From the Dom Post:

Corrections officer punched after killer found guilty

Shane Randle has been found guilty of murder and a vicious sexual assault, but it was the thought that police were laughing at him that finally made him crack.

“Don’t laugh at me . . . (obscenity),” he said.

He also punched the neck of one of the three Corrections officers beside him in the dock. Police and prison staff struggled to control him before he could be taken out of court in Wellington yesterday.

It was too much for a young man sitting with friends and family of Randle’s victim, Tania McKenzie. He too was surrounded and held back as he stood and yelled “pig” at Randle.

Randle’s outburst came as Justice Ronald Young was thanking the jury for their 2½ weeks’ work in the High Court at Wellington.

Randle, 28, was remanded in his absence to be sentenced in May.

Prosecutor Andrew Cameron said the Crown would be asking for preventive detention, an open-ended jail term.

The three guilty verdicts – on the charge of murder and two charges of sexual violation – were delivered to a full courtroom.

Randle was looking at people in the public gallery, including his mother, before his outburst.

If he had looked at Tania McKenzie’s parents he might also have seen the face of his victim staring back from the T-shirt Tania’s mother, Naelene McKenzie, wore.

She and husband Garry spoke later of the time since their daughter’s death, early on the morning of her 20th birthday on January 7, 2005.

“The two years have been hell,” Mrs McKenzie said.

They had not thought of what they would do next.

“We just want to get through this.”

A visit to their daughter’s grave was likely. “We go there all the time. That is what we do,” Mr McKenzie said.

The guilty verdicts were the only ones they could have accepted. No sentence would ever be enough.

The day began with Justice Young warning the jury not to let sympathy or prejudice sway them. They had seen a photograph of Randle with a swastika tattooed on his neck. One of his girlfriends from the time Ms McKenzie died also let slip in her evidence that Randle had been in prison.

The judge said both facts were irrelevant to the decision the jury had to make.

The Crown said Randle had killed Ms McKenzie to cover up sex crimes – she had extensive internal injuries. Her head was beaten in and her body dumped in the Whanganui River.

Randle gave evidence that one of his girlfriends and another woman had killed Ms McKenzie and sexually violated her because his girlfriend was jealous of her.

Ms McKenzie had been a bartender at the hotel where Randle worked as a part-time doorman.

But the jury also had the recordings police secretly made of conversations and text messages, including what the Crown alleged was Randle admitting he had killed Ms McKenzie.

At one point, apparently talking to his two pitbull terriers, he said: “It was just me, little old psycho- murderer me.”