Now, Tukaokao is on trial at the High Court at Rotorua, charged with murder.
This week, the jury was taken through Shrimpton’s movements on November 3, 2023, which ended with him dead from a single gunshot to the chest.
Text messages, maps, CCTV footage and phone data location “pins” formed the basis of a video presentation, edited by police, and played to the jury by the Crown.
The jury also heard about Shrimpton’s drug habit, “low-level” dealing, the debts he owed and his whānau’s attempts to help him get “clean”.
Harley Shrimpton was killed on a rural property in the Western Bay of Plenty in 2023. Photo / NZ Police
Conversations at a hospital bedside
Shrimpton began his day on November 3 at Tauranga Hospital.
The 28-year-old had been spending a lot of time with his younger brother, Caylem Jackson, who is now 21.
Jackson said his older brother had been “saying a lot of things” while he sat at his bedside.
“Thinking he was a bad brother and a bad son, but he wasn’t.”
Jackson said Shrimpton had been a long-time user of cannabis and methamphetamine, and earlier that year neither Shrimpton, nor his girlfriend at the time, had been “looking after theirselves [sic]”.
Shrimpton had some debts, but it “wasn’t crazy” in terms of the amounts owed, and he’d also been a low-level dealer, but again Jackson said it was “nothing crazy”, confirming his brother would sell drugs to pay for his own drug habit.
On that Friday morning, the brothers’ cousin, Janaya Hafoka, visited Jackson at hospital too.
She told the court she hadn’t spoken with Shrimpton in months – he had lived with her about a year earlier, but had moved out because of unpaid rent.
She said his priority, in terms of money, was paying for methamphetamine.
Hafoka said it was a sad reality that Shrimpton wasn’t the only member of their whānau to get caught up in drugs and gangs.
On November 3, she remembered Shrimpton seeming quiet.
He had “sat down and had a conversation”, which he hadn’t done in a while, telling her about a run-in he had with other people, not connected to this trial.
He had bruising to his face, and when asked where he was living, he said, “out of his car”.
As she was leaving, Hafoka told Shrimpton to get in touch if he wanted her to come and sit with Caylem, if he wanted a break.
She didn’t hear from him again.
‘Wft is going on’: Messaging before an alleged abduction
The court heard Shrimpton had been getting messages from a number belonging to a former flatmate since about 7am on November 3.
Only, his former flatmate wasn’t the person sending the messages.
The phone had been taken, in what the Crown alleges was an aggravated robbery, by Tukaokao.
Tukaokao, the Crown says, is a patched Greazy Dog MC member who was owed money by Shrimpton and wanted his debt repaid.
Messages begin, from the “former flatmate”, asking “wea u”.
There is back and forth, with Shrimpton messaging, “I’m at hospital. Whatsup g”.
Later that morning, Shrimpton messages, and his phone data confirms, he was at “the courthouse”.
There are more messages from the flatmate’s number requesting to “talk” at a meet-up.
Shrimpton asks, “wtf is going on”.
By early afternoon, Shrimpton is at the Sulphur Point boat ramp in a silver Mazda with a couple of his mates.
The Mazda is seen on CCTV footage parked up, before, off in the distance, a blue Prius comes into shot.
It’s driven by Tukaokao who, about 1.30pm, gets out of the car.
He walks over to the Mazda and appears to have words with the occupants, before his arm goes to the back passenger door, and it appears he’s trying to open it.
The car speeds off, and Tukaokao gets back in the Prius, and drives off in the same direction.
The two cars are captured on CCTV footage, turning from Mirrielees Rd onto the Tauranga Harbour Bridge, passing the marina, along Hewletts Rd and to the Maunganui Rd roundabout.
Here, the silver Mazda turns left, heading for the Maunganui Rd McDonald’s, but when the blue Prius gets there, it turns right, and it is captured on CCTV heading for Papamoa’s Dickson Rd, where Shrimpton’s former flat is.
Tuara Heke, 21, and Piripi Tukaokao, 23, face charges related to the kidnapping, death and burial of Harley Shrimpton, who was 28 when he died.
The Crown alleges Tukaokao had visited that flat in the early hours of that morning, along with co-defendant Tuara Heke, looking for Shrimpton and robbing the former flatmate of his phone in the process.
But soon, the Prius heads back along Maunganui Rd, and it turns into the McDonald’s carpark, where it blocks in the Mazda, which is parked between two cars.
Tukaokao gets out and appears to speak to the occupants through the Mazda’s windows.
At 2.41pm, Shrimpton gets out and gets into the front passenger seat of Tukaokao’s car.
The Crown alleges this was done under duress, but Tukaokao denies this.
The Prius heads back towards Tauranga, with CCTV footage recording its route before the last camera captures it heading out of Tauranga, towards the Kaimai Ranges, at 3.11pm.
About two hours later, at 5.13pm the Prius is seen by the same camera, coming back along SH29 towards Tauranga.
Shrimpton is not in the front passenger seat.
He was shot in the chest sometime in that two-hour window, at a rural property on Poripori Rd, but Tukaokao says it was an accident.
Just over a month later, Tukaokao admitted to police that Shrimpton was dead, and led them to where Shrimpton’s body was buried.
On December 6, 2023, police recovered Shrimpton’s body, wrapped in a tarpaulin and buried in a hole, 2m deep by 1m wide.
He’d previously been reported missing to police by his cousin, Hafoka, and a missing person investigation began, before it became a homicide investigation.
Tukaokao, who is represented by Rebekah Webby and Nicholas Dutch, has pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated robbery, kidnapping and murder.
In her opening statement, Webby said her client said it “should never have happened the way it happened”, and asked the jury to keep an open mind.
Co-defendant Heke, who has Bill and Rita Nabney representing him, has pleaded not guilty to aggravated robbery and one charge of accessory after the fact to murder, denying helping Tukaokao move Shrimpton’s body.
However, he pleaded guilty to a second accessory after the fact charge, in which he admits helping to bleach and clean the shed where the shooting took place, as well as a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
The trial is expected to take four weeks.
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.