Memorial to Tanya Burr, 1981-2002

Aspects of Serious Youth Crime in New Zealand in September 2002

(Part Six)

Whangarei murder - September 2002

While these other murders all became very high profile, the killing of eighteen-year-old Richard Harcombe in Whangarei, only days before Tanya's death, seemed to become lost in the rush. Perhaps the country's journalists were simply breaking under the burden of all this carnage. Or perhaps Whangarei, way up in Northland, was simply forgotten for geographic reasons.

However, as John Wharekura grew up in Whangarei and only left the town in late 2001 to move to Rotorua, events there have a distinct connection to Tanya's death. At the very least, it means that four of the town's youth brutally killed in a matter of a single week. As they were all aged sixteen when they killed, perhaps they already knew each other. Certainly they will have known each other since that time.

The few available online media reports on the death of Richard Harcombe, and the two resulting murder trials, give little background on him. An internet search on his name reveals (presumably) one other entry besides those surrounding his death. This was a Northland Secondary Schools sports award he had won while at Kamo High School, Whangarei, in 1999.

A forestry worker, on Friday night 6 September 2002, Harcombe had been with friends to watch an NPC rugby game between Northland and Taranaki. After a few hours in town, he left his friends and set off alone to walk home. At 3:47am, a security camera recorded him buying a pie at a service station, after which he walked along Tarewa Road, near Whangarei's Jubilee Park.

Meanwhile, earlier in the evening, three sixteen-year-old youths, Hori Slade, Norton Maihi and James Hamilton, had been roaming about looking for trouble. They first encountered Jason Jurisich, a builder from Kerikeri who had also been at the rugby. They had asked him for a drink and when he refused, they punched him and then hit him on the back of the head with a hammer. Luckily he survived.

Richard Harcombe was not to be so 'lucky'...

Soon after leaving the service station, Harcombe encountered Slade, Maihi and Hamilton. Evidently Hamilton was the first to attack him, but his two companions soon joined in. The beating, which was described as a "prolonged and vicious attack", continued until Harcombe was completely immobilised, whereupon his three attackers took his wallet, shoes and cellphone and left him for dead lying on a driveway.

Maihi reportedly went his own way (with Harcombe's cellphone and wallet) before the fatal blows were struck and without contributing any himself. This left the other two together. They duly turned up at a house at about 5:00am, where they bragged to a young boy about the extent of the assault they had just committed.

At about 6:00am, Slade and Hamilton, and the young boy, returned on their bicycles (as Hamilton thought he might have left his wallet at the scene) and found Harcombe lying unconscious. Hamilton then proceeded to kick him in the stomach, before they all left again.

About 45 minutes later, a jogger found Harcombe still alive, but in a critical condition. He died in Auckland Hospital on 11 September 2002, as a result of multiple blows to the skull which had caused severe brain injury. This in turn had led to pneumonia.

The three youths were arrested on 8 September, and duly appeared in the Whangarei Youth Court on 9 September, charged with aggravated robbery. They were then held in the police cells as no youth remand beds were available anywhere for them. By the time they were due to reappear in Court on Thursday, 12 September (the day Tanya flew into Wellington from Europe), Harcombe was dead. 

Accordingly the three were then charged with murder. However, only two appeared in the court that day. The third had been relocated to the Lower North Youth Justice Centre, in Kelvin Grove, Palmerston North, less than a kilometre from our family home - and where Tanya also spent the night of 12 September recouperating from jetlag. 

Six days later this youth presumably bumped into a perhaps familiar Whangarei face in the form of John Wharekura, when he arrived at the Youth Justice Centre also - after being charged with killing Tanya.

On 18 September, the other two youths were sent to the Kingslea Youth Justice Centre, Christchurch. Wharekura also arrived there on 19 September, having been hastily removed from Kelvin Grove - which was suddenly deemed a most tactless placement.

By this point presumably Kingslea was bulging at the seams due to all the little killers it was now home to.

On about 2 September 2003 and almost a year after the killing of Harcombe and the bashing of Jurisich (and a week after Wharekura had been sentenced), the trial finally began in the Whangarei High Court. All three youths were by then aged 17, and the trial was expected to take four weeks. However, on 10 September Justice Baragwanath (who Wharekura had pleaded guilty to in Rotorua in May 2003) suddenly aborted the trial and ordered a new one. He also suppressed his reasons for doing this.

The new trial, before Justice Keene, began in February 2004. There were issues of intent to kill, intent to injure that inadvertantly killed, or intent to rob that inadvertantly killed, in this complex case. Essentially the difference was between murder or manslaughter - the latter being the one the killers were trying to claim. Slade claimed that he had not intended to be involved in assaulting Harcombe until he concluded that Harcombe was getting the better of Hamilton. He also claimed he had tried to stop Hamilton kicking and punching Harcombe.

The jury retired on 11 March 2004 to consider the various charges on the two attacks. In due course they convicted Hori Slade and James Hamilton of murder and robbery. Norton Maihi was convicted of manslaughter and robbery. All three were also found guilty of injuring Jason Jurisich with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

The resulting sentences, on 28 May 2004, became the toughest handed down in Northland to that time. James Hamilton  and Hori Slade were sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of seventeen years. Norton Maihi received eight years' imprisonment with a non-parole period of five years. For the earlier attack on Jurisich, all three also received two years' imprisonment, concurrent with the other sentences.

Hamilton and Slade's lengthier sentences had been based on their actions after the initial attack. Instead of offering to help Harcombe, when they returned to the park two hours after the assault, Hamilton had taken the opportunity to kick his unconscious victim once more. Harcombe had also been vulnerable because he was outnumbered and the attack had taken place in the early hours of the morning when there was little chance of anyone coming to his assistance. Furthermore, Slade had been on a 24-hour court-imposed curfew at the time of the attack.

Crown Prosecutor Peter Magee had said, "The depravity and callousness that's also shown by the acts of returning to the scene like a wild animal returning to its prey is such that a normal mind can't comprehend."

Then it emerged that Child, Youth and Family (CYF) had been told that Hamilton was at risk of turning violent, before the attack. A report given to them prior to the incident stated that without extreme intervention Hamilton was likely to progress to higher levels of violence. However CYF believed that it had done all it could.

During initial questioning after the killing, Hamilton had said he didn't think anyone would die, as that level of violence had been inflicted upon him and he had survived. Presumably then some other person or people hiding in the background of Hamilton's childhood, should also have been in the dock with him.

The Police believed that this case carried a message: "It's a big wake up call to parents. If your young teenagers are out late at night and (in the) early hours of the morning there's that real potential to be either victims or the offenders of a tragedy like this," Senior Sergeant Chris Scahill said.

As Tanya would add - if she could - potential victims of young teens don't even need to be 'out', to become their victims.

That, however, was not the end of the story. In October 2004, lawyers for Hamilton and Slade requested that the Court of Appeal reduce their seventeen-year minimum non-parole periods. Hamilton's lawyer told the court that while the life sentence was fair, this minimum term would reduce Hamilton's chances of rehabilitation. He accepted that Hamilton had returned after the robbery and kicked Harcombe again, but said this had not contributed to his death.

Of course it didn't exactly help Harcombe either!

Although at time of writing this page (23 October 2004), the outcome of this appeal has not apparently been announced, the report on Hamilton that was passed to CYF prior the killing provides an interesting perspective. If Hamilton was considered virtually doomed to violence prior to killing, isn't the general public then deserving of having him locked up for even longer than seventeen years?

To be continued...