Car driver convicted of 1983 Picton murder

Press, 4 December 1985, Page 4

Car driver convicted of 1983 Picton murder

Nelson reporter The driver of a car from which a gang leader was fatally shot in 1983 was found guilty of murder by a jury in the High Court at Nelson yesterday. Mr Justice Quilliam sentenced James Kehu Wehi, aged 28, a contractor, tb life imprisonment. The jury returned its verdict after deliberating for 90 minutes. Wehi had denied a charge of murdering John Michael Little between Picton and Waikawa Bay on August 26, 1983, and an alternative charge of being an accessory to the murder. The Nelson trial was the second for Wehi after a mistrial was declared at Blenheim last year. Mr R. B. Squire appeared for the Crown and Mr Brian McClelland, Q.C., and Miss P. Costigan for Wehi. Mr Squire, in both his opening and closing addresses, said there' was no dispute about the fact that Little was murdered on August 26 by a Shane Hamilton, a passenger in Wehi’s car and a former president of the Black Power gang. Hamilton had been convicted of the murder.

It was the Crown’s case that Wehi was a party to the murder. He ana Hamilton and two companions set out from Christchurch at 4 a.m. to travel to Waikawa Bay where Little resided. They were going there to confront Little who was the President of the Mongrel lob with headquarters in Waikawa Bay. Little was known to be wearing a Black Power patch, upside

down, on the seat of his jeans and the four set out to recover the patch and deal with him. Twenty-five witnesses were called by the Crown. They gave evidence of the four men leaving Christchurch on August 26, about 4 a.m., of travelling to Blenheim, then to Picton and to Waikawa Bay where the green Vauxhall car in which they travelled was for a time parked in the driveway of a house occupied at times by Little. There was also evidence of the Vauxhall car stopping on the roadside close to Queen Charlotte College alongside Little’s white Mk II Zephyr car, putting the passenger in the Vauxhall, Hamilton, alongside Little, the driver of the Zephyr. Kela Te Atatu Manawatu, of Blenheim, said she was in the car with Little when he was killed. They were travelling back towards Waikawa Bay from Picton when a green car passed them going in the opposite direction. She then noticed this car had turned around and was behind them. Both cars stopped on the side of the road until they were only about 30cm apart. Little, known as Stretch, talked with Hamilton for about five minutes about the Mongrel Mob after Hamilton had said he was a member of the Mongrel Mob from the North Island. Then she said she heard a shot and turning round saw Little had been shot and the Vauxhall was taking off towards Picton. She confirmed that Little had been wearing a Black Power patch on the seat of his jeans for about a month.

A police armourer, Graham Ross Hewitt, gave evidence of his examination of a cut-down Russian-built .22 rifle, which had been made into a pistol. He described the trigger mechanism as unsafe and unreliable and the pistol as crude but functional. Other police witnesses described the stopping of the Vauxhall car and the subsequent search of an area to which Wehi had taken the police. The pistol, wrapped in Wehi’s jacket, was found here. Bruce Gavin Meikle said that up to August, 1985, he was a detective stationed at Blenheim. He told of his interview with Wehi. He warned him in the usual manner and Wehi said he would not say anything until he had seen his lawyer. In subsequent conversations he had asked Wehi if ire knew of the fight that “Stretch” had been in in Christchurch a few weeks earlier, and Little’s tearing off a Black Power patch. Wehi said: “No, but that could have been the reason why he was wasted: like a family, you know, look after each other. Stretch had it coming for a long time. He asked for it for a long time.” Later, when asked if he was travelling in the opposite direction when the two cars met, Detective Meikle said Wehi said: “Yeah, well I nearly hadn’t turned around but it might have been me if I hadn’t,” and as Wehi said this he indicated with his finger a pistol pointing at his middle. Wehi said that he had stopped the car beside Stretch “but I didn’t pull the trigger. There’s a time and place, eh. I wasn’t calling the shots. If I had it wouldn’t have happened then. If I had it would have been different and youse guys wouldn’t have got us." Detective Meikle was closely cross-examined by Mr McClelland on the way he recorded Wehi’s answers. He agreed that towards the end of the interview he had not written down the answers as Wehi had given them. In his address Mr McClelland said the Crown was contending that Wehi, not a member of the Black Power gang, set off deliberately

from Christchurch in the small hours of the morning with his companions to murder Little at Waikawa Bay. • “He must have been as mad as a hatter if he knew Hamilton was going to blow this man’s head off. They may well have been going to deal with Little, but not to shoot him. Possibly to beat his head in and get the patch back. If they were after the patch they didn’t get it because they didn’t stop to take it.” To get a patch was one thing, but “do you think that Wehi would go to Picton with Hamilton who would use that pistol the way he did with Little’s girlfriend sitting alongside him? And

there was no attempt to shoot her,, or take her away with them? If this was a planned murder as the Crown says it was, there wasn’t much planning about it,” Mr McClelland said. He cautioned the jury to be careful of accepting Mr Meikle’s evidence of Wehi’s answers at the interview. He said the gun might have 4 been 'used as a frightener but .it wasn’t the sort of gun that would be used to kill anyone. Did Wehi know there was a gun in the car that day? Did he know that. Hamilton was going to murder Little? The Crown had not proved this beyond a reasonable doubt, said Mr McClelland.