Sentencing for murder of Wellington mum

  • Breaking
  • 22/10/2013

A Jamaican national who brutally murdered his former partner after waiting in the roof cavity of her home for hours has been imprisoned for life.

For what Justice Ronald Young called a carefully planned and merciless killing, he sentenced Ernest Smith to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years when he appeared in the Wellington High Court today.

Smith, 39, murdered his former partner mother-of-two Amanda Taufale in her Tawa home on November 14 last year. He pleaded guilty to her murder last month.

Ms Taufale had a nine-month old son with Smith as well as a 15-year-old son from a previous relationship.

Justice Young called the killing a "particularly brutal, callous murder by an intruder of a woman who was asleep in her own home".

"This was a killing without mercy; a killing of a woman who had borne you a child."

Justice Young said Ms Taufale and Smith, who met in the Cayman Islands, had separated in 2012 and arrangements had been made for him to visit their son only by prior arrangement and in the company of a family member.

She had asked him to return his keys to her Sunrise Blvd home, but he did not.

Before the murder Smith fashioned a makeshift hood and left his Karori home with gloves, a knife, a battery-operated drill and screws.

He parked his car at the railway station in Tawa and walked the short distance to Ms Taufale's home.

Once inside her home, he used a ceiling hatch to get into the roof space. He tied strapping to the rafters to enable him to climb back up without being detected and drilled holes in the hatch cover so he could close it from the inside.

For hours, he waited.

He waited until Ms Taufale and the two boys had gone to sleep and climbed down from the roof cavity. Smith entered the master bedroom with the knife and during a violent struggle stabbed and cut Ms Taufale at least 17 times before he throat was slit.

Smith then went into another room in the house and tried to make the killing look like the result of a break-in.

He returned to his car and threw the knife into a nearby stream. However, his carefully planned crime began to unravel after he wasn't able to find his car keys. He instead went back to the house and took Ms Taufale's car.

Ms Taufale's son found her on the floor the next morning.

Smith's defence lawyer told the court her client was "deeply sorry a million times" and was still trying to come to terms with what he had done.

A pre-sentence report said Smith was brought up in a dysfunctional family in Jamaica and had difficulty reading and writing.

He said he went to the house to commit suicide, but Justice Young said that did not match the facts of the case because it was difficult to understand why he took the knife, waited in the roof and tried to disguise the crime.

Crown prosecutor Grant Burston said the murder was calculated with a high level of brutality -something which Justice Young agreed with.

"You left Miss Taufale to bleed to death knowing she would be likely discovered by her 15-year-old son. One can only imagine the trauma he must have suffered."

Victim impact statements from family had told of their "terrible loss" and the how kindness the family showed to Smith was repaid with her murder.

Outside court, Ms Taufale's uncle Ralph Jorgensen read a statement on behalf of the family said the family were relieved by the guilty plea and the sentence.

"Though they cannot forget what happened, today's sentencing means they can now put this very dark period behind them and get their lives back together again."

The family also thanked police, victim support and friends for their support.

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source: newshub archive