Belief: The Possession of Janet Moses

Oh. I can still see it...

Beautiful girl.

She was quite a sickly baby when she was born.

She ended up being an asthmatic child,

but when she became a mum, she was a beautiful mum,

absolutely beautiful mum.

Always smiling,

she'd always wave, "Hi Auntie," you know.

Just what happened to her is so sad

you know, it still hurts today,

it'll probably hurt forever what happened to Janet.

...and your pappa. Hello.

- You know one day maybe the girls are gonna ask us

and we haven't got an answer.

What do you say to two beautiful girls when they ask you,

"What happened to our mommy?"

They were a nice family.

We all went to the same school together,

played together, we did things together you know.

I was quite close to some of Janet's aunties

on that side.

I'm still in shock a bit, that they let this happen.

That they went that far

to try and heal her.

It was shortly after five p.m. on a Friday

when outplace communications center had a call

requesting that police attend

at an address in Wainuiomata.

My name is Tusha Penny,

I was a detective sergeant in Lower Hutt,

second in charge of the operation.

What we could never have appreciated

when we first walked through the door

was that what was about to unfold

was something incredibly unique,

something incredibly tragic,

and something very challenging.

Whenever you work on any case, any case at all,

it's a privilege, you have a really big job to do

and we worked very hard to understand

how a family could do that to one of their own.

There were conflicting stories about how Janet had died.

Although some of the family members

had said she had actually died hours earlier

and from a mental illness or sickness.

It was a matter of trying to unravel what had happened,

trying work back.

We talked to an excess of 70 people,

we let them tell their story.

One person saying it probably doesn't have a lot of weight,

but when a whole lot of people

are telling you the same story

then there's something in that.

Take a seat.

What can you tell me about making a promise?

A promise is... being truthful

to the person you made the promise to.

So do you promise me everything

we talk about in this room today will be the truth?

Yeah, if I can remember.

So what I'll get you to do

is just read card out aloud please.

I Glenys Wright do sincerely and truly declare and affirm

that I will tell the truth

during this interview here today.

I John Tahana Rawiri

sincerely and truthfully affirm

that I will tell the truth in this interview here today.

This family

cooperated fully with the police.

My name's Phil Mitchell, I was defense council,

tasked primarily with researching the case.

They genuinely believed there was something

very malignant and dangerous within her.

You can't just

act on bizarre beliefs and kill someone

and nothing's done about it.

My name's Grant Burston, it was my responsibility

to lead the team of Crown prosecutors

who conducted the case against

the people charged in relation to Janet's death.

What have you come to talk to me about today?

Things that happened last week.

What?

About Janet Moses.

Should we start there?

I'm just...

from the 21st when we were at... the Palisa Hotel.

On Saturday night there was a 21st function

for Janet's sister at the Palisa Hotel in Wainuiomata.

You have close families

but this was extraordinary.

A close-knit family might be a family

that gets together for lunch every Sunday, but these people,

they lived together, they had their own family sports team,

they socialized together.

I can remember numerous times during the trial

people saying they're best friends with their cousins.

They did everything together.

Janet had a very difficult time

in the weeks leading up to her death,

it would seem to be a complete and total change in her.

And Jan was just... sitting,

gazing at the wall.

She didn't look right.

This was quite a shock

to everybody around her,

it seemed to have come on very quickly.

My name is Dr. Rees Tapsell,

I'm a consultant forensic psychiatrist

and I'm also of Maori origin

and have through my life been involved in the... interface

between particularly psychiatry and cultural practice.

Janet had a very close and loving relationship

with her grandmother

and her grandmother passed away relatively recently

and she'd also had some fairly major stresses

in terms of a relationship.

And I think the combination of those things

are likely to have put a huge amount

of pressure and stress on her.

Who is Shane?

That's Janet's partner,

they've been together for around nine years I think.

Tell me about him, about him that night.

Hello my darlings.

Come on we'll go.

I'm just gonna hang out with the boys for a little bit.

Come be with the kids.

Bye Louise.

She learned of an infidelity with her partner

and after that she became very withdrawn.

Did you drop Janet off somewhere?

We went over to Jan's aunties

and we ended up staying the night there.

They're coming, they're coming, they're coming.

They're coming, they're coming, they're coming,

they're coming, they're coming.

Jan.

Jan?

Hey, come on, come back inside now,

come on, you're okay.

Our girl was in danger,

we decided to take her down to my brother Johnny's

and get the family together for a hui,

to discuss her, why she's not acting right.

Hey, you, come here.

They I think had regular family meetings

to discuss anything that popped up,

which is quite a lovely traditional way,

I mean maybe it's the way we all were generations ago.

And unfortunately the grandmother had died

and she had been a great matriarch of this family

for a long time and she would always take charge

in situations like this, but she wasn't there.

At those meetings is there someone

who is in charge or does the talking, how does that work?

Yeah, that's John, he's like the head of our family.

Everyone put their ideas together,

to work out what the problem was with Jan.

Normally she's happy go lucky, yeah.

We all knew something was very wrong.

Something deep.

She didn't have no tears or nothing,

she was just sitting there and as hot as she was

she still wouldn't take off her jacket.

People were just coming up to her saying,

"I'm sorry if I hurt you in any way," stuff like that,

"We're all here for you, we all love you," and everything.

And did Janet talk at the meeting?

She was just staring at the ground and stuff.

It's very difficult to be certain

about what was actually happening to Janet,

but all of the evidence that I saw

suggested that she was becoming psychotic

and that she was having extreme changes in her mood.

It's very common for people

to incorporate the things that others are saying

and the things that others are doing into your psychosis

and that reinforces for people around that person

the way in which they might have understood that behavior.

It might be depression.

You can imagine then how it's very easy

to get in a bit of a vicious cycle.

But it's important to remember

that whilst I might have a particular medical paradigm

of the way in which I view and approach mental illness,

not everybody shares that paradigm.

is my ancestral mountain.

is my tribe.

where I live.

and Pouroto Ngaropo was my name.

I've had the privilege and honor to be a cultural advisor

to the prime minister of New Zealand,

the very honorable Helen Clark.

You can only run so far from a spiritual world

and from a Maori point of view...

we are both spirit,

and human,.

Over the last 200 years