A court has heard gruesome details of the murder of Rotorua woman Michelle Hoffman-Tamm.
Her friend and lover Gwenda Sloane admitted killing Ms Hoffman-Tamm and mutilating her corpse before dumping it more than 120km away.
With one quiet word - guilty - Sloane admitted the gruesome murder of her friend of more than 20 years, a friend who had recently become her lover.
Then there were the details of how she stabbed Ms Hoffman-Tamm more than 30 times, bashed her over the head, then cut off her ears and put one in the victim's mouth.
Family members in court cried in quiet horror.
"We'd been told how, to a degree, and the basic outline I suppose, but not in detail like what was read out today,” says daughter Monique Hoffman-Tamm. “That was a shock."
Ms Hoffman-Tamm went to visit a friend on November 7, but then redirected after getting a text from Sloane.
After drinking together, they had sex. But at some point Sloane became angry because, she says, she caught Ms Hoffman-Tamm stealing $20 from her wallet.
"She wouldn't have hurt a soul,” says Ms Hoffman-Tamm's daughter. “She wouldn't have. She didn't deserve what happened at all. And to the extent of what happened, nobody deserves that - no one at all."
The court heard how Sloane went to bed after the attack and spent the next day drinking. She eventually wrapped the mutilated body in black plastic bags and drove more than 120km in her parents' station wagon, looking for a place to dump it.
As police investigated the disappearance, Sloane became a suspect when her stories didn't match. Two weeks after the killing, she confessed.
The police said they would have never found the body if Sloane hadn't taken them to it.
Now, Ms Hoffman-Tamm's daughter says she's trying to stay strong for her own children. She has a fresh “Michelle” tattoo on her arm as a tribute.
"Come night time it's dark and it's lonely and you think of everything that's missing. And the major thing that's missing is mum, and that's a void that will never ever be filled or fixed."
Sloane will be sentenced in February.
3 News
source: newshub archive
