Warning: This story includes disturbing content.
The Crown has closed its case against a pair accused of what it calls the "barbaric" torture and murder of an Auckland teenager.
Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
Ashley Shane Winter, 29, and Kerry Te Amo, 26, have been on trial in the High Court at Auckland for the past three weeks.
They are accused of murdering Dimetrius Pairama, a rough sleeper whose body was found in a drum at an abandoned state house in Māngere last July.
The court has heard the 17-year-old was beaten, stripped naked, burnt and then asked how she wanted to die before being hanged in derelict house.
In summing up the Crown's case this morning, Natalie Walker described the sequence of events as "barbaric".
"There is no good reason or explanation for why the defendants did what they did to Dimetrius. In that house on that day for whatever senseless reason there was a terrible loss of humanity."
The court has heard Miss Pairama met up with Miss Winter, Mr Te Amo and two other teenagers in Auckland's CBD before crashing in a state house on 7 July.
It's the Crown's case that Miss Pairama was then beaten and subjected to a period of torture before Miss Winter asked her how she wanted to die, by stabbing or hanging.
By chance, three police officers showed up at the house, on an unrelated inquiry to locate a former tenant, during the period of alleged abuse.
The officers told the court they heard shuffling noises inside the house before Miss Pairama opened the door to meet them.
They described her as teary but hostile towards their attempts to help her and that another older female, matching Miss Winter's description, joined her at the door.
The Crown told the jury this evidence, and the evidence from a teenager at the house who has been granted immunity from prosecution, showed Miss Winter was in charge.
"[The police officers] said she had more presence, was older, more confident, physically bigger and had a forceful character."
The officers eventually left the house and police were later alerted to Miss Pairama's death when a teenager at a fight in Britomart claimed her friend had been murdered.
In a series of interviews with the police, Miss Winter said she was an innocent bystander before admitting she helped beat and tie up the teenager.
One interview was repeatedly interrupted by the defendant dry retching and crying as she told the police Miss Pairama was like a sister and best friend to her, though she was unable to recall her name.
Ms Walker said Miss Winter was involved in every stage of the teenager's death and told the jury the evidence meant they could be sure of her guilt.
She also told the jury Mr Te Amo, who told police his only crime was being present and not helping, must have hung her because his DNA was found on one of several makeshift nooses at the house.
In his closing address, Miss Winter's lawyer Matthew Goodwin said there was no doubt Miss Pairama's death was a tragedy, but his client didn't play a role in it.
He reminded the jury the 29-year-old had pleaded guilty to kidnapping at the outset of the trial but said assaulting and detaining the teenager was the extent of her crimes.
"She has faced up to what she's done. Yes, it is true that in the early stages of her dealings with the police Ashley wanted to conceal the truth that she was involved in the kidnapping but in the end she opened up and fully explained her role."
He said it had been convenient for others to point the finger at Miss Winter but she had been an easy target and the ultimate scapegoat for Miss Paiarama's death.
'It's understandable for you to have feelings of outrage and anger that a teenage girl should be subjected to that. But you do need to hold those emotions in check and sift through the evidence objectively like surgeons to decide whether you find the charges proved against each defendant."
Mr Goodwin said the Crown's immunity witness, who has provided a detailed account of what happened in the house, could not be trusted.
"[She] has taken advantage at times of this cloak of immunity. She had carte blanche because of immunity to minimise her role throughout and at various times boosted or elevated the role of Ashley, the outsider, even though you may think at times her lies were transparent."
The jury has heard Miss Winter blamed Miss Pairama for a past assault but Mr Goodwin said it was the others who had reason to hate Miss Pairama.
He made a point of telling the jury Miss Winter was a trans woman and that it would be wrong to be biased against her.
But Mr Te Amo's lawyer Shane Tait said the woman's identity was important to the case.
"In a trial involving assaults and violence it's important we appreciate that she's not in there slapping and hitting like a dainty fish; she's in there with big fists and the strength of a male."
Mr Te Amo pleaded guilty to kidnapping Miss Pairama during the trial.
The court has heard his DNA was was found on one of several nooses at the house but Mr Tait said this wasn't the "slam dunk" the Crown claimed it to be.
He said it was clear all sides agreed on only one thing.
"I think one of the one of the only things that we rightfully agree on is the appalling and terrible treatment that Dimetrius Pairama recieved at that house of horrors.
"The indignities and things offered to her were disgraceful and sickening and neither Miss Pairama or her whanau needed to be subject to that."
Justice Brewer will sum up the case on Monday morning before the jury retires to deliberate.