'On left in the swamp is where the gun is': Suicide note led police to alleged murder weapon

Warning: This story deals with details of a violent death and suicide and may be distressing.

A gun that “went off” without a trigger-pull, a shot that fired in the midst of a struggle, or a deliberate execution-style shot to the chest?

That is the central issue that experts, called by the Crown, have been tasked with assisting a jury to determine.

Piripi Tukaokao says when he took Harley Shrimpton, who owed him a drug debt, into a remote shed on a property on Poripori Rd in November 2023, he pulled out a loaded gun to “scare him”.

But when Shrimpton argued back, they struggled over the gun, and in the process, Shrimpton was shot in the chest.

Tukaokao told police it was an accident and he didn’t “even remember pulling the trigger”.

Tuara Heke (21) and Piripi Tukaokao (23) faces charges related to the death Harley Shrimpton, who was 28 when he died.

Tukaokao is charged with kidnapping, murder and aggravated robbery, while co-defendant Tuara Heke faces charges of accessory after the fact, for allegedly helping to move the body, and aggravated robbery.

This week in the High Court trial, the attention has turned to the shotgun itself, which was recovered from a swamp in Bethlehem, Tauranga.

The suicide note that led police to the alleged murder weapon

When police were investigating Shrimpton’s death, they arrested a man named Terrence Hayes, whom they believed supplied Tukaokao with the shotgun.

Hayes was interviewed by police on December 5, 2023, and Detective Sergeant Jonathon Mitchell told him they were “aware of some conversations where a Greazy Dog gang member has approached you for a firearm”.

Hayes denied supplying the firearm.

Mitchell said to Hayes that he imagined that “as a prospect”, Hayes would “feel obliged to help out a patched member”.

“So I’ll ask you again, have you supplied a firearm to a patched member of the Greasy Dogs?” Mitchell asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Hayes said.

But on December 11, Hayes died by suspected suicide. Those close to him had noticed he had been reserved and “off” in the lead-up to his death.

Hayes left letters under his pillow, and one provided a different account than what he’d earlier told police.

“Pidz got the gun from me,” he wrote.

Pidz is the nickname that Tukaokao is known by.

Hayes explains he had no idea “what he was getting himself into” when he supplied the gun, and said when he got it back, he was told to get rid of it.

“If you follow the track down bottom there old bridge to cross to get to the water. On left in the swamp is where the gun is. F*** you Pids.”

Police recovered the 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun, and it was sent for analysis, and a series of forensic tests.

Wound margins, shot distances, and a ‘drop test’

Pathologist Dr Kilak Kesha performed an autopsy on Shrimpton’s body after it was recovered from a hole dug near a creek on a Poripori Rd property.

Tukaokao, after admitting to shooting Shrimpton, led police to where the body was buried.

Harley Shrimpton was killed on a rural property in the Western Bay of Plenty in 2023. Photo: NZ Police

Shrimpton’s body had been in the ground for a month when it was recovered on December 6, 2023, and Dr Kesha said there was a moderate level of decomposition.

He noted a gunshot wound with “irregular margins” – caused when shotgun pellets began to disperse.

He said the gunshot caused a fatal injury, and Shrimpton would have died within “seconds to minutes”.

He said shotgun pellets recovered had been scattered throughout Shrimpton’s chest, and he’d concluded the shot had a slight downward angle, based on the wound path.

He estimated, based on the wound size and pellet distribution, and his experience examining gunshot wounds, the shot was fired from between 0.9m to 1.2m.

However, he accepted, under cross-examination by one of Tukaokao’s lawyers, Nick Dutch, that a more accurate test of distance would involve firing the weapon used.

The gun used to shoot Harley Shrimpton was the focus at the start of the third week of the High Court trial over Shrimpton's death.

Police armourer, Graeme Hawken, examined and tested the safety mechanisms of the firearm, including doing a drop test, where he dropped the shotgun from 30cm above the ground, “multiple times” to see if it would fire by itself.

It didn’t. Nor did it fire when it was hit “all over” with a mallet.

There were no modifications to the firearm, and the safety catch was functioning. He described the gun as being in good condition.

He also explained the weight of the trigger pull as being 2.5kg – illustrating this by telling the jury to imagine tying two bags of sugar on the end of a finger, and trying to lift it.

That was the force needed to pull the trigger.

Hawken’s overall conclusion was the firearm could not accidentally fire.

Dutch asked Hawken if the tests he did were related to the specific circumstances described by Tukaokao, or just a generic set of tests related to the firearm mechanics, and Hawken confirmed it was the latter.

The final firearms expert was from the New Zealand Institute for Public Health and Forensic Science, PHF, Gerhard Wevers.

Wevers used the shotgun to do a series of firing tests at different distances.

He had also received the clothing Shrimpton had been wearing, with the bullet holes visible and measureable, and acquired fabric of a similar polycotton woven blend.

He also found ammunition of a similar size and weight, with a similar “wad” – the part of the cartridge that holds shotgun pellets, and was also found in Shrimpton’s body.

Based on a comparison of the holes sizes and markings on his fabric, with that of Shrimpton’s, he concluded the shot was “unlikely” to have been fired from closer than half a metre, and from no further than 1.25m.

In particular, he looked at the propellant visible, and embedded, in the fabric when closer than 0.5m. The fabric was also melted around the edge of the hole at close distances.

Neither of those observations had been made on Shrimpton’s clothing.

At distances further than 1.25m, there were individual pellet holes made by the more dispersed pellets.

Wever accepted there were limitations to his experiments, however. He didn’t know the exact composition of the material on Shrimpton’s shirt – if it had more cotton than polyester, it would be less prone to melting.

He also couldn’t be sure of the exact ammunition used – he’d had to rely on comparing the measurements and look of the pellets and the wad recovered, as well as other ammunition recovered in the police investigation.

However, when he did tests with other ammunition, including slightly larger pellet sizes, it didn’t seem to make a difference over the distances in question.

He accepted, under cross-examination, the shot could have been fired from slightly closer than 0.5m – for example, from 0.4m – but maintained it was unlikely to be even as close as 0.5m because of the lack of melting and propellant.

The trial continues.

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.