Attacker’s dark history is revealed
Colin Jack Mitchell faced charges for the rape of another woman as well as the Riverhead quarry attack at his recent trial, reports Tommy Livingston.
Colin Jack Mitchell’s unravelling began with two misplaced gloves and ended with six guilty verdicts on his 60th birthday. While over the past three weeks, Stuff has been able to report on his trial for an attack on a woman at a quarry in Riverhead in northern Auckland, there was a large portion of the court case that was suppressed.
What the jury knew and the public didn’t was that Mitchell was also being tried for a range of other charges relating to a rape from 1992, and that he had other rape convictions. Mitchell was found guilty of all the charges he faced – including those relating to the 1992 rape – on Thursday.
The trail heard that when police began DNA testing the evidence found at the Riverhead quarry last year, two black gloves produced a match with DNA collected from the unsolved 1992 rape.
In court, Mitchell fought the allegations relating to the 1992 rape and the more recent Riverhead attack. He claimed in 1992 he had consensual sex with the woman. For the Riverhead charges he went further, arguing he was not the attacker at all – despite his DNA being at the scene.
It was also revealed at trial that in 1985 he was charged with raping a prostitute. He was convicted of rape, sodomy and indecent assault at the time.
Last week, the 1992 victim came face to face with Mitchell. She waived her right to be hidden from the accused’s sight, instead choosing to stare her attacker straight in the eyes when she came to give evidence.
While 25 years had passed since the ordeal, she recalled it in great clarity. On the night of the rape, she had been drinking at Ponsonby’s Glue Pot bar at a Blues Brothers review. After the gig, she began to walk home along Great North Rd. At one point, a Polynesian man pulled over and asked if she wanted a ride, which she declined.
‘‘I carried on walking and I got down a bit further towards where Western Springs and MOTAT is ... Another man stopped and asked if I wanted a ride. I said yes to this one.’’
Shivering and wanting to get home, the woman accepted the ride. The man behind the wheel was Mitchell. He dropped her off near Rosebank Rd.
The man turned around at the end of the road and drove back past her. The woman began walking towards the main road, when she thought she saw a man in the distance. ‘‘I walked a little bit more. He was there again. He punched me in the face and in the head.’’
The woman told the court that after the man hit her, he tried to put her in a headlock. ‘‘He started to walk me. I told him to let go and f .... off and all this sort of thing. I think I may have bit him.’’
That man was Mitchell. Mitchell walked the woman behind a factory, where he assaulted and raped her.
The woman said that at the time she believed the police did not take her complaint seriously.
‘‘I had the feeling they were not believing what I was telling them, that I had done something stupid and therefore paid the price.
Last year, officers visited the woman again with news she never thought she’d hear – her attacker had been found. ‘‘I went to the station to make another statement. It was nice, it was relaxed. It was easy. I didn’t feel like I was being judged,’’ she said.
At trial, when questioned about the rape, Mitchell told the jury he had consensual sex with the woman. That they had discussed having sex after he offered to give her a ride and that the act took place in the back of his car. However, on Thursday, Mitchell was found guilty of the abduction, assault and intended sexual assault of a young woman at the Riverhead quarry last year.
He was also found guilty of the rape and abduction of the woman in 1992. Mitchell will be sentenced for the Riverhead attack and the 1992 rape in May, in front of Justice Sally Fitzgerald. The Crown indicated it is likely to seek a sentence of preventative detention.