the Arohena Social Club.

They went on annual trips to the tennis in Auckland. Sport was a common interest - Richmond, Jefferies and Alfons Te Brake competed in triathlons.

But at some point the lines blurred. And Richmond's feelings for Alfons Te Brake went beyond friendship.

One night, in November 2015, when the couples were drinking at Richmond and Jefferies' Mangare Rd farmhouse, Te Brake and Richmond met in the hallway.

He stepped to avoid her but Richmond put her arms around him.

During the next six months the pair stole secret moments, kissing and cuddling, and considering their options if their relationships with their spouses broke down.

It's not clear how but Jefferies knew about the romance early and in February 2016 he told Heather Te Brake, who also knew of the dalliance, he wanted to kill Richmond.

"You don't mean that," she said. "I do," Jefferies replied.

On another occasion he told Alfons Te Brake he "wanted her gone".

By May Jefferies' demeanour was changing. Both he and Heather Te Brake had confronted their spouses but they repeatedly denied an affair.

Friend Mark Dixon said Jefferies was under pressure as his 26-year relationship to the mother of his three children began to collapse.

"He told me that things between him and Kim weren't too good, and that was the reason why he was perhaps not himself," Dixon said during Jefferies' trial for murder last week.

"Cory was a pretty happy-go-lucky successful businessman and a pretty well-liked person in the area and I had seen his character change a little bit and was concerned as a friend."

When Heather Te Brake noticed a text message to her husband from Richmond saying: "I saw you", she confronted the other woman.

"I told her to f*** off and she wasn't welcome at my house anymore."

Heather, left, and Alfons Te Brake, Cory Jefferies and Kim Richmond at the ASB Classic in Auckland. The four friends were tight before Richmond disappeared in July 2016. Photo / Facebook

The situation was intensified by money woes; Jefferies and Richmond owned a farm in neighbouring Wharepapa South and had an $80,000 overdraft due to a low dairy industry payout.

Jefferies admitted to police he kissed another woman before Richmond's death, but "couldn't remember her name".

He again told Alfons Te Brake he wanted to "f***** kill the bitch". Richmond was surprised by the threats but shrugged them off as not serious.

On July 7, three weeks before Richmond's death, the couple split.

The next day Jefferies himself spread rumours of Richmond and Te Brake's affair.

"He turned up at my house, at my kitchen window, just before 8am," Cottingham told the High Court at Hamilton.

"He just seemed agitated and under a lot of pressure and stress."

Cottingham ushered Jefferies to the back door, out of sight of her children.

"I thought he was a bit paranoid and I was shocked because I had seen Kim three times that week and she had never mentioned anything about [the affair]."

Jefferies told Cottingham he had incriminating photos but that was a lie.

He then drove around looking for Alfons Te Brake, who had been "trying hard not to have an affair" with Richmond.

"He mentioned along the lines that he was going to f*** up my life and Kim's," Te Brake told the court. "I said, 'You go and help yourself'. I didn't ask him how he was going to do it."

Soon after Jefferies penned an apology letter to Richmond.

"Dear Kim, I am so sorry for what I have done, the way I have treated you and things I have said to you and other people but sometimes I am a dickhead ...

"... I would like us to try one more time for us and the kids because we have made mistakes but we have come a long way together and worked hard to get where we are today as a team and I don't want to lose that or you ..."

Richmond told Cottingham the week before her death she believed the letter was heartfelt and it made her decision over whether to leave Jefferies permanently more difficult.

When asked by police if he had ever assaulted Richmond, Jefferies said he never beat her up, only once had he dragged her by the arm in front of their son.

"She was too f***ing beautiful to touch."

Rural community

A signpost at Arohena in the Otorohanga District shows how isolated the farming community is where Kim Richmond and Cory Jefferies lived. Photo / Natalie Akoorie

Now 46, Jefferies' silence and cover-up of the killing of one of Arohena's own has rocked the tight-knit farming community.

"It's shocking what's happened. It's terrible what Cory did and not to own up," one resident said.

Arohena sits 40km east of Te Awamutu and 31km northwest of Mangakino, in the Otorohanga District, population 170.

Magpies and the occasional tractor break the monotony of windy, narrow roads.

The hilly paddocks are dotted with dense bush, boulders and cliffs.

Farmhouses give way to implement sheds, busy now at the height of calving, as they were when Richmond disappeared.

There is no township, no shops or even footpaths. Only a small school, a hall where the social club meets, a church and a playcentre, all built by locals.

