The family of slain Hawke’s Bay teenager Ariki Rigby will have to wait more than a year for a scheduled trial of two men charged in connection with her death.
One of the men has been charged with murdering Rigby and the arson of the car in which her body was found at a Hawke’s Bay river reserve in 2022. The other man has been charged with being a party to arson.
Both men appeared at a High Court hearing on Friday that scheduled dates for a three-week trial in November next year.
An interim order for the suppression of both men’s names was extended to October 23, when another hearing will be held to determine whether their identities can be made public.
Both men, who have yet to make a plea, were remanded in custody until that date.
The two were visible via audio link from separate custody suites screened in the High Court at Napier as a contingent of Rigby’s whānau and supporters watched quietly.
Justice Karen Grau, who was in Wellington and appeared on the same segmented screen with the two accused, acknowledged the presence of whānau in Napier and others in Wellington for attending the short hearing dealing with administrative matters.
“There aren’t going to be any decisions made today,” she told them.
“Thank you very much for coming along today. I acknowledge that your emotions are very raw.”
Rigby was killed in September 2022, about four weeks short of what would have been her 19th birthday, in a case that shocked the Hawke’s Bay region and the nation.
Her badly beaten and burned body — which her sister says had the hands and feet cut off — was discovered in a burned-out car parked at a Havelock North river reserve.
The wreck was reported to police on September 3, 2022. The officers who attended at the time deemed Ariki’s remains were those of a sheep.
A tow truck was booked to take it to a wrecking yard two days later, but police returned to the scene on September 5 after being told by a dog walker who looked into the car and realised the body — which had shoulder-length hair and was wearing a necklace — was human.
Ariki had been living in Auckland, but was killed on what was believed to be her last day on holiday in Hawke’s Bay — where she was raised — before her planned return north.
In addition to the October 23 date to determine name suppression, further court dates were scheduled for a case review hearing in December and a trial callover in February.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.
