Murder and violent crime rates by strangers 'extremely rare' in New Zealand

Saturday, 9 January 2016

Murders, attempted murders and serious assaults by strangers in unprovoked attacks are exceedingly rare in New Zealand.

Auckland mother Jo Pert was named on Friday as the jogger killed by a stranger on a suburban street. The woman's body was discovered in the front yard of a house on Shore Rd in exclusive Remuera, at 11am on Thursday.

Police believe a weapon was used in the daylight attack, and the mother-of-two tried to get help before collapsing metres from the house.

However, the chances of deadly, unprovoked attacks are rare, so rare that instances of murders by strangers number in single digits. New Zealand's murder rate overall is, annually, in double figures.

* READ MORE: * Neighbours in shock after violent Auckland killing[

](http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/75684845/murder-charge-after-female-jogger-found-dead)* **[Hitchhiker's murder sparks coroner's warning

](http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/9226190/Hitchhikers-murder-sparks-coroners-warning)*** *Crime rates down*

University of Canterbury sociologist Dr Jarrod Gilbert said the likelihood of being killed in an unprovoked attack in New Zealand was extremely low.

Members of the public should not modify recreational behaviour after an apparently one-off incident, he said.

Unprovoked murders involving strangers were exceedingly rare in New Zealand and, statistically, the figure was around 1.5 homicides per year.

The killing in Auckland meant that another similarly random homicide was unlikely in 2016.

'You could say there's every chance that statistically it could be the only one this year.

'These are very, very, rare occurrences. More than 80 per cent of women who are murdered are murdered by their partner.

'Those killed by a stranger on the street - it's very unusual.

'We're not just safer. We have not been safer since since the early 70s and this runs quite contrary to public opinions.'

Gilbert said public perception studies often indicated people believed violent crime was increasing when the opposite was true.

When there was a disturbing murder, such as the Remuera death, there was an attendant increase in the perception of crime by the public, especially when the victim was killed in an exclusive suburb where people expect safety.

Statistics and trends might not be dramatic but they reflect reality, he said.

'It's an anomaly. It's really important we say that as [some] people will change their lives based on fear that's grossly exaggerated.

'The greatest threat comes from inside the home.'

Comparable trends were observed in Australia. Across the ditch and in New Zealand, the trends for violent crime include a higher chance of men being killed by strangers.

'But it's so rare for women to be killed by a stranger. The problem, of course, is this is the type of case that sticks in the public consciousness not because they're indicative of anything at all or any sort of trend but they stay in our consciousness.

'People should not change their lifestyles.

'People should still feel comfortable running in New Zealand,' Gilbert said.

New Zealand has a low murder rate, in double figures annually, and people sometimes over-estimate the rates of violence when the reality is New Zealand is a safe place.

However, when troubling one-off, unprovoked attacks occur they receive a lot of attention.

In Dunedin, a jogger was attacked while running at Ross Creek in November. The police investigation continues while, in December, a woman was attacked and sexually assaulted in a horticultural area near Lincoln University in Christchurch.

Police have released a computer-generated sketch.

Previous cases often stick in the public's consciousness too.

In 2001, a Wellington jogger, Margaret Lynne Baxter, was abducted, raped and murdered by Dartelle Maremare James Alder, who was sentenced to 17 years' jail without parole.

And in 1986, Wendy Snowdon's life was brutally cut short when she was attacked and raped as she jogged in a New Plymouth park. Her attacker, Gary McKinley, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In a cold case, Wellington woman Kaye Stewart disappeared while she was out for a short walk.

Such cases and, for example, attacks on hitch-hikers are also the types of crime that stick in people's minds.

There was an attack on the West Coast in March 2014, when two hitchhikers were attacked by a convicted killer who was on parole.

One of the more high-profile cases in recent years was the killing of a Czech backpacker, Dagmar Pytlickova, 31.

She did not know her attacker, Jason Frandi, who picked her up while she was hitch-hiking in Central Otago and drove to a remote area, where he cut major arteries in Pytlickova's neck and throat and then killed himself.

Frandi, 43, had picked up the backpacker as she hitch-hiked to Timaru, and drove from the Cromwell area to Omarama. But then he diverted down the Waitaki Valley and into the Pentland Hills.

Three men and five women have been killed while hitch-hiking in New Zealand since 1970, a Fairfax Media review found in 2013. A sixth woman is presumed dead after vanishing while hitch-hiking in 1975.

To contrast this, in the United States,  a 2011 crime report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation found that out of 13,636 murders in 2011 and 2012, some 30 per cent of the victims were murdered by people known to them, 13 per cent were murdered by family members and 12 per cent were murdered by strangers.

Overall, the trend is similar in New Zealand.

A project mapping homicide rates by country charts New Zealand's 41 murders in 2012, a per capita rate of 0.9, or, in other words, almost one murder a year per 100,000 Kiwis.