Police took an interest in a small group of street kids, some as young as 11, known to wander the streets of Waitara late at night. Two Waitara girls connected to this group, both aged 14, duly appeared in the Palmerston North Youth Court on 14 March 2002 jointly charged with unlawfully taking Mr Pigott's vehicle.

The Depositions Hearing, held in the New Plymouth Youth Court, began on 22 May 2002 - three days before we celebrated Tanya's 21st birthday at Dannevirke. 

At this Hearing, it was revealed that a 14-year-old Waitara girl had used Pigott's own hammer to bash him over the back of the head while another distracted him. A third girl briefly left the scene while this was done. As a result, three 14-year-old girls were charged with his murder on or about March 11 and the unlawful taking of his vehicle.

The girls' grandmother had bought them a large bottle of bourbon and the girls had drunk half of it during the afternoon. Then at about 11:00pm on March 10, they saw Pigott's vehicle, with its lights and windscreen wipers working, parked outside a restaurant in Waitara (just around the corner from the pub he had been at), and with the driver asleep inside it. 

Two of the girls opened the unlocked door and removed various  items including his wallet, cellphone, a hammer and the 4WD's keys. Pigott then awoke and angrily demanded the return of his keys. Meanwhile they were thinking about how to steal the vehicle. So as one of the girls distracted his attention, the girl with the hammer went around the vehicle, got behind him and hit him on the head about eight times with the hammer.

The three girls then took turns to drag him to the river, where they kicked him in the head and stomach (breaking his jaw also at some point) before pushing him in the river. Meanwhile a 13-year-old boy who was with them, threw the hammer into the river. They then drove off in Pigott's vehicle. 

Pigott is now believed to have still been alive when he went into the river. However, had he not apparently drowned, the head injuries would also have ultimately killed him.

The girl with the hammer briefly cried as she thought about the possible effects of what she had done (life imprisonment). However, she was soon laughing as she tooted the 4WD's horn as they passed the Waitara Police Station. 

The boy subsequently mentioned being forced to contribute $5.00 for petrol for the vehicle (which in fact ran on diesel!!!), as otherwise the girls weren't going to let him get out of the vehicle near his home.

About 120kms later, the two girls then still travelling in the vehicle had to abandon it when it broke down (because it disliked the aforementioned petrol). The man who subsequently picked them up as hitchhikers (in the dark at about 6:30am), reported them to the Wanganui police after dropping them off elsewhere in the town as he felt suspicious about their behaviour.

The trial of the three girls was set to begin in August 2002. However, on 26 August 2002 - the day the trial was intended to begin - one of the girls, Kararaina Makere Te Rauna (14), decided to plead guilty to manslaughter and to give evidence for the Crown against the other two. She was subsequently sentenced to eight years and nine months prison for manslaughter. Her lawyer then described how she had been a top student living in Palmerston North until her parents split up and she ended up living with her mother in Waitara - where she went off the rails. She had distracted Pigott while he was hit.

The trial of the remaining two girls,  aged 14 and 15 (one having had a birthday in the meantime), began on 28 August 2002. Meanwhile Tanya was having a great time sightseeing at the Toblerone factory in Switzerland.

On 9 September 2002, the 14-year-old, Puti Irene Heather Maxwell, suddenly pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the final stages of the trial. She was remanded for sentencing on 30 September 2002, leaving just the 15-year-old - the one who had used the hammer - still pleading not guilty.

Finally, on 10 September 2002 - as Tanya was onboard a Qantas 747 flying between Heathrow and Sydney -  the last member of the group, Renee Kara O'Brien, was found guilty of murder by the jury.

In summing up, the prosecutor had described O'Brien as: streetwise and older than her years. She had not been to school since 2001, was used to roaming the streets late at night and was an experienced drinker. Her view of life was such that on the night Mr Pigott was killed she left the house of a friend's aunt planning to steal a car. When she got home at 3am, she told her father - who had woken up - that she was going out again and he allowed that. Mr Brewer said a person had to be "pretty far removed from the average 14-year-old" to have the sort of determination needed to strike an adult male repeatedly on the head with a hammer and then rope friends into helping to remove his body.

After the verdict was delivered, Justice John Priestley said that the court had heard a sorry tale of children out on the streets, with access to hard liquor and who drank alcohol regularly. "I rather suspect - I don't have all the facts before me - that there are some adults that need to take a hard look at themselves in light of this tragedy." The taxpayer spent hundreds of millions of dollars on healthcare and financial help for families, but none of that mattered as much as the individual responsibility of parents and responsible adults to guide children through life, he said.

On Monday, September 9th, as Maxwell pleaded guilty to manslaughter, the presses were rolling out Rotorua's Daily Post issue of the day, complete with a smiling photo (below) of John Wharekura. He had been photographed in the streets of Rotorua two days previously as part of a survey of what local residents thought of the fluoridisation of water.

While he was not apparently very interested in water fluoridisation, he did tell someone the day before he killed Tanya that he had seen a copy of the newspaper that contained his photo. I wonder what else he saw in that newspaper? 

Tanya, meanwhile, was at the end of her Contiki trip. She spent the day travelling back from Paris to London. The next day she had her photo taken in the old London Dungeon, with her head and arms in stocks, an executioner's axe poised above her head, and the walls all around her supposedly covered in sprayed blood. This was the last photo she ever posed for. She had five days left to live.

She probably would also have had minimal interest in water fluoridisation at her age. However, ironically, a comment in her autopsy report makes special note of her beautiful teeth! Tanya had enjoyed all the benefits of water fluoridisation. Its just that thanks to Wharekura, she could no longer use the resulting very healthy teeth.

There are grounds to wonder whether those who once made a decision not to fluoridate Rotorua's water (as is still the case), also contributed indirectly to Tanya's death.

On 30 September 2002, Maxwell was sentenced to eight years and three months for Mr Pigott's manslaughter. Pigott's family were angered to learn that as there was no minimum parole period set, she could be free in three years.

O'Brien was finally sentenced in 21 February 2003, after her sentencing was twice delayed waiting for psychiatric reports and background reports to be completed. She received life imprisonment with a ten-year non-parole period.

In sentencing O'Brien, Justice Priestly rejected a plea by her defence lawyer Patrick Mooney for a reduced sentence because of diminished responsibility due to low intelligence. Justice Priestly said neither low intelligence nor mild intellectual impairment were justification to trigger the manifestly unfair argument for a lessened sentence. 

"The diagnosis of conduct disorder is hardly surprising, given your alarming history of alcohol abuse, occasional drug use, aggression, assaults, truancy, defiance of authority, vandalism, misbehaviour, tagging and general antisocial activities. "Miss O'Brien you killed a man. You battered a man senselessly and recklessly. Your conduct that night was of catastrophic consequence of the antisocial behaviour and bad conduct which you have displayed over the previous year or two."

Justice Priestly also recommended to prison authorities that O'Brien's psychological assessments were released to the unit manager and her case manager, that she be immediately seen by a psychologist to address adjustment and other issues and be given an appropriate education programme to address her "lamentable" deficiencies.

In April 2003, the Court of Appeal ruled Maxwell's sentence manifestly excessive and it was reduced to six years. Maxwell had played the lessor role of the three girls.