Aaron Wilson changes plea, admits murder of Cambridge woman Maree Paparoa
A man has admitted the murder of a Cambridge woman nine months after her death sparked a manhunt for her killer across the Waikato.
Aaron Nicholas Wilson, 42, initially pleaded not guilty to the murder of Betty Maree Paparoa on August 8 last year.
But today, through his counsel Ann-Marie Beveridge, Wilson changed his plea to guilty during a brief appearance in the High Court at Hamilton via audio-visual link from prison.
Paparoa’s body was found by police at 1.20am after they were called to an address on Richmond St.
Aftera manhunt that stretched to 50km away in Te Aroha, where streets were closed and cars were searched, Wilson was arrested that afternoon.
Crown prosecutor Jacinda Hamilton said at the hearing that given the lateness of the plea change, an agreed summary of facts on what led to the death of Paparoa, 46, was still to be drawn up.
That would be done within the week, she said.
Justice Campbell convicted Wilson and remanded him in custody for sentencing in August.
During an earlier appearance in the High Court last year tensions ran high as Wilson was heckled by Paparoa’s whānau in the public gallery.
A family member later posted on Facebook that Paparoa preferred to be known as Maree.
“She is a mother, a nana, a sister, an aunty. I won’t talk in past tense as she is still very much so all of the above,” the woman wrote.
She said Paparoa had “a lot of life left to live” before her murder on August 8.
“Her life ended by the hands of Aaron Wilson, her former partner at the time. Yes, he murdered her.”
She said Paparoa “loved hard no matter how broken she was she always knew how to smile through her day”.
“My point in this post is to make her existence known, that she isn’t just a lady in Cambridge who had been murdered. She has a name, a title a family.”
She said the family was angry and they wanted Paparoa’s life to be remembered and her death to be known.