A man jailed today for at least 19 years for the brutal murders of two young women hung his head as the victims' families vilified him.
Joseph Ogle, 28, got a life sentence with a 19-year minimum non-parole term when he appeared in the High Court at Wellington for bashing his former partner Joeline Rangimaria Edmonds, 21, and Jashana Maree Robinson, 16, to death with a softball bat.
Ms Edmonds was the mother of Ogle's two children, while Ms Robinson had started boarding at her Porirua home only days before the June 26 attack.
The children, aged one and two, were at home during the murders and the elder one would have seen Ms Edmonds either dead or dying, the court was told.
The Crown said Ogle had recently been released from prison and was jealous after having learned Ms Edmonds had started another relationship.
He breached a protection order by going to Ms Edmonds' house early in the morning with an aluminium softball bat hidden under his jacket, expecting to find her in bed with another man.
He walked into her bedroom to find her ill - and alone - with a bucket next to her bed.
She asked him to move it closer to her and when she threw up, he smashed the bat into her head.
He then lured Ms Robinson, who had been in a separate bedroom with the children, into Ms Edmonds' room and did the same to her.
Both remained alive but Ogle continued to sporadically bash them with the bat, at one stage making a dazed Ms Edmonds read him a letter he had sent her.
She would have witnessed blood being splattered on the ceiling and walls as Ogle bashed her young boarder, the court was told.
Both were groaning when he left the house and post-mortem examinations identified horrific injuries, including broken hands in Ms Edmonds' case from trying to protect herself.
Ogle returned to the house with his flatmates later in the day and pretended to be shocked at what he found.
His children, who had been alone for several hours, were in a distressed state.
Police quickly found Ogle to be lying and by the end of the day he had admitted to the killings.
Ogle, a burly man with short hair, a rat's tail and string of previous convictions for violence and protection order breaches, kept his head buried almost between his knees as family members of the women read victim impact statements in front of a packed courtroom.
Ms Robinson's father, Patrick Robinson, said Ogle didn't even know his daughter and his actions had devastated the family.
"We just couldn't work out why someone would do this to Jashana."
He said Ogle was a "big coward with a softball bat. We will never forget your face".
Ms Edmonds' mother, Dianne Pekama, said her daughter was a good mother who had played representative touch rugby for Wellington and had dreams of representing her country. "But that all changed when she met Joe."
Outside court she said the 19-year non-parole period, reduced from 23 years by Justice Denis Clifford because of an early guilty plea, was insufficient.
A concurrent six-month term was added for a charge of breaching a protection order.
Crown prosecutor Grant Burston had argued for a non-parole starting point of 25-years.
Defence lawyer Greg King said the early guilty plea was one of the few mitigating factors in the case.
Family members commented outside court on the positive aspects of the murdered women's short lives and praised detectives for their work on the case.
