The lights were red, and Karen and her husband Geoffrey were making their way over the crossing, walking side by side after going out for dinner.
But they never made it home.
Kimber rode straight into them on his Harley Davidson, failing to stop at the red light, which he said he never saw.
He now accepts that even though there was an overhead traffic light board missing that night, ultimately the cause of the collision was his speed.
“If I’d been giving due diligence to my ride, I would have had time to stop, you know?” he reflects.
Karen flew through the air on impact, hitting a fence on the side of the road. Geoffrey was dragged under the bike.
Both died at the scene.
At first, Kimber says he didn’t realise he’d hit anyone. Then he saw Geoffrey.
It wasn’t until quite some minutes later that he saw Karen.
She’d already been assessed by paramedics and a first-responder nurse as being beyond help, but Kimber says all he could see was a woman lying unattended.
“I did the best of what I could do of CPR… I didn’t really know a great deal about it, but I had a try.
“But to hear her take her final breath… it blew me away.”
He says it was a turning point.
Remorse, regret, and a 3.5 year prison sentence
Kimber spoke to NZME while still serving a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence, after being found guilty of two charges of manslaughter.
Outside are the rolling paddocks of the working farm that form part of Waikeria Prison. This low-security area could almost feel like a campground cabin block, were it not for the towering barbed wire fences and high-security gates we enter through.
Mark Kimber is in Waikeria Prison for the manslaughter of two pedestrians in Tauranga. He says the incident prompted a personal reckoning and efforts to change his life.
Photo / Mike Scott
Kimber holds tightly to a rolled-up piece of paper he continues to fidget with – it’s the handwritten letter he wrote to the judge who sentenced him.
Justice Cheryl Gwyn referred to this letter when determining his sentence, and to the letters of support written on his behalf.
In her view, he had “taken responsibility for what [he] did and the harm [he] caused and [he has] tried to make amends for that”.
She said one of the themes of the letters was that under his tough exterior, he was a kind and compassionate man, “with a lot of potential to make a real and lasting difference for others”.
Justice Gwyn said no sentence could ever make up for the deaths of the couple.
In determining a sentence, Justice Gwyn acknowledged she gave particular weight to Kimber’s remorse and rehabilitative efforts – a 25% discount – because “it is significant and sustained and, in my view, genuine”.
She thought his “continued rehabilitation will offer the best protective outcome for the public, more so than a very long prison sentence”.
‘I’m genuinely sorry’, says Kimber
Before the interview starts, Kimber says he wants to make it clear: he doesn’t think he’s a saint. He’s agreed to talk because he wants to offer an apology to the Boucher family.
“I’m sorry if I haven’t got great words for the job, but I’m sorry… I wish I could change things.” He adds later: “I’m genuinely sorry. I know it’s only a little word.”
Geoffrey and Karen Boucher were crossing State Highway 2 in July 2022 when they were struck and killed by Mark Kimber, who was speeding on his Harley Davidson.
The Bouchers’ two adult children told NZME they did not want to comment and had no interest in hearing what Kimber had to say.
Karen’s sister Janet Lentle and niece Louise Lentle, who live in the United Kingdom, said they remained sceptical about the so-called remorse, particularly given Kimber received two speeding infringements after the deaths.
“It wasn’t the turning point, was it? Because after he killed my aunt and my uncle, he went on to be caught speeding twice… if you were actually remorseful, you would be the most cautious driver going,” Louise said.
She believes his remorse is calculated, and “all for show”.
A ‘s***’ history of speeding and driving while disqualified
It was July 22, 2022, when Kimber’s path fatally crossed with that of the Bouchers.
Kimber, a life member of the Filthy Few who was riding his bike in full gang “colours”, was no stranger to bad driving, and is quick to admit his driving history is “s***”.
He’d racked up 70 recorded infringement offences and 11 convictions for driving-related offences, and accepted at trial that he routinely rides above the speed limit if he thinks it’s safe.
His criminal history includes violence, drugs, dishonesty, non-compliance with court orders, property damage and weapons charges.
He’s been imprisoned six times before , with his longest sentence being six and a half years.
After killing the Bouchers, he acknowledges there were two further speeding infringements.
One he says happened on a straight piece of road, as he was trying to get to his dying father.
He said the second was when he saw a cop on the side of the road, and sped up. When pulled over, he said he threw the licence at the officer, telling him he was “over it” and didn’t want to ride a motorbike anymore.
For all his expressed regrets, Kimber acknowledges from behind bars that he’s “not an innocent man”.
He has meted out serious violence and has been a long-time user of methamphetamine.
