Bloodied baseball bat 'brandished' by boy, Aim hearing told

Published on Tuesday 2 September 2008 22:27

A SECURITY guard told yesterday how a 14-year-old accused of murdering Scottish backpacker Karen Aim brandished the bloodstained murder weapon in front of him.

Leigh Herewini told a court in New Zealand that the accused had fetched the wooden baseball bat from behind a trapdoor at the back of his grandparents' house.

"It had a lot of dents and bits missing off it," he said. "It looked like it had blood on it.

"I felt uncomfortable. It could have been the bat that hurt that girl. He said he had washed it, tried to wash the blood off it."

But the accused, now 15, identified another man as the killer, Mr Herewini told the court.

Naming him as "Brian", the accused said the man had been trying to prove himself to one of New Zealand's most notorious gangs, the Mongrel Mob.

The accusation first came in a phone call from the youngster hours after Ms Aim, 27, from Holm in Orkney, was found dying in Taupo, a lakeside tourist resort where she was on a working holiday.

Mr Herewini, 34, a school security guard who is a friend of the accused, had been called to the scene in the early hours of 17 January when an alarm was triggered by someone smashing windows.

He had seen a policeman kneeling beside Ms Aim, who suffered horrific head injuries, in a pool of blood and was sent by officers to fetch tape to fence off the crime zone.

Later that day came the call from his young friend, he told a committal hearing at Taupo Youth Court.

"He said he knew the person that supposedly done it. He said it was a guy, Brian, a Mongrel Mob prospect from Rotorua.

"He hit her over the head with a baseball bat and he was planning on throwing her into the Waikato River but there was too much traffic around, so he left.

"He told me that Brian had been at his place (the accused's grandparents' house]. He had borrowed a bike, his bike, and a bat."

The following day, Mr Herewini was himself interviewed under caution by the murder squad.

During interviews, he was told by police that a person had been seen riding a distinctive bicycle on security footage at the school minutes before Ms Aim's death.

It was at that point that he gave the accused's name and address to the police. The court has heard that between 19 and 23 January, police put the youth's home under surveillance.

Days later, Mr Herewini told the court, he had visited the house. There, after showing him the bat, the accused told him he had found it in the garden.

"He said he had found it on the back lawn. This guy Brian apparently just threw it on the back yard in the grass.

"I asked him if he thought Brian would turn himself in if he had done this to the girl. He said no."

The hearing also heard yesterday from a forensic scientist who said there was a "very strong" likelihood that DNA found in swabs taken from Ms Aim's inner thighs, and on her underwear, came from the defendant.

Jayshree Patel, a British expert working for a New Zealand laboratory, said it was unclear what sort of cells the DNA found had come from. Tests for semen and saliva had proved negative.

Ms Patel said tests showed the DNA samples could not have come from Mr Herewini.

The hearing, expected to last up to a week, will decide whether there is enough evidence for the accused to be sent for trial.