The closest supermarket is in Te Awamutu and the nearest city, Hamilton, is at least a 50-minute drive north.

The artificial Lake Arapuni runs alongside the eastern boundary, formed as part of a hydroelectricity scheme on the Waikato River.

Richmond and Jefferies were pivotal in the community. Trusted members of the social club, they held a key to the hall.

Their spare time revolved around their primary- and secondary-school-aged children.

"They were fully involved with their children and that's the saddest part," the resident said.

"It's very sad because they [were] very community-minded people. They were very well-liked. Willing to help get [stuck] in."

An extensive search found no trace of Richmond, who went missing on July 31, 2016.

"That's the worst part I think. He didn't say that he did it, owned up and all that cost of anguish to the children, her parents, the district, the people looking for her, the [police], people in their helicopters, everyone searching for her and he knew what he did.

"He wasn't honest enough to say 'I did it'."

Jefferies' story, that the couple returned from the Chiefs versus Hurricanes Super Rugby semifinal barbecue at the Arohena Hall before Richmond abruptly drove off in the wee hours, was plausible.

"When you do drive at night in winter it can be very foggy, wet and everything and it is quite easy for someone to go off the road."

The route from Arohena Hall along Pukewhau Rd to Mangare Rd takes about five minutes to drive.

During the day the drive offers peeks across the valley, but it would have been dark and deserted that night - Richmond and Jefferies were last to leave.

The couple, who consumed six beers and 12 premixed drinks between them during eight hours at the hall, apparently argued over a song.

It was just past the Te Brake home on the corner of Pukewhau and Mangare roads that police say the ute stopped.

Using the GPS co-ordinates of Jefferies' cellphone, police tracked the ute driving toward Lake Arapuni at 3.48am.

By 4.17am the phone was moving back toward Mangare Rd, at a walking pace. It pinged from the house at 6.30am.

Jefferies keeps low profile

When Richmond supposedly vanished, Jefferies set his story in motion.

He sent a text message to Cottingham asking if she had seen Richmond. No, she had not.

Ten hours after he claimed to have seen Richmond driving off at 3.30am that Sunday, he texted Richmond's cellphone: "What time are you back?"

He let his then 7-year-old daughter text her mother asking her to come home, knowing she never would.

More than 24 hours after Richmond was killed and driven off a boat ramp at Arapuni Landing, Jefferies rang Richmond's mother asking if she'd seen or heard from her eldest daughter.

Of course, she hadn't.

It was her mother Raywynne Richmond who reported the disappearance to police, a day later on Tuesday, August 2.

Jefferies never searched, despite the mammoth effort going on for weeks and involving most of his friends and neighbours.

He did not attend a community meeting with police to discuss Richmond's disappearance and when her parents fronted a police press conference to help find their beloved daughter, Jefferies was nowhere to be seen.

Jefferies let the story of Richmond deserting her family in the middle of a cold, wet winter's night, at the height of the calving season, go on until he was arrested the day before her funeral, almost a year later.

His phone's GPS co-ordinates helped police unravel the case.

So did Richmond's Fitbit, recording a final heartbeat at 3.43am that day, either because her heart stopped or the Fitbit came off in a struggle with Jefferies. A broken strap was eventually found in the ute.

The data led police back to Lake Arapuni for a second search and on June 15 last year they hauled Richmond's silver Ford Ranger out of the water.

In court last week Jefferies admitted killing Richmond, but maintained it was manslaughter and not murder.

After two years, the ruse was up.

Red roses for Kim

Kim Louise Richmond was a loved member of the tiny Arohena community. Her killing has devastated family and friends alike. Photo / Supplied

The last, violent minutes of Richmond's life might never be known.

When Detective Constable James Walker told the court Richmond's badly decomposed body was discovered in the back seat of her ute, in the foetal position, with no clothes covering her torso - her singlet and Highlanders jersey wrapped tightly across the back of her neck - her mother and sister sobbed in the public gallery.

As Justice Sally Fitzgerald summed up the case that has captivated the nation, friends and family wore red roses, the 42-year-old's favourite flower.

Back in Arohena, residents closed ranks. They won't discuss how crushed the community is over the shocking revelation Jefferies "did it".

One of Jefferies' own supporters said she felt "betrayed" when he confessed to the killing.

A farmer said he shuddered to think how many times his family launched their boat at Arapuni Landing, only to discover they were "driving over the top of her".

Now, a small white cross bearing the name Kim Richmond marks the site in her memory.