“I’ve done some horrible sh**, you know? And I’m not proud of it at all… But everything else is something I’ve done,” he said.
Mark Kimber says seeing Karen Boucher’s final moments have changed him, and made him reflect on his lawless and violent past.
It appears that for Kimber, he thinks the collision with the Bouchers is different, because there was no intent – it was not something he set out to do, and that’s the distinction between this and his previous offending.
“It still can be construed that I’ve done something because I was speeding, it’s still doing something.
“But I had no intention of hurting people. …to hurt someone when you didn’t mean to… it’s not a nice feeling.”
His fault lies, in his view, in his overestimation of his ability on a motorbike.
Yet, the jury’s verdict reflects they found his riding deviated so far from the standard expected of a reasonable motorcycle rider, such a “major departure”, that it amounted to manslaughter.
At one point before the collision, estimates had him riding about 60km/h above the 50km/h speed limit as he approached the Bethlehem roundabout.
At the point he hit the Bouchers, his estimated speed was 72.8km/h, just over 20km/h above the posted speed limit.
Geoffrey and Karen Boucher were using the pedestrian crossing at the traffic lights near the Bethlehem shops. Photo / Mead Norton
Kimber’s riding that night seemed to reflect the kind of lawlessness he’s adopted throughout his adult life, a way of operating outside the norms of law-abiding New Zealanders. A decision to ignore the lawful speed and ride as he chose.
His previous violence seems to have been his way of dealing with disputes, of seeking retribution within his gang context, or taking out his frustrations on his partner.
Court documents said, in early 2018, he “whacked (his partner) across the back of her head with his knuckles” because she was “stressing him out”.
A couple of months later, he saw her using her phone, and punched her in the eye after thinking she was messaging another man.
In 2003, in a dispute over money owed, he smashed a man around the head, shoulder, hand, chest and leg with a baseball bat.
Stopping short of justifying his actions as warranted, he accepts that he actively chose to behave unlawfully and violently in those cases.
But on July 22, 2022, his lawlessness hit the lives of those outside his world in a way he says he never intended.
A bigger picture he ‘never used to see’
Kimber says the Bouchers’ deaths “altered his thoughts on a lot of things”, particularly his understanding of the pain and suffering he’s caused.
“It’s the bigger picture, not just the victims, but the bigger picture of their brothers, their sisters, their family, their parents.”
“That’s the picture that I never used to see. I used to see what was just in front of me.”
During the trial, Kimber was confronted by the CCTV footage that shows him speeding through the roundabout and hitting the Bouchers.
Karen’s body is seen flying through the air on impact.
The footage was played many times during the trial, though not always in its entirety. With every play, a heaviness descended on the courtroom.
Kimber says he tried not to look at it.
“It just ruins you, you know… because everyone’s seen a nice couple walking down the road, you know, and [they’re now] no more… It’s one of those things that’s never going to go away.”
Mark Kimber, pictured at the start of his trial in the High Court at Rotorua.
After the collision, Kimber says he self-referred to the Grace Foundation in Auckland after his methamphetamine use increased.
He says because he wanted to be there, he got a lot out of it.
A knee operation brought him back to Tauranga, and after recovering, he went to an addiction support programme run by Paul Stanyer, through Curate Church.
Stanyer has since started a new faith-based programme in Te Puke called Shelter Recovery.
Stanyer referred Kimber to further support groups at Tauranga’s Historic Village, where Kimber joined a men’s group, and ended up doing an intentional peer support programme, which helps with mental health and suicide.
Kimber reckons all this has made him realise he’s “reasonably good at getting alongside people”.
“I’ve got a lot of life experience and a lot of things that a lot of other people would only read about, and [have] never seen.”
He also did a first aid course, after his attempt to perform CPR on Karen continued to weigh on him.
“I just kept wondering… did I do it too hard or, you know, or just too soft or wrong place?” he said.
At the trial, there was clear evidence that Karen’s injuries were unsurvivable.
Kimber says he hopes once out of prison, he can help others.
It’s unclear what his involvement with the Filthy Few will look like, though.
He’s previously told the court and Parole Board he’s “distanced himself” from the gang, but accepts he’s a “life member”.
“We all know that being gang members is pretty negative in the community, but I look at things slightly different,” he said.
“I look that I can be trusted by other gang members, and if through… my experiences, I can help somebody else move away from violence or drugs or whatever… it’s a better community for everyone.”
He says: “At the end of the day, I don’t want Geoffrey and Karen’s death to not mean anything, you know?”.
Kimber’s childhood was marked by neglect. He was sent to live on a remote farm with his father, whom he describes as a “hard man”.
He says he would be left for months on end, while his dad worked on farms in the lower North Island.
