‘Suspicious’ meetings held between Angela Blackmoore’s killer and man accused of ordering hit

The former partner of one of Angela Blackmoore’s accused murderers witnessed him holding discreet meetings with her killer and his co-accused.

This was the evidence of Toni Parris in the High Court trial of David Peter Hawken, 50, and Rebecca Wright-Meldrum, 51, on Friday. Both are charged with Angela Blackmoore’s murder.

Blackmoore, 21, was bludgeoned and stabbed 39 times not long after a pizza was delivered to her Vancouver Cres home in Wainoni, Christchurch, on the evening of August 17, 1995. She was nine weeks’ pregnant, and her 2-year-old son Dillon was asleep in the next room.

Parris was Hawken’s partner in 1995 and lived with him on Cashel St. In the month leading up to Blackmoore’s murder, Wright-Meldrum and her then-boyfriend, who Parris knew as Jeremy, held “discreet” meetings with Hawken that she was excluded from, she told the court.

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“They would go into the front room of the house, an office, and be in there for an hour or so, or more. I was a bit suspicious, so I tried to sneak down the hallway and listen in. I was curious what was going on.

“I didn’t hear anything. They were discreet… There were enough meetings that I noticed a pattern.”

The Crown alleges Hawken ordered Blackmoore’s killing by placing a $10,000 bounty on her head, while Wright-Meldrum, Blackmoore’s friend, helped the killer – her then-boyfriend Jeremy Powell – get access to her, and helped him dispose of the murder weapons and clean up the crime scene.

Powell confessed to the murder many years later. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a 10-year minimum non-parole period in June 2020 and is to give evidence for the Crown as its star witness.

Hawken, who at the time was mediating the sale of Blackmoore’s family home with her ex-husband William, told Parris multiple times during their relationship that if Angela Blackmoore didn’t agree to sell, he’d “deal with her”.

“I took it as a threat,” Parris said.

She recounted arguing with Hawken early one morning after Blackmoore’s death.

Angry and refusing to do something Hawken had asked her, she told him: “What’re you gonna do about it, get me whacked like Angela?”

As she made the comment, police knocked on the door and raided their home.

Parris and Hawken separated in early 1996 and she moved to Hereford St.

Hawken visited her one day, when the man named Jeremy and Wright-Meldrum showed up.

At one point Hawken said “we should get you two out of the country at some stage”, Parris recalled. She thought it was a very odd thing to say, but did not know why he said it.

Parris became visibly upset in the witness stand as she gave this evidence. Wright-Meldrum, who usually watched intently as witnesses gave evidence during the trial, turned her back and did not look at Parris once.

Hawken was at home with Parris on the night Blackmoore was killed, she said.

In cross-examination, Hawken’s lawyer, Anne Stevens, KC, suggested the meetings never happened and that Parris was trying to get back at Hawken for being a bad partner.

“No, it was to clear my conscience,” Parris replied.

Both Hawken and Wright-Meldrum firmly deny any involvement in Blackmoore’s murder.

Arrests in the cold case that stretched more than two decades followed a Stuff investigation and $100,000 reward that brought forward new evidence and more than 50 tips to police.

The trial in front of Justice Cameron Mander continues.