Robyn Hydes, aunt and godmother of Cory Protos, who was killed in a prolonged beating in 2014, talks about how his death has affected the family. (video first published in January 2018)

Cory Protos was strangled to death by his girlfriend after she gave him a prolonged beating. It looked like murder but police eventually accepted a guilty plea to manslaughter. How did this happen? MARTIN VAN BEYNEN reports.

He was the best boyfriend she ever had.

Kind-hearted, helpful and selfless, she said.

DAVID WALKER/STUFF Zariah Jae Samson, 25, at her sentencing for manslaughter last year.

But seven weeks on, she was thinking differently – and irrationally. He was a snake, a snitch and spreading rumours.

READ MORE:

* Editorial: The costs and complications of justice

* Killing 'ripped our hearts out', but police accepted manslaughter to protect informants

* Zariah Samson jailed for 'horrific' killing of boyfriend Cory Protos

* Zariah Samson denied parole

Over four hours in a friend's kitchen, she tied his hands behind his back, stripped him and assaulted him with punches and kicks.

She then marched him out of the flat and took him to the desolate state house where she lived with her pregnant sister. There she wrapped a computer cord around his neck and strangled him. Police found his body the next day wrapped in a red faux mink blanket under a double bed.

Cory James Protos, 30, died on Saturday, April 26, 2014. It took nearly three years and three months for Zariah Jae Samson, 25, to plead guilty to his manslaughter. For all that time she was on remand in jail.

Last July, Justice Cameron Mander sentenced her to six years and three months' jail, imposing a non-parole period of three years and three months.

NZ POLICE Cory James Protos, 30, was a good footballer and skate boarder.

He said he did not consider Samson was "labouring under any diminished capacity or understanding" when she killed Protos. However, a manslaughter charge meant Samson, who was 22 at the time of the killing, had to be sentenced on the basis she had no murderous intent.

Much about the case looked odd.

For a start, why had it taken more than three years for the case to have reached the plea stage?

Why had the prosecution decided not to pursue the murder charge given the strong evidence against the defendant?

And why was no-one else charged given the circumstances of the homicide? Had Samson, only 163 centimetres tall, really done it all herself?

Stuff obtained the court file late last year after a protracted process requiring a ruling from Justice Mander. Although some documents were removed, witness statements, interviews and other documents reveal a more complex case than might first appear.

Shane Bachop, father of Zariah Jae Samson, decided to leave when he saw his daughter distressed.

Police first knew about Protos' death when Samson came to the police station about 4.15pm on Sunday, the day after the killing. She came with a woman called Cindy, the partner of her father Shane Bachop, and probably the most sensible person in the whole saga.

Samson told police where Protos could be found. She said she had killed him after an argument that escalated to the point where a gun was held to her head. After dumping his car, she had walked to where her father was staying with Cindy, near Church Corner in Riccarton.

Police believed Samson was telling the truth, even if it took her nearly 17 hours to hand herself in.

They began by interviewing Samson's sister, Chevelle Samson-Witana, who was home at 51 Earnslaw Cres, Bryndwr, when Samson arrived with Protos. The house is a street along from where former Prime Minister John Key was brought up.

Samson-Witana recorded a full evidential interview on the Sunday night, saying she disliked Protos because he stole her chocolate biscuits and, although she heard some thumping, she was not aware of what her sister was doing.

Within 24 hours, detectives became aware a second address was involved and ​a clearer picture emerged. Interviews of two of Samson's friends, Nga Peta Tawha, 27, and Tawha's cousin, Ruanuku Kapea, 21, shed some light on what happened the day Protos was killed.

DANIEL TOBIN 51 Earnslaw Cres, Bryndwr where Cory Protos was killed.

Samson spent the early part of the day with Tawha, Kapea and Tawha's two children. After a shopping trip to Pak'nSave​ in Moorhouse Ave, the group noticed Samson become angry and tearful, vaguely blaming Protos for something.

It appears Protos was summoned by text message and the group waited for him at Tawha's Conference St flat. She lived on the third level of a large, solid-looking, block of flats in the leafy central city street.

Protos, a good skateboarder and snowboarder, arrived about 2.45pm wearing his usual outfit – a baseball cap, hoodie, Dickies skate pants and skate shoes – and had a bottle of beer in hand. He had been to the Conference St flat before, playing on the children's laptop.

