Pregnant mum’s shocking murder.

A family torn apart: Pregnant mum’s shocking murder

Hanging on a bedroom wall in Laurie Anderson’s brick-and-tile home in Christchurch is a precious family portrait. Taken in 1995, it shows Laurie, his partner Angela Blackmoore and her toddler Dillon smiling self-consciously at the camera, their whole lives ahead of them.

“We were a little family and family is everything to me,” says Laurie, now 51. But a week after the trio posed for that portrait at a photographic studio, 21-year-old Angela was dead.

Laurie came home from work at 11.20pm on the night of August 17, 1995, to find his partner lying in the kitchen, face-up in a pool of blood. Angela, who was 10 weeks pregnant, had been stabbed 39 times in a frenzied knife attack. Her two-year-old son Dillon was asleep in his bed.

Despite a police investigation spanning two decades, the killer is still at large – and many questions remain unanswered. There was no sign of a break-in and a murder weapon has never been found.

Laurie says Angela was extremely safety-conscious and it was the first time he had left her on her own at night. “At 3.30pm that day, I got a call saying I needed to head in to work,” tells Laurie. “No-one knew she was going to be alone that evening.”

The couple’s boarder had moved out a week earlier. More than 21 years on, Laurie can still remember the eerie feeling of entering the home they shared. “The front door was closed and locked,” recalls Laurie. “I walked into the living room. The TV was on. Everything seemed normal.”

On the way through the living room, he picked up a piece of leftover pizza and took a bite. “Then I saw Angela in the kitchen on the floor. I panicked. There was a lot of blood.”

The day before, Angela had picked up the family portrait and hidden it in the house to surprise him. Laurie didn’t find it until after her death.

He says the knowledge that Angela met such a violent end has been hard on him and also on Dillon, who’s now 23. Their grief has been intensified by the frustration of not seeing anyone held accountable.

“I still think of Angela and I think of what could have been,” reflects Laurie. “But it’s important to get on with life.” Laurie still lives in the home on Vancouver Crescent that Angela was murdered in.

“The house didn’t kill her – someone in the house did,” explains Laurie.

“I love this place. We had a lot of happy memories here.”

His stepson Dillon lives not far away with his fiancée. On Dillon’s wall, there is a copy of the same studio portrait taken when he was a toddler.

Laurie and Dillon are close – not a week goes by where they don’t catch up. For Laurie, it doesn’t matter that Dillon isn’t his biological son or that he knew him for only seven months before Angela died.

“When I took on Angela, I took on Dillon,” he tells. “This is my family.”

When Laurie met Angela in 1994, she was in the process of separating from Dillon’s dad. It had been a difficult relationship and she was in need of a friend, says Laurie. “She had low self-esteem and was insecure. I always felt like Angela really wanted to be wanted.”

At the time, Laurie was working at Canterbury University as a librarian’s assistant and in the chemistry store room. He has now been there 25 years. “I’m a hard worker. I am reliable,” he says.

The couple did a road trip around the South Island and set up house in the home Laurie owned on Vancouver Crescent in Wainoni, Christchurch. Bit by bit, Laurie watched Angela’s confidence grow. “What I saw in her was a bubbly young woman with a unique perspective on life,” he remembers.

Angela had done a stint in foster care as a child and it was not a happy time, says Laurie. She didn’t believe she was a good mother and needed help bringing up her son Dillon.

“He was a full-on little boy and Angela didn’t think she could handle him,” he says. Angela had respite care for Dillon through Open Home fostering. He lived with an older couple, John and Margaret Hills, but spent the weekends with his mum and Laurie.

“Angela loved Dillon and wanted to be a good mother,” tells Laurie. “We were both working together to get full-time custody.”

The week after Angela died, the couple had been due to start a 10-day parenting course. Laurie says their life was on track and they planned to marry. They wanted to be a “real family” with Dillon and the new baby they were having together.

“We were excited about being parents,” says Laurie. “It wasn’t until after Angela died that I found out the baby was a boy. I would have had a son.”