Source: Radio New Zealand
Nathan Boulter has a long history of stalking and assaulting ex-partners. NZPA / David Rowland
The country’s chief victims advisor is demanding answers over the killing of a Christchurch woman by a violent repeat offender and says the criminal justice system is not equipped to deal with high risk, obsessive and manipulative criminals.
On Thursday, Nathan Boulter, who had a long history of stalking and assaulting ex-partners, pleaded guilty to murdering a woman in Parklands, Christchurch, earlier this year.
The woman had been in a brief relationship with Boulter. After she ended it, he harrassed, stalked and threatened her, making nearly 600 calls in two weeks, before hiding outside her home, then stabbing her 55 times with a hunting knife as she arrived home with her children.
Ruth Money called it “one more example of preventable tragedy”.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it – I just do not believe that we have the system right for our highest risk and our highest threat prisoners and offenders.”
These offenders were “absolutely difficult to manage,” Money acknowledged.
“They’re in and out of prison. The way that the parole and probation laws work, it’s very difficult to manage past sentence conditions, so they are complex people to manage from a risk perspective, but other nations do it better than us. And that’s what I have been trying to get to the bottom of with this particular case.
“I think the system is not educated enough around obsessive, high-risk, highly manipulative people. If you look at the Tony Robertson case [who murdered Blessie Gotingco in 2014], the Brider case [who murdered Juliana Bonilla-Herrera in 2022], this case, Tainui [who killed Kimberley Schroder and Nicole Tuxford], there are what we call the one percenters that I just do not think we have got enough expertise and experience and potentially just training even at a lower level for people to actually see the markers.”
Chief victims advisor Ruth Money. Stephanie Creagh Photography
Money referred to the findings of the coroner’s inquest into the deaths of Nicole Tuxford and Gary Schroder, which found double murderer Paul Tainui had psychopathic traits which the Department of Corrections missed.
“There was a specialist out of Corrections [at that inquest] talking about psychopathy and the obsession and how to improve the situation where people get used to managing the same person, they get used to the story, right? You need fresh eyes and fresh information all the time.”
There were systemic failings she had seen repeated time and time again.
“This has got to stop. This is just one more example of preventable tragedy within the kind of … obsessive interpersonal relationship space.
“We have to do better.”
In 2011, after a short, violent relationship with Nortessa Montgomerie, Boulter tracked her to her home on Great Barrier Island, brutally assaulting her, dragging her into the bush and holding her hostage for 38 hours. He was released in 2018, despite Montgomerie imploring the Parole Board not to free him.
Montgomerie told Checkpoint she had been “trying for so long to shine light on the fact that this person was really dangerous.”
“My warning to the parole board was if we dont step in and manage this person he is going to take someone’s life. It makes me really emotional to say that because I could see it coming.”
Nortessa Montgomerie was kidnapped, held hostage and assaulted by Boulter. Nathan McKinnon / RNZ
Money said she was enraged victims like Montgomerie felt a burden for their attackers’ actions.
“It actually makes me rage that we are causing more victims and that victims are feeling responsible when they should not be responsible for preventing these people being released into the community.
“They should not feel responsible for ultimately what the offender chooses to do and any system failings that may have enabled that. But invariably, every case, we have exactly that. It’s exactly a replay of Tainui, for example, [and] Brider. There are many one percenters out there like Boulter, and we need to do better.”
Money said she understood multiple reviews were underway by Police, Corrections and other agencies.
She would look at each of the reviews individually, but also from a systemic lens, she said.
“How did it work, or not? How should it have? And do we have the right provisions in the system to do this better and we just simply didn’t? Why not? Or do we need to change the system somehow to make sure that this doesn’t happen again?”
She wants to know why Boulter was not removed from the woman’s home when she informed Corrections he was residing there in early June.
“One of my questions that I have for the review is what on earth was he still doing there? How have Corrections allowed him to be there? Yeah, it’s absolutely one of my questions.”
She had seen better approaches overseas.
“Some other jurisdictions have specialised teams for high-risk individuals. There is also some legislative differences around the ability to monitor people for longer. Judicial decisions are obviously always different, but should this person have been on preventative detention or an extended supervision order? Are there other tools that we need or that could have been applied to help manage this person and ultimately keep people safe?”
Montgomerie was not informed Boulter had been released from jail, something she told Checkpoint was retraumatising.
“I truly believe that informing victims should be the paramount, most important thing to do….withholding information from victims is just crazy to me.
“There were failings I experienced during my time dealing with being a direct victim of Nathan’s that I don’t understand where the ball was dropped, and one of those was finding out he had been released from prison by reading it in a news article, and the emotional and mental fall out of having to deal with that after the fact,” Montgomerie said.
Money said victim notification rules meant Montgomerie would only have been told when Boulter was released from the sentence relating to crimes against her, not from other lags, something she wanted to see changed.
“You’ve got a fine line of the balancing act between the privacy of that survivor of the time that person is serving but you’ve also got the privacy of the offender. I would argue that any victim’s rights come before the offender’s rights in that regard, as well as obviously community and society protection.
“I’m not comfortable and not convinced that we have the settings around notification quite right in terms of community safety and certainly victim and previous victim safety, and that’s something that I’ll be looking at as part of my review,” Money said.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
