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A mother-of-two found guilty of murdering her partner during a domestic dispute is appealing her conviction and sentence.
Dale Watene’s body was discovered buried in a shallow grave deep in a Southland forest on May 18, 2020 about a month after he’d disappeared from Otautau.
An autopsy revealed he’d been shot.
Watene’s girlfriend, Sandy Graham was found guilty of murder, and her friend, George Hyde, was found guilty of being an accessory after the fact to manslaughter by a jury in July last year.
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In November, Graham, 33, described as a “master manipulator” and the “world’s best liar”, was jailed for a minimum of 13 years, while Hyde, 25, narrowly avoided a prison term, and was sentenced to eight months home detention.
Stuff
George Hyde and Sandy Graham buried Dale Watene’s body in a forest after Graham shot him at her Southland home.
Last week, a Court of Appeal spokeswoman confirmed Graham had lodged an appeal against her conviction and sentence, but Hyde had not.
No date for a hearing had been set, the spokeswoman said.
At last year’s lengthy trial in the High Court at Invercargill, Graham gave evidence that during a domestic dispute, which erupted after she received a “dick pic” from another man, she got a .22 calibre rifle from behind a mirror in her Otautau home and used it to try and force Watene out of her house.
As the pair struggled over the gun, it went off.
Supplied
Murder victim Dale Watene was a father to a young boy.
Graham said she did not think the rifle was loaded and her boyfriend’s death was a tragic accident, not murder.
She’d tried to cover up what she’d done – enlisting the help of Hyde, her best friend, to bury Watene’s body in Longwood Forest – because she did not have a firearm’s licence and was scared she’d lose her children.
However, the Crown countered her story with evidence that they said proved she knew the gun was loaded.
They also called an expert who said Watene was shot from at least 80cm away, meaning he couldn’t have had his hands on the rifle when he was shot.
SUPPLIED
Dale Watene’s body was buried deep in a forest in western Southland.
The verdict, in Hyde’s case, meant the jury was unable to establish beyond reasonable doubt that he knew Graham had murdered Watene when he helped conceal his body.
Stuff previously reported Graham was known to fly into a rage, and had attacked at least two men in the years before the murder.
She also dragged a police officer behind a car and badly injured him during a drink-driving incident, and was once described by her mother as “the world’s best liar who always has a plan”.
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