Ratima was later sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 10 years after pleading guilty to seven counts of murder, attempted murder and killing an unborn child.<\/p>\n
Raymond Ratima was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1993 after pleading guilty to seven counts of murder, attempted murder and killing an unborn child. Photo \/ NZ Herald<\/p>\n
He appeared before the Parole Board yesterday with the understanding he would not be likely to receive parole, because he needed to complete at least 12 months in a special treatment unit for men with a history of violent offending.<\/p>\n
At his last parole hearing in July, he had explained he did not want to go to the unit out of concerns for his safety, but yesterday he confirmed he had agreed to go to the unit.<\/p>\n
One board member, Professor Susanna Every-Palmer, asked Ratima questions through the parole hearing, and asked him to put himself in the shoes of his living victims.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou intended to kill them but you did not,\u201d she said, noting they might be fearful he would try to come back and finish the job if he were ever released.<\/p>\n
Ratima said he wanted to reassure those victims that he meant them no harm.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to send my aroha to them and wish them absolute healing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Judds Rd house in Masterton in which the massacre of seven people by Raymond Ratima (inset) took place.<\/p>\n
At his last parole hearing in July, he tearfully spoke about missing the people he had killed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very sorry and miss them profusely, all of them, the seven members of the wh\u0101nau whose lives I took,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack then, [I] felt if I can\u2019t have them, no one can have them. It was a very selfish thing, it is one of the most regretful and stupid things.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t blame any of the victims for having anger towards me for what I\u2019ve done to their families. I still have anger toward myself for what I\u2019ve done to those families.\u201d<\/p>\n
At yesterday\u2019s hearing, Ratima\u2019s lawyer said he had had an \u201cexemplary\u201d record in prison. A Corrections officer said it was expected Ratima would drop down to a minimum security classification when it was next up for review.<\/p>\n
In giving their decision, the board members said they would decline parole on this occasion so they could \u201csupport\u201d Ratima in receiving the right type of rehabilitation in the treatment unit.<\/p>\n
They would look at a possible period of reintegration once he had completed at least 12 months in the unit. He will next appear for a parole hearing in January 2027.<\/p>\n
Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He then lay in wait in his in-laws\u2019 darkened home on Judds Rd for his wife, Toni, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[51582,74,114108,1863,1061,8615,15159,19343,17898,19724,42,78,8454,14910,3375,9554,27612,61390,43,47839,384,8442,147985,1330,202,1529,40,38,41,39,8844,147984,1530,4741],"class_list":["post-256465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-51582","tag-after","tag-assurance","tag-back","tag-children","tag-come","tag-denied","tag-desire","tag-didnt","tag-given","tag-headlines","tag-in","tag-including","tag-kill","tag-killed","tag-manage","tag-mass","tag-murderer","tag-news","tag-parole","tag-people","tag-prison","tag-ratima","tag-raymond","tag-seven","tag-three","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-victims","tag-wahia","tag-years","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}