Maori teen sentenced to "life" for murder of British backpacker

**Vulpix** · 03-26-2009, 11:24 AM

New Zealand teenager sentenced to life in prison for murder of British backpacker Karen Aim

By Richard Shears
Last updated at 10:56 AM on 26th March 2009

Jailed for life: Jahche Broughton, 15, appears in the Rotorua High Court in Rotorua , New Zealand, early today where he pleaded guilty to the murder of Scottish tourist Karen Aim

A teenager who savagely murdered British tourist Karen Aim in New Zealand last year has been sentenced to life in jail.
Jahche Broughton, 15, is the youngest ever New Zealander to be handed a life sentence.
A Maori, Broughton kept his head down as Miss Aim's father, Brian Aim, read an impact statement, saying his heart had been broken by his 26-year-old daughter's murder.
'I would have been proud to have walked my daughter down the aisle in a wedding dress - instead I took her in a coffin,' he said.
Miss Aim's mother, Peggy, who had travelled with her husband 15,000 miles across the world from their home on a Scottish island to hear the sentencing, fought back tears as she spoke.
In handing down the life sentence, Justice Graham Lang, sitting, in the High Court in Rotorua ordered that Broughton should serve a minimum non-parole period of 12 and a half years.
Broughton was just 14 years old when he savagely beat Miss Aim to death with a baseball bat as she returned home from a night out with friends in the resort town of Taupo, in the centre of the North Island.
The attack on the fun-loving young woman from Orkney was not the first brutal assault Broughton had carried out on a stranger.
At a pre-trial hearing in Auckland last month, when he pleaded guilty to murdering Miss Aim on January 17 last year, he also admitted injuring a 17-year-old woman with intent to cause grievous bodily harm two weeks earlier.
For that attack, on 17-year-old Zara Schofield, the judge sentenced Broughton's to six years' jail, to be served at the same time as the longer sentence for the murder of Miss Aim.

Happy go-lucky: Karen Aim, 26, was savagely beaten to death with a baseball bat after a night out with friends

As well as Mr and Mrs Aim, the parents of Miss Schofield and Broughton's family were also present in the court when defence counsel Chris Wilkinson-Smith said that while Broughton accepted he was the principal party in the murder, he also maintained there was another person involved.
Broughton's mother at a previous hearing had said her son was 'very well loved' as a child and had a good upbringing.
But Crown prosecutor Fletcher Pilditch said the blows to Miss Aim and Miss Schofield were brutal and swift.
Miss Aim's murder had shocked New Zealand, particularly the townspeople of lakeside Taupo, one of the most popular tourist areas in the country.
Her battered body was found in the street after she had said goodbye to a group of friends late at night and had set out to walk to her rented flat a short distance from the town centre.

Security camera footage at a service station showed her buying a drink from the premises at around 2am, half an hour before she was discovered with serious head injuries. She was just 50 yards from her home. She died in hospital a short time later.
It was, said her friends, a sickening end to the working holiday plans of the happy-go-lucky young woman, who had been working in a glass blowing gallery.
A team of 50 police officers, working under a specially-formed task force that had been named Operation Waikato, searched for clues in a nearby school, which had been vandalised, and also hunted around the area where Miss Aim had been found with her fatal injuries.
Detectives described the investigation as a 'massive whodunnit'.
But they had one clue - a distinctive diamond earring that Broughton had been wearing during both attacks.
Later Detective Senior Sergeant Greg Turner was able to announce that police had 'arrested a youth domiciled in Auckland and charged him with the murder and aggravated robbery of Karen Aim at Taupo on January 17.'

It had been Miss Aim's second visit to New Zealand after a three- month stay in 2006.
Her death sent shock waves among her friends and backpackers, scores of whom listed tributes on social networking sites.
More than 300 people gathered in Holm, Orkney, for her funeral on January 29, when her father said: 'She brought a ray of sunshine into every room she came into.'

**Rainraven** · 03-26-2009, 08:20 PM

Originally Posted by Arctic Fox

A Maori, Broughton kept his head down as Miss Aim's father, Brian Aim, read an impact statement, saying his heart had been broken by his 26-year-old daughter's murder.

Interesting how they have put this, like it has some relevance towards the case.

A real tragedy.