Episode Details

On a winter Friday night in 1992, Raymond Ratima let himself into his in-laws' house on Judds Road, Masterton, with a key he had taken when he was told to leave. He waited forty-five minutes. Then he killed seven members of his own family — including his three small sons and a woman a month from giving birth — before lying in wait in the dark for the rest of them to come home. He pleaded guilty. He has never been released. And across thirty-four years, fourteen parole boards, a High Court judgment and the country's best forensic psychiatry, nobody has been able to answer the only question that matters: why.

Sources used:

Court and official records

Ratima v The New Zealand Parole Board [2024] NZHC 613 (Preston J, 20 March 2024) — https://thelawassociation.nz/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Ratima-v-Parole-Board.pdf

New Zealand Parole Board, decision of 12 March 2024 — https://www.paroleboard.govt.nz/decisions/decisions_2024/raymond_wahia_ratima_12032024

Parole Act 2002 — https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2002/0010/latest/DLM137632.html

Sentencing Act 2002, s 103 — https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2002/0009/latest/DLM136499.html

Contemporaneous reporting

"Man charged over massacre of seven," UPI, 26 June 1992 — https://www.upi.com/Archives/1992/06/26/Man-charged-over-massacre-of-seven/7593709531200/

History and reference

"Masterton massacre, 1992," NZHistory, Manatū Taonga — https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/masterton-massacre

"Mass homicides since 1990," Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand — https://teara.govt.nz/en/violent-crime/page-6

Later reporting

Nikki Macdonald, "Faces of Innocents: The Ratima massacre — remembering the children of Judds Rd," Stuff, 23 July 2016 — https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/faces-of-innocents/81305979/faces-of-innocents-the-ratima-massacre--remembering-the-children-of-judds-rd

"Mass murderer believed he was 'putting them in a better place'," NZ Herald, 2017 —

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