WARNING: This story contains graphic details of violence, mutilation and homicide
A man imprisoned for nearly three decades for murder says he was triggered by sexual abuse in state care when his victim sexually assaulted him.
Lon Reti stabbed Leslie Edmonds multiple times and cut off his ears in October 1997.
His case is back in court after a Crown entity reviewed his conviction and raised serious concerns about whether a partial defence of provocation was fully and fairly considered during his jury trial.
Reti appealed against his conviction in 1999, but it was dismissed under a regime designed to handle a high volume of appeals filed by unrepresented prisoners.
He exercised his right to a rehearing in 2003, but it was also unsuccessful.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission began investigating his case in 2022 and found that expert evidence about his abuse in state care was not put before the jury or the Court of Appeal.
Provocation was raised at his trial, a defence that was available at the time but has since been abolished. The commission concluded that new information was relevant to his defence.
Murder, and life imprisonment
Reti was convicted of murder in July 1998 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Both men were sleeping rough in Christchurch and had wandered into an abandoned city squat. Police were confronted with a surreal scene when they reached the house.
A rough sleeper had called them about a murder.
When they arrived, Reti was in the overgrown front yard, wobbling and performing martial arts movements. His mouth was smeared with gold paint he had been sniffing. His hands were covered in blood, and he was shirtless.
Sawn-off human ears were stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.
Edmonds, 28, lay dead in the backyard with multiple stab wounds.
He lay on a mattress, dressed only in lingerie. Both his ears were missing, and there were obvious injuries to his throat.
Reti, then 29, had been wandering around the cottage that day, sniffing spray paint, after a night of partying and sniffing.
He claimed Edmonds sexually assaulted him and continued making aggressive sexual advances while wearing only women’s underwear, even after Reti struck him.
Reti then fatally stabbed Edmonds.
He said he had asked Edmonds to leave the cottage, and then cut his ears off because he wouldn’t listen.
Reti ‘didn’t’ want to kill
Today, the Court of Appeal heard that Reti had Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) at the time of the murder, which his lawyer, Kerry Cook, said qualified as provocation.
Cook said Reti had also suffered sexual abuse while in state care, which he didn’t disclose at the time because of mistrust in the system.
He said Reti didn’t want to kill Edmonds, but believed Edmonds was out to get him after he awoke to find the man sexually assaulting him.
Cook said that, after years of therapy, Reti realised it was because of CPTSD that he was in “fight or flight” mode.
“He now has ability to explain; in my experience, people who experience abuse are slow to share it.”
Cook said Reti had genuine trust issues at the time of the trial, due to the way he had been treated in state care.
Mistrust in the system
Much had changed since then: Reti was more mentally stable, the state abuse had been admitted, there was an understanding of CPTSD, and he had undertaken counselling.
“He didn’t have the capacity at time of trial to tell people; we have no evidence he was asked about it,” Cook said of the abuse in state care.
“It is very likely that his emotions have been triggered by past trauma.”
Cook said he didn’t want a retrial, but a conviction for manslaughter and release from prison, given how long Reti had been incarcerated.
Crown lawyer Fergus Sinclair said Reti was a patient at Sunnyside Hospital in 1996, a year before the murder, when he gave an account of physical and sexual abuse as a child.
His discharge notes said there was a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) linked to physical and sexual abuse.
Sinclair said the medical records were reviewed before the trial.
“For his own reasons, he [Reti] didn’t want to make anything of his abuse; he didn’t trust his lawyer or the system.
“It is now submitted that sexual abuse is something the jury should have known about.
“This boils down to a better defence if he had been more forthcoming before the trial.”
Sinclair said there was nothing to have stopped Reti in 1997 from saying he had that background and diagnosis, which affected how he regarded Edmonds’ behaviour.
He said Reti was strongly encouraged by his lawyer at the time to consider a challenge based on the abuse, but that wasn’t the way Reti wanted to go about it.
“My view is you have a witness who gave a clear account, and now 30 years later gives a different account.”
Reti was not overwhelmed by the sexual conduct, but by the fact that he had killed Edmonds.
“Reactivity must not be placated with provocation.”
There was solvent abuse before the killing, and again before the mutilation, a background of drug use, and Reti had pulled a knife on someone who wasn’t threatening him several days before the murder, Sinclair said.
Justices David Collins, Jonathan Eaton and Layne Harvey reserved their decision.
Al Williams is an Open Justice reporter for the New Zealand Herald, based in Christchurch. He has worked in daily and community titles in New Zealand and overseas for the last 16 years. Most recently, he was editor of the Hauraki-Coromandel Post, based in Whangamatā. He was previously deputy editor of the Cook Islands News.
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