Warning - this story includes distressing details of domestic violence.
A Northland man has been found guilty of murdering his former partner Bridget Simmonds.
The mother of two was reported missing in March 2019, aged 42.
Her body was found buried in a shallow grave in farmland at Parakao, near Whangārei, 15 months later.
Samuel Hemuera Pou has been on trial at the High Court at Whangārei for the last three weeks.
He denied the murder charge, but the Crown alleged he deliberately beat Simmonds to death, punching her and hitting her with a tree branch for up to 90 minutes.
The jury began deliberating late Thursday afternoon.
The victim's family and friends held back tears in the public gallery as the unanimous verdict was read on Friday afternoon.
Pou and his family were subdued.
The Crown also alleged Pou's nephew Te Koha Samuel Pou helped his uncle avoid arrest when police investigated a beating Simmonds suffered on Valentine's Day 2019, just days before she was last seen.
Te Koha Pou was also charged with dishonestly using Simmonds' bank card after she went missing.
The jury unanimously found him guilty of both those charges.
The two men will be sentenced on September 2.
Dozens of witnesses gave evidence in the trial, including Simmonds' mother, police who investigated the case and carried out interviews, and scientists who completed the post-mortem on Simmonds' remains.
In the first week of the trial, the court heard from Pou's former housemate, David Erihe.
He said Pou told him during a drinking session around the time Simmonds went missing he had "wasted her" and "knocked her off" then burned her body.
Pou said he did it "because she was taking him to court for assault", Erihe recalled, and Pou was "blasé" when told to hand himself in.
The court also heard from Simmonds' mother Carol Callen who saw her daughter for the final time in February 2019, about two weeks before she disappeared.
Simmonds had briefly stayed with her mother and asked to be dropped off at a Countdown supermarket in Whangārei.
Callen told the High Court her daughter yelled something at her as she drove away, but she could not make it out at the time.
"After about half an hour's driving, I was trying to figure out in my head what she yelled at me, and I suddenly clicked: 'Oh my God she said 'don't forget my headstone'."
Callen said her daughter was very sore from a beating on Valentine's Day, when she came to stay.
She said her legs were covered "black and blue" with bruises from her hips to her knees.
Pou has previously admitted to assaulting Simmonds twice in the months leading up to her death.
RNZ
