WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Josiah Rolleston said when he first heard it, he didn’t believe it - it sounded too diabolical, like something out of a crime documentary.

The 15-year-old was getting a feed with two of his buddies at McDonald’s in Manurewa’s Southmall one afternoon five years ago and had decided to also buy food for two girls, ages 16 and 14, who he didn’t know well but recognised as frequently hanging out there.

As he approached the pair to give them their Big Mac and a cheeseburger, he recalled catching the tail end of a conversation they were having with his friend: “Do you know Demitri? Yeah, we killed that bitch.”

The person he recalled having spoken those words is now on trial for the murder of Dimetrius Pairama, who was 17 years old in July 2018 when she was tortured and killed. Jurors returned to the High Court at Auckland today as testimony in the murder trial continued for a third week.

“The way they said it was ugly,” Rolleston recalled of the conversation, which he said took place just one day before news of Pairama’s death “went viral” on social media. “That’s evil.”

Prosecutors allege four people were present in an abandoned Māngere state home when Pairama was repeatedly punched and stomped, forced to disrobe and tied naked to a chair with soiled underwear stuffed into her mouth, burned on sensitive areas of her body with a makeshift blowtorch, had household chemicals poured on top of her, burning her eyes, and was ultimately forced to choose the method of her murder: via hanging or stabbing.

Ashley Winter, then 27, and co-defendant Kerry Te Amo, 24, were both found guilty by a jury the following year. The current and final defendant, who was 16 at the time, did not join the others at that trial. She continues to have name suppression, as does a 14-year-old who was also hit Pairama and served as a lookout during her hanging but was given immunity in exchange for her co-operation with police.

A woman with name suppression is on trial in the High Court at Auckland, accused of having helped kidnap and murder 17-year-old Dimetrius Pairama in July 2018. Photo / Michael Craig

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• Witness: 'Unhinged' woman, not 16yo defendant, orchestrated murder of teen forced to hang herself
• 'Hesitant' or 'keen'? Torture-murder witness changes testimony about defendant's appetite for killing

The current defendant, now 21, has acknowledged through her lawyer that she was present when Pairama was killed and she did participate in some of the torture beforehand. But she was not on board with killing Pairama, going along with it only under duress because she was fearful of dominant, older co-defendant Winter, her lawyer has suggested.

But Rolleston insisted in the witness box today that his interaction with the defendant and the 14-year-old witness did not leave him with an impression they were reluctant or fearful about what happened.

“They didn’t have no remorse or anything,” he said. “They knew they’d done something wrong. It wasn’t right.”

Defence lawyer Philip Hamlin pointed to the witness’ police statement from five years ago, in which Rolleston’s recollection of the conversation appeared less slightly charged. “Oh, she’s dead. We killed her,” Rolleston previously recalled the defendant saying, rather than, “We killed the bitch.”

Rolleston reviewed the statement and agreed that his recollection was slightly different today but insisted that his memory has gotten better over time because he’s had more time to think about it.

“It’s all coming back now,” he said. “I was freaked out about it because we ran into murderers.”

He said it struck him as especially cold that “they had the balls to say it to random people” - him and his mates.

“I’m 100 per cent sure [they said ‘that bitch’] because they had no remorse when they said it,” he testified. “No guilt, no nothing.”

Testimony continues this afternoon before Justice Kiri Tahana and the jury.

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.