IAIN McGREGOR/STUFF Cory Protos was beaten in a third level flat in this block of apartments in Conference St.

He went into the flat's tiny kitchen, to be accused of various things by an angry and paranoid Samson. Both had been using methamphetamine. Then the beating started, the thuds resounding through the flat.

Tawha said she heard "bang, bang, bang, for about three to five minutes".

She went into the kitchen and saw blood on Protos' white top and on his hands.

STUFF Zariah Samson was well supported when she appeared in the High Court at Christchurch last year.

"He was standing in front of the window. He like had a look on his face, like it was like a unsettled, like a kind of cry for help, but more, my help was, yeah nah, gone."

Tawha told police she was appalled, thinking: "F..... crazy b...., the f... . . . you f...... kidding me."

Tawha returned to the living room and turned the television sound up. She took her children out on the balcony to play I Spy, so they wouldn't hear the noise from the beating, and told them to be quick in the toilet because the toilet was close to the kitchen. After a couple of hours she decided she had to get out and took the children to McDonald's for dinner. They ordered three chicken-nugget hunger busters and ate in the car park.

Back at Conference St, Kapea, who had stayed behind, thought Samson was behaving bizarrely.

"She thought he had wires on him so she made him take off all his clothes and was checking his mouth, turned his phones off, stuff like that," she told police.

"He was bleeding. I tried to see where it was coming from but it was just every where . . . When I went in, and she was just talking to him, asking him if he's a snitch, and rah, rah rah and she was pretty paranoid. And he was just like, what are you doing this to me for. Like she didn't even know herself, I don't think."

With more banging coming from the kitchen, Kapea went in again to find Protos sitting on the floor, naked and wrapped in a blanket, and Samson "just going nuts". According to her interview she told Samson, "You're not doing this here".

"I think she wanted to f...... kill him."

Samson said, "it's over for him" and drew her hand across her throat.

Kapea reminded Samson she had children and told her to stop. Protos wasn't saying much.

"It's like he'd been cracked in the head and he was a bit dazed," she told police.

"Then when I was like nah, f... off. That's way over the top bro . . . I was thinking f.... F.... She was real crazy in the head."

Towards the end of the beating, about 7pm, Samson's father Shane Bachop arrived. It appears Tawha or Kapea had alerted him but he told police he had received a visit from a woman he didn't know who told him Samson was in trouble.

Bachop drove to Conference St with Cindy and their baby.

According to an interview recorded on June 4, 2014, Bachop claimed he found Samson in a bad way but denied he saw Protos in the kitchen.

"I don't take notice of people I don't like. It's easier for me," he said.

"She was talking in riddles, she wasn't right, thinking about ringing mental health."

But Bachop didn't stay.

"I got pissed off and as I do when I get pissed off, I walk away."

Kapea saw it differently.

"He came into the kitchen, just looked at him and Zariah, had a little talk and then he left. I think she wanted him to help her move him or something like that. Like he didn't want any, I don't think he wanted anything to do with it."

Samson seemed unsure what to do next and Kapea couldn't help her.

"And I was just like 'bro, I don't know, but you are out of here, you got to cruise. You know you ain't doing that here'."

About 7.20pm, Samson dressed Protos and walked him down the external stairs of the flat to his car. He was able to walk but looked dazed and unsteady.

By about 8.50pm Protos was dead. Samson sent Cindy a text saying "cleaning up mai mess" and asking for petrol and cleaning products.

In his police interview, Bachop said his daughter arrived at his house and went immediately to see Cindy. He then went to pick up Samson-Witana from Earnslaw Cres.

He maintained Samson had told him "why it happened, how it happened" and that she believed Protos was dead. He refused to go further saying he wasn't going to quote somebody "who I know wasn't in sound mind".

He said they had talked together about what to do on Sunday.

"I thought about coming in myself."

The court files contain other information showing Tawha returned to the Conference St flat after Samson had gone. She and the children packed bags to stay the night with Tawha's then boyfriend, Ricky Smith, a feared senior gang member.

Tawha, apparently a fastidious cleaner, returned the next night with Smith and, according to witnesses, thoroughly cleaned the kitchen and threw out a curtain in the kitchen. She also mopped the floor.

