A 62-year-old man has been jailed for three years for twice trying to hire hitmen to kill his wife.
In the High Court at Auckland, Justice Rodney Hansen ordered name suppression for the man, who is remarried with a wife and child overseas, and for his former wife. He said it was to protect the victim.
The man admitted two charges of attempting to procure murder.
It was not the first time he had plotted to harm his wife; in 1996 he was given a one-year suspended sentence for attempting to get a man to rape her. She was assaulted for 15 minutes but no sexual attack took place.
The court was told his former wife was standing by him, and she and one of her sons was helping support his new wife and child while he is in jail.
Justice Hansen said the man went overseas to take up a job in 1988, leaving his wife and two sons in New Zealand.
However, in 1995 he discovered his wife was seeing another man.
"That led to a rapid and significant deterioration in your relationship," Justice Hansen said at the sentencing hearing.
Late in 1997, the man approached a person at the Auckland District Court and asked if he knew someone who would "do his wife over".
"You told him that you would have plenty of money to pay him once your wife was dead," Justice Hansen said.
Two days later he supplied the man with a photograph of his wife, details of her movements and a sketch plan of the family home.
He told the man he would pay him $25,000 and told him how he wanted his wife's death to appear. He then left New Zealand.
On his return to New Zealand a year later, he told the alleged hitman's partner that he would pay her $20,000 for his wife to be beaten and stabbed to death.
He showed her around their home and indicated possible escape routes.
However, those approaches came to nothing and in 1999 he told another man he wanted his wife killed.
That man was offered $10,000 on completion of the job.
Police became aware of the plot after receiving information from the second hitman's flatmate.
Justice Hansen said there was some support for the man's claim that he was in a depressed state at the time.
However, there was significant premeditation and the offending was persistent.
Despite that, the woman was completely unaware of the danger and had suffered no lasting harm, and the accused claimed his wife was never in danger.
Justice Hansen said it was not clear whether there was a serious intention to put the plan into action.
There were some indications that this was an "elaborate role play" in which the man acted out his "feelings of anger and betrayal".
The judge said the man enjoyed an "extraordinary level of support" from his former wife, a "highly erudite woman", and two sons, who had asked for a merciful sentence.
"You are clearly not the man that you were 10 or 12 years ago when this offending occurred and when I accept you were in something of a disturbed mental state," Justice Hansen said.
