Angela Blackmoore's life promising before murder

Monday, 6 November 2023

In early August 1995 Angela Blackmoore, a former sex worker with a difficult history, was getting her life together.

She had nearly completed a parenting course, was looking forward to getting full custody of her two-year-old son and was engaged to university librarian Laurie Anderson. She was also nine weeks pregnant.

But the 21-year-old was denied a better life when on the evening of August 17 she was bludgeoned and stabbed to death by an acquaintance called Jeremy Powell while her little boy slept next door.

The Crown alleged at a trial in the High Court in Christchurch, which started on Monday, that Powell was put up to the murder by David Peter Hawken, 50, for a fee of $10,000, and was helped by Rebecca Wright-Meldrum, 51, a friend of Blackmoore who got Powell into the Wainoni house where she was living.

The pair deny charges of being party to Blackmoore’s murder.

The case has a tortuous past. Despite an intensive police investigation, no one was charged with Blackmoore’s murder until Powell confessed in 2019 after a story by Stuff journalist Blair Ensor and the police offering a $100,000 reward for information.

Powell admitted the murder in a police interview in October 2019 and was sentenced to a 10-year non-parole jail sentence in June 2020.

Hawken and Wright-Meldrum first went on trial in May, but it was aborted after a few days.

In opening for the Crown on Monday, Mitchell McClenaghan said Blackmoore’s life was looking up when she died, while Hawken was a sickness beneficiary who ran a debt collecting business. He was heavily in debt himself, and facing bankruptcy.

He was living with Angela’s former partner William Blackmoore and hoped to get an interest in the Blackmoores’ two properties to raise funds for his own projects, one of which was a Moncks Spur subdivision. The Blackmoores had funded the property purchases with large ACC payments they had received.

Angela stood in the way so Hawken hatched a plan to get rid of her and then get an interest in the properties through his power of attorney from William Blackmoore.

Powell had done some debt collecting for Hawken and was hired for the hit, which he carried out with Wright-Meldrum for payment of $10,000, McClenaghan said.

Angela Blackmoore was very security conscious and Wright-Meldrum’s role was to get Powell into the house. Hawken reneged on paying them the money after the murder.

Powell had lost his nerve on the first attempt in early August 1995, but claimed Hawken, who had links to a bikie gang, told him he would be killed if he didn’t follow through.

McClenaghan said Wright-Meldrum’s phone was monitored from the time police rang to arrange an interview in October 2019. She then phoned her partner to say if she wasn’t home, he could assume she had been arrested.

In other calls, he said, she talked about “going down for it”, about going to jail and “not coming out”

She also called her daughter to tell her to phone Powell as he was going down too, and in another call said “I was there”.

In further calls she talked about getting someone to kill Powell for opening “his big mouth”, saying “we were safe but now we are f….d”.

“This case is over for me. I’m going to take as many f…ers down with me as possible,” she was recorded as saying, McClenaghan said.

She denied being involved in the murder in other calls, saying she was at home and drunk when Powell killed Blackmoore.

McClenaghan said Hawken, in his monitored phone calls, denied ordering the hit but said he knew what had happened and police had arrested the right people. He claimed to have an alibi as he was home with his missus.

Lawyers for both defendants also gave brief opening statements.

Stephanie Grieve, KC, representing Wright-Meldrum, said the key issue for the jury was whether Powell was a credible and reliable witness.

“You will hear that Ms Wright Meldrum worked as a stripper and dancer, and other people in this world were using drugs and had gang connections. These are the sort of things [about which] you need to put prejudice to one side.”

For Hawken, Anne Stevens, KC, said her client had no motive to kill Blackmoore, stood to lose from her murder and had no power over Powell, who enjoyed violence and was depraved, she said.

To questions by Phil Shamy for Wright-Meldrum, the first witness, Detective Sergeant Todd Hamilton, said Detective Inspector Tom Fitzgerald had called Powell in October 2019 to arrange the interview and had been in the monitor’s room when he was interviewed. He had viewed both the interviews with Powell and Wright-Meldrum.

Hamilton said the interviews with Powell and Wright-Meldrum had a relaxed format in keeping with a form of interviewing that Fitzgerald had established for cold cases.

The idea, called CIPEM, was to interview in comfy chairs, with food provided and to get close to the subjects. Fitzgerald was not recorded in the formal notes of the interviews.

Hamilton agreed the technique had been criticised and been renamed Peace Plus.

The case continues.