Crown says killer’s partner also guilty of murdering Taranaki farmworker

On the day a Taranaki farmworker was beaten and dragged to his death, young mother-of-two Jodie Shannon Hughes smiled while the man was being viciously assaulted and stopped a workmate trying to end the deadly violence.

Those were just two of the allegations the Crown made on the opening day of Hughes’ High Court trial at New Plymouth where she stands accused of murdering Jacob Ramsay.

Two men, Hughes’ partner William Mark Candy, 39, and fellow farmworker Ethan Webster, 19, have already admitted murdering Ramsay on an Oanui farm in South Taranaki in July last year, and been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Now the Crown will attempt to prove Hughes was also culpable.

Dressed in knee-high boots, jeans and a turtle-neck jumper, Hughes softly pleaded guilty to kidnapping Ramsay, as well as the burglary of his farm house, before she denied causing him grievous bodily harm.

The 30 year-old was most audible when she entered a not guilty plea to murder.

Ramsay, 33, was a father-of-two, and expecting a third child with wife Sarah at the time of his death.

He suffered more than 30 blunt force trauma injuries to his head, neck, chest and limbs, as well as lacerations to his scalp, multiple fractures and brain bleeds.

He had been beaten to death, suffering the first attack in the Oakura Cemetery by Candy before he was bundled into a car driven by Hughes who drove back to the Kina Rd farm.

Once there, the beating continued as Webster joined in before Ramsay was chained to the back of a car and dragged along a tanker track before he was left dead or dying beside one of the farm’s rubbish pits.

Despite a number of people knowing where he was, no one called emergency services until two days later.

In a lengthy opening address, prosecutor Rebekah Hicklin said Hughes was more than just frustrated by Ramsay, who owed them money, she was angry, not only with him but by Candy’s inaction at trying to get it back.

She made repeated expletive laden text messages to Candy demanding he do more to get the $150 that was owed before she set her sights on Ramsay with a number of text messages involving warnings.

When a witness to the first beating of Ramsay at Oakura tried to intervene, Hughes said: “This guy is a druggie, he’s stolen from us and has ruined our farm.”

The Crown said later, during the beating at the farm, she pushed one of Ramsay’s workmates away when he tried to stop it continuing.

“Let him f…..g do this, don’t stop him,” she demanded.

Hicklin also said the accused stood by the car smiling while Ramsay was stomped and kicked for approximately 10 minutes.

In stark contrast to the Crown, defence counsel Tiffany Cooper, KC, said Hughes had no idea that Candy would assault Ramsay in the way he did when she drove him to Oakura, nor did she encourage him.

“She also had no idea of the things that would evolve on Kina Rd that night,” Cooper said.

Hughes, according to Cooper, also played no part in chaining Ramsay up to the back of the car.

In all, the Crown intends to call 29 witnesses, many of whom had already been granted interim name suppression.

The trial, before Justice Matthew Palmer continues on Tuesday, with the jury expected to be taken to a number of places of interest in the case on Wednesday.