Warning: This story refers to domestic violence

When police found a woman dead in a West Auckland home, bleeding from the mouth but with no other apparent injuries, they didn’t yet declare it a crime scene.

The woman had been highly intoxicated, had recently suffered increasingly severe health issues due to not taking her epilepsy medication and appeared suicidal, the man who called 111 on June 9 last year informed them.

But the situation quickly changed the next day when a preliminary exam of the woman’s body revealed a brain bleed, prosecutor Ruby van Boheemen told jurors in the High Court at Auckland today as the man’s murder trial began.

Neither the defendant nor the woman who died can yet be identified pending a name suppression hearing tentatively set for tomorrow.

“The night [she] died was not an isolated incident of violence,” van Boheemen told the 11 man, one woman jury during a lengthy opening address today.

“It was the result of what had been happening for a long time.

“[The woman] was in a toxic and volatile relationship with [the defendant].”

The completed post-mortem examination revealed at least 20 injuries on the woman, including what appeared to be defensive wounds to her forearms, the prosecutor said.

Six were to different areas of the woman’s head, the pathologist found.

But it remains a circumstantial case in which authorities cannot exclude the woman dying from a fall during an epileptic seizure, the defence countered.

The defendant has pleaded not guilty to murder, as well as charges of strangulation and violating a protection order stemming from an alleged incident two months before the woman’s death.

Emergency responders arrived at the small cabin - made from a converted shipping container - just before 1am on June 9, 2024 after the defendant called 111 stating he awoke to find the woman cold and lifeless in his lounge.

Police and forensic staff at the West Auckland address where a woman died in June 2024. Photo / Alex Burton

But his story quickly evolved, prosecutors said.

He allegedly told one officer that he didn’t check on her when she came in hours earlier because he was trying to sleep and he could tell she was drunk, but he then told another officer that they had been in an argument.

“I know it looks bad,” he is alleged to have said as police took him to the station later that morning for a voluntary interview.

Prosecutors described a “complex” on-and-off relationship in which he helped care for her after her epilepsy diagnosis a decade earlier.

But it was also marred by repeated reports of violence - and seemingly just as many retractions from the woman - which prosecutors described as signs of a woman trapped in an abusive relationship.

Both were prone to jealously and the woman knew how to “push his buttons”, prosecutors said. Jurors are expected to hear from health professionals, and others who reported outcries from the woman, as well as what was described as private notes the woman wrote to herself alluding to domestic violence.

“[She] told people she was scared [the defendant] was going to kill her,” van Boheemen said.

Jurors are expected to hear from a witness who contacted police in June 2019 to report seeing the defendant punch the woman in the mouth during a loud argument inside their car. Police went to the woman’s house but no charges were filed after she denied having been hit.

Two months later, both the defendant and the woman showed up at a hospital and the defendant said he needed help for anger issues.

The woman showed up on her own four hours later and elaborated, saying that he had previously tried to strangle her, threatened to kill her and had fractured multiple bones of hers, witnesses are expected to say.

But when a hospital employee called police a few days later, she recanted.

Police and forensic staff at the address in West Auckland where a man says he awoke to find a lifeless woman. The man is now on trial for murder. Photo / Alex Burton

The following year, the defendant pleaded guilty to assaulting the woman in an unrelated incident in which he kicked her legs and picked her up by the hair before throwing her to the ground.

On the night of her death, the woman had arrived at the defendant’s home about 9pm and it appears an argument started after the defendant accused her of infidelity, prosecutors said.

He “saw red”, beating her to death before going into the adjoining bedroom and spending the next hour or so going through her phone looking for evidence to back up his suspicion, van Boheemen told jurors.

“This is not a case about a woman who died from epilepsy,” she said.

“This is not a case about a woman who fell over.

“This is a case about domestic violence. This is a case about a woman who was beaten to death by her partner.”

Defence lawyer Ian Brookie gave a much shorter opening statement, as is generally required in jury trials. He described the Crown opening as “bold” but likely unable to hold up under the jury’s scrutiny over the next three to four weeks.

If there were discrepancies regarding what his client told police, it would have been because adrenaline was coursing through his body and he was in shock, he said.

Defence lawyer Ian Brookie.

“He was highly upset and still panicking at the aggressive suggestion,” he said of his client’s follow-up police interview days later, when the results of the post-mortem exam were explained to him.

“He did not know how she died and he still doesn’t.”

While it was known the woman died of a head injury and the relationship between the two was on the rocks, that doesn’t amount to murder, he said.

He pointed out that the woman was so intoxicated that it was “at the lower part of the range of enough to kill you”.

That, when added to her increasingly frequent seizures, adds to the likelihood she died from a fatal fall, he said.

While his client admits he punched the woman in 2020, that’s not an automatic pass to assume he committed an act magnitudes worse on the night of her death, Brookie added.

“It says little about what happened that night,” he said.

The trial is set to continue tomorrow morning before Justice Simon Mount and the jury.

How to get help:
If you're in danger now:
• Phone the police on 111 or ask neighbours or friends to ring for you.
• Run outside and head for where there are other people. Scream for help so your neighbours can hear you.
• Take the children with you. Don't stop to get anything else.
• If you are being abused, remember it's not your fault. Violence is never okay.
Where to go for help or more information:
• Women's Refuge: Crisis line - 0800 REFUGE or 0800 733 843 (available 24/7)
• Shine: Helpline - 0508 744 633 (available 24/7)
• It's Not Ok: Family violence information line - 0800 456 450
• Shakti: Specialist services for African, Asian and Middle Eastern women and children.
• Crisis line - 0800 742 584 (available 24/7)
• Ministry of Justice: For information on family violence
• Te Kupenga Whakaoti Mahi Patunga: National Network of Family Violence Services
• White Ribbon: Aiming to eliminate men's violence towards women.
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Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.