She told police she was cleaning up some "dog s...".

About a week after the killing, Samson pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder. A stream of information flowed into the inquiry team, some from informants who were promised confidentiality. One informant reported someone else had confessed to killing Protos. Another said Samson was taking the rap for someone else. Police followed up but found all the information was no more than gossip and rumour and some possibly deliberately misleading.

A trial date was set for April 2015, a year after the killing. Just before the trial Samson changed lawyers and one of New Zealand top barristers, Jonathan Eaton QC, took over her defence. Eaton wanted police to disclose the identity of the informants so he could pursue possible defences.

The police resisted on the basis the information was, in their view, completely unreliable and to protect the identity of the informants to whom they had promised confidentiality. Eaton insisted, seeing an opportunity to throw doubt on Samson's confession.

Police found themselves in a difficult predicament. Going for a murder conviction meant several years in the courts over the disclosure issue. Reducing the charge to manslaughter and accepting a guilty plea would not sit well with the Protos family but seemed the best of several bad options. The deal was done and Samson entered her guilty plea in court on July 10 last year.

In a pre-sentence report she said she didn't necessarily accept the statement of facts but didn't want a long trial. She had thought about suicide after the killing and expressed remorse, saying Protos was the best boyfriend she ever had.

The court file seen by Stuff also reveals more of both Samson's and Protos' background. Samson was one of eight children. Her parents were affiliated to gangs and were both drug users. She claimed her father had thrown her from a balcony when she was only 2, causing lifelong nerve damage. Her mother, who spent periods in jail, killed herself when Samson was 14 and she helped look after the other children.

Her youth was troubled and violent. By the age of 15 she had several convictions for assaulting police and for carrying a knife in public. By 19 she had been admitted to a Child and Youth Mental Health Facility to be treated for depression, drug and alcohol abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder.

By the time of the killing she had accumulated a long list of convictions mainly for dishonesty and driving offences. Her record showed a habit of thumbing her nose at the law. She committed numerous offences while on bail and failed to appear in court on 22 occasions.

A relationship with gang member Jason Hemaloto produced three children in short order. In early 2014, the relationship foundered and Hemaloto alleged she had threatened to kill him. Shortly before Samson began her relationship with Protos, Hemaloto took their three children to Gisborne without her consent. ​

The loss of the children caused a new crisis for Samson and her drug use escalated. She sank deeper into the drug world where she met Protos who was eight years older and whom, she said, pestered her to be his girlfriend. By the time of his death, Protos was heavily addicted to drugs. Like many users, dealing was the way he financed his habit.

"He would smoke crack every day. He would use a pipe and I know he used a needle because I saw them round," a friend told police.

Money was always short and Protos borrowed from mates but generally paid it back and was not thought to owe more than a couple of hundred dollars at his death. Although he talked about getting a job as a bouncer, he was no fighter.

His mates told police he had a nose for trouble and would just leave before it escalated.

"If he got confronted, he just be gone," one said.

"Cory was a funny bugger. Always taking the piss out of everyone. He was pretty bubbly, but he also kept things to himself," another mate told police.

"He always owed people money or had his drugs ripped off him. Always had something happening in his life . . . He was only a small fella (168cm) and people would take advantage of that."

His friends said he had intended to pick up his things from Samson's house on the Saturday he died. The house had too many dodgy people, he said. He seemed nervous and had spent the whole night smoking methamphetamine.

Protos' family remains deeply concerned about the way the case was handled. In November last year, his aunt and godmother Robyn Hydes, of Ashburton, wrote a letter to Minister of Justice Andrew Little.

"I am writing," she wrote, "to advocate for tougher sentencing so no other family has to endure years of having their lives in limbo, only to have no justice at the conclusion of the proceedings."

She said the family felt badly let down by the justice system.

"We never knew what was happening until the last minute. Over the next three years and four months we had four separate trials delayed, some in the week before the actual trial date.

"This is an unprecedented case and because of a loophole both Cory and his family fail to get justice for what we were later to find out was a prolonged violent atrocity.

"He was essentially tortured . . . with many bystanders being aware of what was happening and doing nothing. Learning what Cory had endured ripped out our hearts all over again."