{"id":581280,"date":"2026-08-26T21:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T21:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/581280\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T21:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T21:32:09","slug":"robert-mark-purchase-admits-sexually-motivated-kidnap-in-auckland-after-long-florida-prison-stay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/581280\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Mark Purchase admits sexually motivated kidnap in Auckland after long Florida prison stay"},"content":{"rendered":"

His latest crimes were brought to the attention of police in March \u2013 five months to the day after his misleading account of his past was first published \u2013 when a distressed woman flagged down a motorist<\/a> in a remote bush area in coastal West Auckland.<\/p>\n

The night before, she had been visiting bars and restaurants on Auckland Central\u2019s Karangahape Rd with friends. At 11.52pm, a friend ordered an Uber but the driver cancelled the request a short time later, court documents state.<\/p>\n

Purchase, who is not an Uber driver, had been driving up and down K Rd that night in his white Toyota Vitz.<\/p>\n

The two friends, unaware that their ride had been cancelled, walked up to Purchase\u2019s car when he pulled over next to where they were standing. When they asked if he was their Uber, he didn\u2019t bother to correct them and drove the first woman to her home in Mt Wellington.<\/p>\n

\u201cThereafter, and once he had her alone, Mr Purchase took [the second woman] away without her consent, and with the intention of having sexual connection with her,\u201d the agreed summary of facts states.<\/p>\n

He drove her in the opposite direction of her home.<\/p>\n

\"AucklandAuckland resident Robert Mark Purchase has been charged with abduction for purposes of sexual connection, injuring with intent to injure and strangulation.<\/p>\n

The woman told police her memory of what happened next was fragmentary, but she recalled the driver pulling over and assaulting her out of anger after she vomited in the car.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Her] next memory is of running away from Mr Purchase, who managed to catch her and pin her to the ground,\u201d documents state. \u201cMr Purchase then continued to assault her, including punching and strangling her.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The victim\u2019s] next memory is of being in a grassy area at Pine Avenue, Titirangi.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was still nighttime, and the victim had torn underwear, missing shoes and cable tied around her wrists, which she managed to wriggle out of. She had severe bruising and swelling to her face and neck and couldn\u2019t see properly through one eye. Disoriented, she decided to hide in the bush until daylight, then asked a passing motorist for help.<\/p>\n

Purchase\u2019s DNA was later discovered on the inside of the woman\u2019s undergarments and on the cable ties found at the scene.<\/p>\n

When spoken to by police, Purchase denied strangling or sexually assaulting the woman, but he claimed to have beaten her and tied her up because of her own bad behaviour. He said he thought he had dropped off both women when he realised the victim was passed out in the back seat.<\/p>\n

He said the woman gave him directions to the remote dirt road. He then tried to kick her out after she vomited and refused to clean it up or pay for it, he claimed, but she resisted by scratching and stabbing him with her nails.<\/p>\n

\"AucklandAuckland resident Robert Mark Purchase has been charged with abduction for purposes of sexual connection, injuring with intent to injure and strangulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe then hit her on the back of her head, and slapped her across the face,\u201d he told police, according to the agreed facts. \u201cHe [said he] then placed a cable tie on each of her hands to stop her from fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if it was all a misunderstanding, then it was remarkably similar to another case that landed him a long stretch in an American prison in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

US court documents show Purchase was sentenced to 25 years\u2019 imprisonment in 2003 after pleading no contest in Florida to armed kidnapping and carjacking with a deadly weapon. He had also initially been charged with committing sexual battery with great force.<\/p>\n

Purchase, then 25, and co-defendant Seth Straws, 21, were arrested after they ran into bad weather while driving along a Florida motorway and crashed the victim\u2019s car, according to media accounts at the time. <\/p>\n

\"AucklandAuckland resident Robert Mark Purchase spent two decades in a US prison after kidnapping a woman who said she was repeatedly sexually assaulted. He’s now been charged in New Zealand with abduction for purposes of sexual connection, injuring with intent to injure and strangulation involving another woman. Photo \/ WTHR<\/p>\n

When paramedics arrived on the scene, the 21-year-old woman told them she had been abducted in Indianapolis<\/a> \u2013 a nearly 16-hour drive that would have taken them across at least four state lines.<\/p>\n

Purchase admitted to police that he had sexually assaulted the woman several times during the journey, according to media reports.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed like the right thing to do at the time,\u201d Purchase allegedly responded when asked by police why he did it, Indianapolis TV station WTHR reported in 2002.<\/p>\n

Purchase was returned to New Zealand in 2023 after his parole release.<\/p>\n

In his subsequent interviews with Stuff \u2013 for which he posed for photos and insinuated he had not committed another crime since 1997 \u2013 Purchase showed the reporter a copy of his otherwise clean New Zealand criminal record, the media organisation reported last year. He suggested that New Zealand was especially judgmental of his past, noting that he had been able to find jobs while living in the US. <\/p>\n

\"AucklandAuckland resident Robert Mark Purchase’s LinkedIn profile photo. He has been charged with abduction for purposes of sexual connection, injuring with intent to injure and strangulation.<\/p>\n

But he didn\u2019t mention in the initial story, or in two feel-good follow-up stories, that some of those jobs were prison assignments, Stuff noted in a fourth article acknowledging Purchase\u2019s misleading statements.<\/p>\n

After yesterday\u2019s guilty pleas, Justice Mathew Downs set a sentencing date for February next year. He ordered Purchase to remain in jail until then.<\/p>\n

Craig Kapitan<\/a> is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His latest crimes were brought to the attention of police in March \u2013 five months to the day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[254694,163102,1443,16489,21653,74,12476,51,110076,3246,71728,286316,793,2147,286317,8241,17511,286318,78,232,5844,62508,685,2190,32573,86468,11692,111,43,139,195710,69,8442,13673,3046,15386,3168,2069,162551,427,116377,212625,1316,102,379,4741],"class_list":["post-581280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-254694","tag-163102","tag-about","tag-admits","tag-adult","tag-after","tag-applied","tag-auckland","tag-aucklander","tag-both","tag-constantly","tag-excon","tag-felt","tag-florida","tag-hardluck","tag-himself","tag-honest","tag-honourable","tag-in","tag-jobs","tag-journalist","tag-kidnap","tag-last","tag-long","tag-mark","tag-motivated","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nowadays","tag-nz","tag-prison","tag-purchase","tag-robert","tag-sexually","tag-shared","tag-stay","tag-stint","tag-story","tag-stymied","tag-touted","tag-when","tag-with","tag-year","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581280","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=581280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}