Kidnapper pressured to admit strangling woman
THE man jailed for kidnapping Rae Portman has repeatedly told a jury that he did not kill her.
Lee Rigby was convicted and jailed for his role in the offending after admitting to driving to Hamilton in Portman’s car while she was bound and gagged in the boot.
Paraire ‘‘Friday’’ Hori Te Awa, 33, is accused of kidnapping and murdering the 33-year-old woman known as ‘‘Bok’’. Dean Michael Addison, 36, is charged with kidnapping her, along with drug offences. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Ms Portman was reported missing in June last year and her body was found in a pit at the back of a rural Ardmore address three months later.
Rigby told the High Court at Auckland yesterday how he drove Ms Portman’s car to Hamilton in convoy with Te Awa because he had been threatened by the murder accused.
Once there, Rigby said he watched Te Awa strangle her to death with a makeshift noose as she sat in the boot of her car in a dimly-lit industrial area.
Defence counsel Peter Kaye said Rigby’s story was a ‘‘fabrication’’.
‘‘Did you not only kidnap Rae Portman, but did you kill her? You know quite a few details, don’t you?’’
Rigby flatly denied murder but was pressed by Mr Kaye on why he did not drive away from Te Awa or call the police when he had the chance.
‘‘When [Te Awa’s] an angry man, he’s a man on a mission. You’ve got to understand that when he speaks in that tone he’s got to be taken seriously and it’s for the long term too,’’ Rigby said.
He said he regretted his actions.
‘‘There was a lot of opportunity through these events I could’ve got help and that’s why they charged me with kidnapping,’’ he said.
‘‘There were many times when thought about driving away but didn’t.’’
Mr Kaye said the pair drove to Hamilton simply to take the car to the wreckrs and Ms Portman’s body had not in fact been in the boot.
He suggested she was killed over ‘‘drug rip-offs’’ but Rigby said he did not have anything to do with Ms Portman’s drug dealings.
In April Rigby was given a reduced sentence of three years and nine months after agreeing to assist police with their investigation.
‘‘You were interested in doing the best possible deal you could as far as you were concerned,’’ Mr Kaye said. I I
‘‘Right from the start I’ve been interested in doing the right thing,’’ Rigby replied.
‘‘I’ve always co-operated with the police from the word go.’’
The witness will be eligible for parole in a year –a large incentive to ‘‘carry on with his story’’, Mr Kaye said.
‘‘Putting incentive aside I’d still be doing this,’’ Rigby said. The 33-year-old Auckland man told the court he had had a serious methamphetamine addiction for five years before he was jailed. He smoked P twice on the day he kidnapped Ms Portman.
But he denied any suggestion that using the drug made him violent.
‘‘You’re the one that when you get on the meth loses control and goes crazy, off your head ... It makes you speed up. You’re apt to lose your temper and lose your cool. Aren’t you?’’ Mr Kaye asked.
‘‘I don’t lose my temper. You can’t portray me like Antonie Dixon. Far from it,’’ Rigby said.
Dixon, one of New Zealand’s most notorious criminals, maimed two women with a samurai sword and fatally shot a man during a P-fuelled crime spree in 2003. He killed himself in prison in 2009.
The trial, in front of Justice Kit Toogood, will restart on Monday and is expected to last three weeks.