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Siale Fotu
.
Murdered Jim Fletcher in the course of a home invasion in December 1993 in Papamoa
Jim Fletcher
.
none known
Born 1978
Unknown
Sentenced to a "life" sentence in September 1994
First parole hearing September 2004
Due for next hearing November 2009
Background
Denied parole for the 6th time in November 2008
From Brian Harmer's WYSIWYG News October 1994
16 year old Siale Fotu, from Te Puke was fond guilty of the murder of
Jim Fletcher, the businessman son of Sir James Fletcher, and brother
of Fletcher Challenge CEO Hugh Fletcher. Fotu stabbed Mr Fletcher in
the chest with a bread and butter knife, when he and others were disturbed
in an apparent burglary at the Fletcher beach home at Papamoa on New Year's Eve.
The defence argued that the verdict should be manslaughter as there was no intent to kill. The prosecution countered that the force required to make a blunt butter knife penetrate the chest to puncture the heart was clearly delivered with lethal intent. Fotu faces a mandatory "life" sentence.
From Sunday Star Times article 08/04/2001
Jim Fletcher, 49, was murdered at his Papamoa beach house, at Mt Maunganui, on the last day of 1993, having disturbed intruders. He was killed by 15-year-old Siale Fotu, high on drugs and dope. There was neither motive nor profit from the crime. In the house that night were Bronwyn Fletcher, the couple's two- year-old son Roddy, and Bronwyn's eight-year-old son David. He had a friend the same age sleeping over. As well, there were Fletcher's 23- year-old son Jim and his girlfriend. Jim had resumed working for the family firm, Fletcher Challenge, a year earlier, and was chairman of the company's construction activities. His job involved overseeing, among other projects, the building of two national landmarks, Auckland 's Sky tower and casino, and Wellington 's waterfront Museum of New Zealand , Te Papa.
Also from Sunday Star Times article 08/04/2001
That was a long struggle for Bronwyn. It was several years before she found a psychotherapist who was able to help her, years in which she suffered without anyone to tell her that her range of symptoms was normal. The research done into post-traumatic stress syndrome has been based on war veterans: "The murder thing," says Bronwyn, "is a relatively recent epidemic." She knows there is no specialist in the field at present, and that other people don't know what victims like herself experience.
The Fletchers' social position (her two sisters-in-law are now the Chief Justice and the mayor of Auckland ) was no protection against the justice system, either, and Bronwyn suspects the family's high profile may even have accentuated the need for scrupulous fairness for her husband's killer. She had to endure a trial, a retrial, and an appeal against his life sentence, each forcing her to relive that night, each re-traumatising her. It was a great effort of will not to give in to despair and grief.
Bronwyn Fletcher, with a portrait of her late husband, says she's had to let go of bitterness and anger. Siale Fotu, who was 15 when he murdered Jim Fletcher. The Fletcher beach house at Papamoa beach, Mt Maunganui, where Jim Fletcher was murdered. It still happens. Someone in a social setting will look at Bronwyn Fletcher and say: "Oh, you were there that night when your husband got murdered, weren't you? What was it like?"
"You feel like replying," says Bronwyn, "Tell me about the worst night in YOUR life. Tell me about the worst thing that ever happened to you. When it comes up in conversation that Roddy hasn't got a father you don't want to burden them with it. You say well, he was murdered, and you can see the effect that has on people."
"You (victims) have to have someone to talk to who you can trust, and who has the compassion and wisdom to understand your experience. It's not all about sympathy. In the end that will limit your progress in going forward. Somewhere along the line you've got to make sense of it." "I want to write the widow's book on how to survive, and also for sudden death--all that physiological stuff that's not written down anywhere.
"Seeing the body - they hadn't prepared me for that, how different Jim would look. I left the room saying, `I don't choose to remember my husband like that'. People need to be better trained for what to do. And then the little old lady from ACC came to get my details. I was sitting in the hospital corridor filling in a form while my husband was lying there! And then the policeman says he'll give me a ride back home, but `I'll just take the body to the morgue'. You couldn't do it on Monty Python!
"I said on the way, `You do know who's just died, then, do you?' He says, `Your husband'. I'm thinking there will be some press interest because of who Jim is, so he stops the car and has a chat with another policeman about that. And so I get to the police station where there's my baby and my parents and they hadn't told David, and so I had to tell him..."
"All the things I could have done - that was crippling. I felt really grotty that he wasn't wearing his nightshirt that night because it was in the wash. The knife wouldn't have gone in so deep, you see. And I thought, what if I'd told the ambulance men to put the siren on? Maybe we could have got to hospital faster if the siren was on. And I thought we should have got a helicopter and gone to Green lane: I thought if it had happened here (in Auckland ) he might have survived. "They sent victim support people. Well, it was just as well I was a polite girl. It was bizarre. It wasn't what I needed."
