Man for trial in threat to kill

Press, 12 May 1987, Page 4

Man for trial in threat to kill

“Do you want a quick death.or a slow one?” a Christchurch man asked a woman in one of four letters he wrote to her, the woman told a depositions hearing at the Christchurch District Court Roland Cecil Honniwell, aged 28, appearing before Messrs J. H. Christensen and D. Wilson, Justices of the Peace, pleaded not guilty to four charges of threatening to kill on January 11,12, 24 and 27. Sergeant Gordon Moore said Honniwell had been living as a boarder at a private address with the complainant, and a rela-

tionship had developed. Sergeant Moore said that when the relationship ended and Honniwell was evicted, he began writing the letters.

In the letters, read by the complainant, whose name was suppressed, Honniwell said,“Do you want a quick death or a slow one?” and “I also meant it when I said your daughter had to die.” The daughter’s name was also suppressed. Honniwell wrote, “I’m not worried if you hand this (letter) to the police — that will only make me more determined,” and that the complainant

would have to watch while he cut her daughter “into small bits.”

The complainant said she had felt threatened by the letters, “more so for my daughter.” “I really thought he would have done it,” she told the Court

Counsel for Honniwell, Mr John Halls, in crossexamination asked the complainant whether she had received other letters from Honniwell.

“Yes,” she said, “quite a few.”

Mr Halls also asked whether there had been intimacy in the relationship at any time. “Once or twice. He actually came into the bedroom with a knife ...” Ruth Ameena Jarvis, a document technician from Police Headquarters, Wellington, told the Court that Honniwell was responsible for writing the letters before the Court.

Honniwell was remanded in custody to May 29 for trial in the District Court.