Foul, Fiendish, Cruel and Brutal Crime - A Wicked Whangarei Wife-slayer:
Maori spiritual beliefs have always been very important to tangata whenua. Particularly with regard to our waahi tapu, spiritual places, urupa, burial grounds where our tupuna rest and other sacred and historic sites. It is therefore deeply, deeply offensive to discover the evidence of the history of the house which Julian Batchelor currently occupies at Rawhiti and which is the site of Mr Batchelor's unconsented works and breaches of the local bylaws . A woman was murdered in this house by her husband, in front of her children , in a particularly sad, and vicious, attack. The plot thickens however - the murderous husband pleaded not guilty of bashing his wife five or six times in the back of the head with an axe, embedding it about six inches in her skull, in front of the witnesses, because his wife wouldn't give him money. The murderer's favorite son, 13 year old Herbert, witnessed the gruesome deed, before his father shouted "Goodbye" and rushed out