"It's the sleeping with the axe under your bed, and the fear," she says. "The first day I went out to the bank I ran into a man with a tattoo on his chin and I was almost paralysed with fear. It was just even facing people, and the teller looking at you with sympathy, and putting your hands up to say `please don't say anything, it's enough that I'm just here'. And then on the bad days you remember `I've still got the boys'. You read about car accidents, and one person survives in a family, and you say how cruel is that?
"Your sense of empathy is so strong when you read of similar things happening to other people. But you don't want to become one of those people who send, `You don't know me but...' letters. The first year I didn't read a book, watch TV or read a newspaper. I couldn't cope with any more reality than what I was living. I couldn't bear to see bad things happening to other people.
"It was about surviving and no more. It was about getting through each day, doing the small stuff and not having to think of anything bigger. Friends were there and listening, but they have to get on with their lives and you actually have to learn to get by on your own. "A story needs to be told, and the role a friend plays is that they listen and hold it as you tell your story. Every time you tell it you lose a bit of its energy, which makes it manageable so that the fear you have in confronting it is not so great. What the body does is go into shock, and then you let in a little at a time, and your body is able to cope.
"Nothing is ever going to be the same again. Everything is altered in a split second. Nothing can get you through it but holding on to what is good and not giving in to the bitterness and hurt and the rage and the anger, not letting them be the dominant emotion, because nobody ends up better off. "It forces you to restructure your life into what's important. It makes you do a bit of spring-cleaning in terms of relationships and friendships, and it makes you grateful for all the good stuff you've got in your life, and makes you want to maximise that. I became very intolerant of trivia for a long time after Jim died." From Focus C1
"You don't have a monopoly on grief. You don't have a monopoly on loss. You can't go round thinking that you're the only one that's suffered. Everyone out there is suffering. To find the purpose is what we're looking for. "Nothing's going to take away the emotional pain, but I think if someone is there to help you break it down and disperse it, you can be resourced and given some tools to cope. Even an answer to: Is this normal? Is this how it was for you?
"Post traumatic stress syndrome has things unique to each individual, and that's quite reassuring: `I'm not going mad because other people have walked this path before me and it can be managed'. Even if someone had been able to tell me one thing about their experience of violation and the fear of never feeling safe and what that does to abandonment issues and ability to trust. It's just a feeling of being incredibly sad and violated.
"You think about politicians and the belief they have that they're making a difference. I'd rather make a difference for one person on a deep level in their moment of absolute need. It's about being able to give something back to the community in terms of compassion and understanding, to help others make sense of it and put their lives in order; to help them see that life is different but that it is still very rich and worthwhile, and that it can be again, and that something beyond your control has happened but you can still take control and be positive.
"You need to make sense of why bad things happen to good people when you basically believe in karma, and that you're a good person. I'm not going to get political and rally for sentencing changes, but in some way I can help others." "I don't think 10 years is long enough for murder. It's not long enough for me. Someone told me last year that they thought he (Fotu) would be up for parole, and I was quite nervous."
"At the end of that year (1994) I went and spoke at the prizegiving at my old college, Mt Maunganui College. Maybe that was an unusual thing to do, but I wanted to make it clear that there was a choice in life. Yes, Fotu didn't have a great upbringing, but he went to the same primary school, the same intermediate and the same college as I did. It's strange synchronicity.
"He began with stealing milk money. More stealing. Breaking in. Nobody did anything. You've got to start nipping it (offending) really early on. They go off to get counselling in prison, but what about the people who are affected? It's about everybody's rights. It's about personal dignity, and being left with that.
"That's why I'd really like to see something done for juries. Our own murder wasn't particularly gruesome, but there are some really gruesome ones. I think jurors need looking after; they get traumatised in their own way. I think they need a place to take that stuff, and I'd like to see that put in place. There are even jurors that find it difficult to cope with the burden of putting somebody away. It's quite a big thing to be in the position to change somebody's life, and that power can be quite frightening for people.
"With the 91% (the referendum in the last election calling for harsher penalties for violent crime) I'm in there on both sides. There are those prisoners who are lost to society for ever and will never be rehabilitated. That's sad, but it's a fact. But there are those you can help. I would like to see the education statistics coming out of prisons. I still believe education is the key to a humane society. If a person can believe they are worthwhile and can contribute they will become worthwhile and they will contribute. It's about changing the mindsets of people and I think maybe we've become a bit soft on that. There's a lot of `Oh, he's hopeless and he's unemployed', and `Oh, but he's brown'. Whatever happened to `You could learn to do this job', and `You could help the kid down the road at the Little League Club'?
"On the other hand I believe a life sentence should be 25 years. Fotu will be 26 when he gets out of there. That is still incredibly young and he still has a whole life ahead of him, whereas I look at Roddy who will never have his father back, and to me 10 years is not enough. I think life should be 25 years, with parole at 20 years. But if we spend so much money on our prisons we must try to make them useful and productive places.
"I'm not harbouring a bitter judgemental thing I don't think. But we've got to change this third generation of social welfare beneficiaries and recipients if for no other reason than living like that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You've got to break that cycle, give people their pride back in working and supporting their family. We forget how quickly that's changed, since Muldoon knew everybody who was unemployed by their first name."
