‘We can’t force people to talk’: Silence is handbraking the Baby Ru homicide investigation

Saturday, 25 November 2023

The detective tasked with solving the homicide of Ruthless-Empire says despite an absence of arrests in the month since baby Ru's death, he's hopeful for justice. But how do you achieve that, when no-one's talking? Virginia Fallon investigates.

Such a lot of names for such a little boy.

When he was born barely two years ago, he was called Ruthless-Empire Souljah Reign Rhind Shephard Wall, though the name was never formally registered.

After he died, he became Nga Reo Te Huatahi Reremoana Ahipene-Wall, just in time for the death certificate.

And since he was killed, the police have called him Baby Ru, or sometimes just Ru. He’ll be both in this story.

Ru, Baby Ru, was killed more than a month ago and there were three people in the Lower Hutt house when it happened, police say. They’re understood to be Rosie Morunga, Dylan Ross and Ru’s mother Storm Wall.

Despite that, no arrests have been made.

This week, the officer in charge of the homicide investigation said police are receiving “differing levels of cooperation” from the trio.

“We are engaging and trying our best to get them to talk to us,” said Detective Inspector Nick Pritchard.

“New Zealand law as it stands means people do have a right to silence, so we can’t force people to talk to us… it is frustrating.”

Lance Burdett, a former police negotiator, calls that an understatement: “It’s extremely frustrating for cops; they’re parents too and this will be heartbreaking.”

Essentially, he says, the right to silence is protected under the Bill of Rights, allowing people to refuse to answer questions, incriminating or not, put to them by police. They can’t be compelled to give any details or information, nor inferred as guilty for remaining silent.

While there is legislation that means you can arrest someone for failing to protect a child, Burdett says, police can’t simply charge every person who was in that house, wistfully adding, if only it were that simple.

“The fundamentals of arrest procedure and bringing someone to justice include two factors: mens rea, the mental intent to commit a crime, and actus rea, an act towards it.

“If you can’t prove either then there’s nothing to go on. There’s nobody in the house saying, ‘I did this’ and nobody saying, ‘I wanted to do this.’ Nobody’s saying anything.”

But they are, if not to police.

Unlike in most homicide investigations where families of victims and defendants might draw a curtain of silence, this one has seen an extraordinary number of threats, denials and allusions to ‘the truth’ aired on social media. This has only complicated the police investigation, adding a layer of sorting fact from fiction.

Still, while both Morunga and Wall have, online, denied any involvement in Ru’s death, Pritchard is clear: there were three people there and they need to tell the truth.

'My son has recently passed away…due to him choking on his breakfast,' Storm Wall.

Ru was days away from turning two when, on October 22, his mother announced his death on social media.

Three weeks previously they’d moved into the Lower Hutt property where Morunga and Ross had been living since January and getting off-side with neighbours from almost the get-go.

Later, nearby residents would tell of violence towards the dogs chained behind the house and constant yelling and screaming. The carpet had been ripped up, window framing broken, and rubbish strewn about the property.

Also on the windows, messages. “F… off” and “stay the f… away,” read the etchings when reporters visited in the days following Ru’s death. Then, mattresses and a baby-walker were piled on the roadside.

Again, later, a neighbour alleged Morunga had tried to attack him, and on another occasion, threatened to steal his car and burn his house down.

That was the neighbour who’d last seen Ru riding a plastic trike up and down the driveway, doing the best he could to steer.

“He could push himself with his little legs, and he had a little smile on his face. He crashed into the fence not long after, but he didn’t cry.”

Two days later , Wall wrote on social media that her son had died, choked on his breakfast, something about “clogs” coming out.

“I have tried with all will and power to respond to all helps (sic) to act for him but he is resting now in Wellington.”

Four days later, a day after what would have been Ru’s second birthday, Pritchard announced the child’s initially-unexplained death was now a homicide investigation.

Ru had died from blunt force injuries in a level of violence “difficult to fathom”, he said, also addressing claims from wider family who said they’d been asked by police about the toddler ingesting wet wipes.

