Trial hears of Manchester Street “sex tax”
A sex worker who gave evidence in a Christchurch High Court murder trial today said there was no trouble with gangs on the streets until a couple of months before Mellory Manning was killed.
The Mongrel Mob started demanding a payment of $20 from the girls on the streets for each job they did, the woman said. She has name suppression.
Mauha Huatahi Fawcett, 26, has denied murdering 27-year-old Ngatai Lynette Manning, known as Mellory, on or about December 18, 2008, and is defending himself.
Manning’s partly naked body was found in the Avon River on December 19, 2008.
People who knew Manning had their evidence read to the jury and Justice David Gendall today.
On December 18 Manning told her partner that she had money, but wanted to work to get more for Christmas presents for her family.
She argued with him about meeting a client, and he thought she had spent the night with him when she didn’t arrive home.
He phoned the police when he heard about a body in the Avon River.
A woman said Manning had a love-hate relationship with her partner, and both of them had physical injuries from each other at times.
Six weeks before Manning died they both went on the methadone programme.
The woman said she didn’t like Manning and not many people did, but she had clients who were old dear men who took her shopping for clothes and groceries.
Manning was street-wise, both from having worked the streets, and having been in jail, she said. She was nice as anything to clients but not with the other girls.
Another woman said Manning was on the methadone programme, but she had also been using morphine and cannabis.
She said Manning had her own clients, and never mentioned being scared or threatened, but the Mongrel Mob had been standing over some of the street girls.
People involved with the Manchester Street sex trade told of a “tax” imposed by the Mongrel Mob on the girls working there.
The trial has heard that Fawcett told the police that Manning had refused to pay the “tax” and had spat in the face of the gang member who approached her. It was also suggested she had drug debts.
One man who worked as a minder for a girl on Manchester Street said he was aware of the presence of the gangs working on the street. “The Mongrel Mob used to drive up and down frequently. I think they may have had a couple of girls running down there,” he said.
A sex worker on Manchester Street about the time of Miss Manning’s death told of being approached by a man who demanded money as a “tax” because he and his friends “owned” the area. She refused to pay and moved to another part of the street.
When the man moved away, without his money and complaining that she had made him look bad, he said, “Sieg Heil”, which the trial had been told was a form of Mongrel Mob salute.
Update, Afternoon evidence:
Manning’s drug dealer described hearing a scream between 10pm and midnight on December 18 in Galbraith Avenue.
“It was a pretty horrible blood curdling woman-being-attacked scream,” he said. “But it was usual to hear screams in the area.”
His ex-partner went to have a look around, but didn’t see anything, and they found out the following morning that something had happened that night in the area, he said.
A woman who was visiting her boyfriend in Avonside Drive said about 11.10pm she heard a splash along the river. She said it sounded like a dog might have jumped in the river after a stick.
She looked under the willow trees but it was too dark to see anything, she said.
Two cars then went past her coming from the direction of the splash, each with one man in them.
The boyfriend, a Dallington resident, told of the cars going by after 11pm, and then hearing the crinkling of a tarpaulin or plastic, a splash in the river, and then more crinkling. After that he saw a four-wheel-drive vehicle drive slowly past them.
Category: Focus
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