WINTON, SOUTHLAND. On August the 12th 1895 ‘Southland baby farmer’ Williamina Dean became the first and only woman to be sentenced to death in New Zealand. The name of Minnie Dean lives on, and around that name has grown a legend. Southland children who misbehave are threatened, not with boogeymen, but with being sent to Minnie Dean.

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RUSSELL, BAY OF ISLANDS. In the Bay of Islands, about four kilometres northeast of Russell, you will find Motuarohia Island. A small island of only two kilometres in length. Today, the island exists mostly as a tourist attraction, selling itself with promises of crystal clear waters, sandy beaches and stunning walking tracks. 

Although in 1841, when Aoeteroa was still in its infancy, the island which directly translates to ‘beloved island’ was more infamous than famous. Infamous, for it was the island at the centre of an incident, an event that one newspaper of the time described as a ‘most shocking and inhuman atrocity’.

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MANGERE, AUCKLAND. On the 21st of March 1991, Martin Smith, an ambulance officer was responding to a call about a dead child at an address in Mangere. When he entered the property he found an emaciated two year old girl in the fetal position. She was lying on a filthy, blood covered mattress. The child had extreme scarring on her body appearing to be burns. Similar burns were on her hands and feet with deep bruising covering the remainder of her body. The girl was unresponsive, when Smith knelt down to check her pulse, he discovered she was dead. 

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PAERATA, AUCKLAND. May 19 1992, 7.40am. Police Constable Jeff Stuck answers a 111 emergency call from a hysterical woman. Stuck was unable to extract much information from the woman. She was screaming into the receiver, when suddenly the conversation ended. The phone fell to the ground. Constable Stuck, still listening heard in the background, raised voices of a woman and a man; yelling. Accompanied by a pair of loud gunshots.

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CHRISTCHURCH, CANTERBURY.

June 22, 1954
"The Day of The Happy Event. I am writing a little of this up in the morning before the death. I felt very excited and 'The night before Christmas-ish' last night. I did not have pleasant dreams though. I am about to rise"

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CHRISTCHURCH, CANTERBURY. 22 June 1954. The body of forty-five year old Honora Parker was discovered in Victoria Park, in Christchurch, New Zealand. That morning Honora had gone for a walk through Victoria Park with her daughter Pauline Parker, and Pauline's best friend, Juliet Hulme. Approximately 130m down the path, in a wooded area of the park near a small wooden bridge, Juliet and Pauline bludgeoned Honora Parker to death with half a brick enclosed in an old stocking.

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