“…The post-mortem confirmed that this did not contribute to his death. It was the injuries sustained that did.

“He was an innocent child who should have been safe and loved and should not have died as he did.”

Earlier that morning Wall had again posted on social media, this time to say her son had been murdered: “I am broken of all brokens (sic) I've cried more then any soul could cry”.

'Ruthless was in the care of [the other woman] that night,' family spokesperson explaining what they were told by Storm Wall about the care of Ru.

Dr Patrick Kelly was Starship hospital's director of child protection when in 2011 he first publicly questioned the right to silence in some child abuse cases.

Back then he was speaking at the coroner’s inquest into the deaths of Chris and Cru Kahui, twin babies who died of head injuries at Starship in 2006.

In that case, adults in the house initially refused to cooperate with police; the twins’ parents denied the killings and, two years later, their father Chris Kahui was acquitted of the murders.

Following the inquest, incoming children’s commissioner Russell Wills backed Kelly’s call to change the right to silence.

'When children have been seriously assaulted or killed, I think it's not OK that a family can gather together, can circle the wagons and be silent. I think that fails to keep children safe - and children deserve better than that.'

Now, more than a decade on, Kelly is still at Starship working as a paediatrician in the child protection team. Nothing has changed, he says, neither in the numbers of children abused nor the law protecting those who hurt them.

“My understanding back then [in 2011] was that in response to a number of child homicides in the UK, the UK Law Commission did a fairly comprehensive investigation and made a number of changes.

“The thing NZ did change was the law to create an offence of failure to protect, so if you had multiple adults in a house where a child came to harm it became possible to prosecute all those adults in theory.”

But the problem there, he says, is the prosecution must demonstrate that all the adults in the house must have known the abuse was occurring.

“Since NZ made that law change I’m not sure I’ve ever been involved in a case where all the adults in a house have been charged under that category.”

Kelly has been involved in cases where it was quite clear the child was abused and there were only two adults in the house.

“They were successfully convicted of failing to provide the necessities of life because it was able to be demonstrated the child had been injured days before help was sought. But neither could be prosecuted for causing the injuries because nobody knew which of the two did it.”

What Kelly wants is a law change like in the UK which, in certain circumstances, allow a jury to make an inference from silence. That would potentially mean that all adults present when a child was harmed could be cross examined in court and, should they remain silent, the jury should take that into consideration.

“I very much understand the importance of the right to silence…it was designed to protect the weak and vulnerable from exploitation in the justice system.

“But pre-verbal children are in an extra weak and vulnerable position in criminal court because they cant speak for themselves and never will be able to.

“The nature of the offence is very unique and there should be a unique potential to modify the right to silence.”

“I just want the truth to be told … I want justice, that’s all,” Storm Wall.

The police case is this: on the morning of October 22, Ru suffered injuries that could have been caused by a weapon, or the toddler’s head being slammed on furniture or a floor.

In an unresponsive state, and accompanied by Ross, Morunga and Wall, he was driven to Hutt Valley Hospital where efforts to save him failed. He had a piece of fabric around his neck, though that wasn’t a factor in his death.

“It’s very unusual and we are trying to unpick what it means, how it got there, and again going back to the people that were in the house at the time. Someone will know the answer to why it was there, but we don’t have an answer at this stage.” Pritchard told the NZ Herald.

Leaving the hospital, the Nissan Sedan – licence plate TE6972 - was then driven to and from the house three times where it was used to remove items directly relevant to the investigation. Those include a hard drive containing CCTV footage of the property taken by security cameras installed by its occupants.

Lance Burdett says this evidence will be especially crucial, given the lack of cooperation from those who were there.

“Police will be doing lots of forensic work now, that will be the key. They’ll be looking for any evidence linking one with another but they have to have more than one.They have circumstantial - they were all there - we know that, but which one did it?”

It’s methodical and painstaking work, he says but in cases like this DNA left on the victim may not be enough to prove who was responsible.