Kimber was about 11, and would return from school to find grown men, who knew his dad, but whom Kimber didn’t know, staying in the house.
He remembers getting hungry, especially in winter, and was told he could help himself to a meat freezer at a nearby farm.
He didn’t realise he was actually eating possum meat meant for the dogs. He thought it was rabbit.
Emerging from childhood, Kimber quickly took up with the Filthy Few, in large part due to his love of motorbikes and desire to build a Harley Davidson.
When asked about his background, his violence, and his drug use, he says that’s his history.
“We can learn from it, but we don’t want to make it our future, eh… All I can do is do my best to change the way I’ve done things, the way I’ve thought.”
Boucher family asks: ‘Why does he get out and have a life?’
While the judge, and others connected to Kimber’s case, may take Kimber at his word, others remain unconvinced, particularly the Boucher family.
Louise Lentle has worked in UK courts and said she was “flabbergasted” by the sentence handed down; she expected a sentence in the realm of 20 years’ imprisonment.
“I also know how expensive court cases are,” she said.
“It feels like it’s been a massive waste of money. If he wasn’t going to get a decent sentence, then what was the point in going through all of this?”
The trial had been hard to watch, particularly when the CCTV footage was played.
“For us to see it unexpectedly shocked us all and made us all feel sick,” Louise said.
“To see my aunt be thrown in the air like a ragdoll, I hope he never gets a good night’s sleep. I hope the last thing he sees when he goes to sleep every night, and the first thing he sees when he wakes up, is my aunt dying.”
Karen and Geoffrey Boucher.
In terms of the sentencing process, she and Janet both say they didn’t feel as though the impact of the deaths on the family had been given enough weight.
They hadn’t told Karen’s mother, who is in her 90s, that the trial was under way, because they didn’t think she would cope.
They hoped that when they could tell her the final outcome, it would come as some comfort.
But after sentencing, they said it had the opposite effect.
“It broke her heart all over again because it felt like her daughter’s life meant nothing.”
At the centre of their frustration is that when Kimber gets out of prison, despite being disqualified from driving for a period, eventually he will get back to a normal life, rehabilitated or not.
“I think he should die in prison,” says Janet.
“Why does he get out and have a life? My sister and brother-in-law have not got a life anymore. They don’t get to see their children married, their grandchildren. He’s robbed them of all that. So why does he get a life?”
She says she felt the loss of Karen acutely when she achieved a life-long dream of visiting Canada.
“I got there when I turned 60, which was two years ago, and the first person I wanted to tell was my sister, and she wasn’t there,” she says, as she begins to weep.
Louise reflects that her Uncle Geoff was the “fun uncle”, always picking her up by her ankles as a child.
She said it’s bittersweet that her own young boys got to experience the “fun Uncle Geoff”, just months before he passed, during the couple’s visit to the UK.
When told of the comments Kimber has made about his recurring memories of the moment Karen passed, both women say, “good”.
“I can understand where he is saying that killing my aunt and uncle changed his mindset because… he did not go out that night and go, ‘I’m going to kill two innocent people’,” Louise said.
However, he also didn’t make a choice not to kill anyone, she says.
“When I go out and drive my car, I’m making sure that I drive in a safe manner so I don’t cause anybody else any hurt, or injury, or kill anybody.”
She believes his remorse has been calculated, and nothing he says is genuine.
“I think he’s actually probably quite a clever man, and has managed to manipulate everybody to think that he is this poor lost soul,” she said, adding that nothing she heard him say in court rang true.
“It was all a ruse so that people would feel sorry for him, so he could try and get a lower sentence, which worked, evidently.”
If he’d been genuine, she believes he wouldn’t have been caught speeding again, and wouldn’t have taken so long to do the first aid course.
They found it “insulting” that Kimber had made an offer of $10,000 emotional harm reparation.
“It wasn’t even [enough for] a funeral,” Louise said.
“To me, he put a monetary value on my aunt and uncle’s life, and that’s all he thought they were worth. Like a proper slap in the face.”
‘My actions have taken their loved ones’
Kimber acknowledges why the family might be reluctant to hear from him and accept his remorse.
“My actions have taken their loved ones, you know,” he says.
“I can’t tell them how to think or even try to, you know. I’ve had enough losses in my life to understand what loss is.”
When asked if he truly has a new outlook, Kimber returns to the same reflection he began with.
“I had it from the moment Karen went, you know. To have something outside your control.”
He then acknowledges it was indeed his deliberate decision to speed that caused the incident.
“If I need a reminder of what my stupidity can cause, all I’ve got to do is close my eyes, and there she is.”
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.