Serial trespasser claims link with murdered woman
Depressed by the murder of a woman who had previously been her caregiver, serial offender Margaret Mabel Dodds says she was trying to commit suicide on the day of her latest arrest for trespass.
The caregiver was found murdered and left in the boot of her car at a Woolston supermarket on March 30, two days before Dodds’ suicide attempt. A 38-year-old Otaki man has since been arrested for the murder.
Dodds claimed the link with the murder victim at the Christchurch District Court today when she pleaded guilty to a charge of trespassing at the City Council fitness centre in Parklands.
Authorities are struggling to deal with her repeated offending, and today Judge David Saunders ended up convicting and discharging her after noting that almost everything had been tried to bring her behaviour under control.
Dodds pleaded guilty to the trespass charge. Police said she went to the fitness centre about 8.45pm on April 1. The manager told her to leave several times but she went into the men’s toilet and shut herself in a cubicle. She was in there until the police removed her.
Defence counsel Paul Johnson said she had been feeling very depressed at the time because of the loss of the caregiver.
She had obtained tablets and written suicide letters, before taking a bus to Parklands.
As a result of the incident, she had been held in custody in the police cells overnight.
Mr Johnson said: “She’s been trespassed pretty much all over Christchurch. She’s got to go somewhere I guess.”
Dodds is a resident at the Seager Clinic at Princess Margaret Hospital, but she is able to leave during the day and move around the city as she pleases. The 58-year-old has acquired a threatening and often violent reputation.
She has been trespassed from shopping malls, parks, buses, and some fitness centres at various times. People have been concerned that she sometimes menaces or threatens children at playgrounds, and police sent a warning to schools in 2012 saying the woman presented a threat and could be abusive when asked to move on.
People have posted warnings about her, including her photograph, on social media websites.
In 2010 she was sentenced to her third prison term for her 19th attack on caregivers. The court was told of incidents in which she threw a chair and a rubbish bin at staff members.
Judge Saunders said today that Dodds was a recidivist offender. Deferred sentences, supervision, community work, and imprisonment had all been tried.
“Obviously, there is a psychiatric or psychological problem, but I don’t think anyone has been able to ‘crack’ it,” he said.
There was little that would work among the possible community-based sentences.
He told Dodds: “You know there are a number of places in Christchurch where you are not permitted to go.”
She had safe accommodation available, but if she kept leaving and going to places where she was not allowed, she would face “the ultimate sanction” of another prison term, he said.
Category: News
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