“They’ll all say, ‘of course I held Ru’…this happened with the Kahui twins; they all shut down, there were a lot of people in the house. Why wasn’t this sorted out by law? Probably the Bill of Rights; you can’t be compelled.”

Meanwhile, through Ru’s uncle, Ngatanahira Reremoana, Wall has offered conflicting accounts as to what happened that Saturday night - when police initially believed Ru was injured.

So far, Reremoana has relayed three different versions from Wall. In them, she’s either put Ru to bed herself; Morunga tells her to go to bed while she takes care of Ru, or that Ru was put into his mother’s bed.

“Ruthless was in the care of [the other woman] that night,” Reremoana told media.

'We never were babysitting. His mother was there. We brought them back from abuse,'** Rosie Morunga.**

While Morunga has denied online she was caring for Ru when he died, the agency tasked with looking after New Zealand’s children has been accused of not caring for him while he lived.

Oranga Tamariki has confirmed Ru did have an ID number in its case management system though wasn’t in its care. Other than that it won’t comment on specifics.

On Thursday, the agency’s chief social worker Peter Whitcombe said he’s commissioned work to change approved information-sharing agreements between agencies when a child is killed.

“… we should be able to get to a point where we’re able to say, ‘this is the nature of our connection either presently, at the time of their death or in the past’.”

And so far, through commissioning that work, the picture is bleak.

In the five years between 2017 and 2021 there were 66 homicides in the under 20 age bracket nationally.

Of those, OT had direct involvement with four at the time of their deaths; two were in the agency’s custody and two were not: “They are suspected homicide through family harm incidents.'

Whitcombe is also working to validate how many of the 66 had some previous involvement with OT - be that a report of concern or a family group conference.

'We're aware of at least 19 of those we've had some involvement with previously.'

He says to give this some context, the agency analysed how many 18-20 year olds nationally have previously had a report of concern made about them. Thirty per cent had.

Whitcombe says risk is never static for families. His team often see that when there’s a change of relationship, location or community support, that risk increases. OT can only act if it knows about those changes.

“I want to say quite clearly that when people see something they’re worried about, that they don’t assume safety, that they don’t walk past it…

“Either they’re doing something to provide support, or they’re contacting OT or the police if there’s something really significant going on and needs an urgent response.”

According to Reremoana, Ru lived on and off with family in Taupō and would also stay with his grandmother in Wellington. Reremoana’s mother Sarah has said she raised Ru from birth until he moved to Hamilton to be with Wall in June.

In December 2022 and worried about his nephew being “in and out” of Hamilton drug houses, Reremoana made a formal complaint to Oranga Tamariki.

That email was titled “child in danger”, and outlined concerns his nephew didn’t get the “well-deserved care he needs”.

Nearly one year after he sent it, Pritchard confirmed Waikato police conducted a welfare check on Ru in July and found nothing of concern.

'Lots don't know the story. You all assume,'** Storm Wall.**

On Wednesday, exactly a month after Ru was killed, Pritchard appealed not just to the three adults in the house but to anyone.

“If you know anything at all about what might have happened, or have spoken to anyone who has disclosed anything, please come forward and let us know. Regardless of whether you think it’s significant or not you need to call the police.”

As to whether he’s confident someone will be charged?

“That’s hard to say. We’re definitely working towards it, that's our goal to hold people to account. Ultimately, down the track, when we look at everything, that's the goal - to prosecute.

“We're not losing focus of the end result which is to bring someone to justice for this crime.”

Lance Burdett says that with the lack of cooperation from those in the house, police will be relying on both forensics and heartstrings to do so.

“If they’re able to get onside with one, divide and conquer, and reach their heartstrings, they could talk. That’s a recognised crisis negotiation technique, but some of us have strings that are shorter than others.”

Ultimately, Burdett doesn’t believe justice for Ru will come any time soon. It may come, he says, because the thing about people is they almost always talk. Eventually.

“You’ve got to hope don’t you? With good detective work, something will occur that will start the change. There’s an old saying that’s applies well here.

“If you can bring all the little strands together you’ll have a rope.”