Last updated 13:06, May 18 2018
David White/Stuff
Colin Mitchell during his trial in the High Court in Auckland.
Colin Mitchell during his trial in the High Court in Auckland.
Colin Jack Mitchell liked the shadows. He prowled in the middle of the night. He sought out his prey at random, abducted them, raped them and then left them for dead.
On Friday Mitchell was jailed indefinitely for the central Auckland abduction of a woman who was then sexually assaulted and left at the Riverhead quarry last year.
He was also sentenced for the rape and abduction of a woman in 1992.
CCTV footage showed a car entering and leaving Riverhead quarry, where a woman woke up to find herself being attacked.
To this day he does not own up to his dual lifestyle and the dark side that comes out in the shadows.
When Mitchell was sentenced in the High Court in Auckland on Friday by Justice Sally Fitzgerald, and heard how his predatory personality had affected his victims, he sat emotionless in the dock wearing a white button-down shirt.
Photographs of Halloween masks submitted as evidence in the trial of Colin Jack Mitchell for rape.
During his trial, Crown prosecutor Kirsten Lummis said most of the time Mitchell was "a law-abiding citizen, heavily involved with his local RSA and worked as a truck driver, in fact he had worked in the same company for over 20 years".
"But Mr Mitchell has a dark, sinister side. A side that only comes out in the black of night … the Crown says he turns into a prowler," she said.
At his sentencing, the court heard that Mitchell still denied his brutal attacks on vulnerable, innocent woman, and had yet to accept he had a problem for preying on vulnerable women who were strangers to him.
Mitchell's 1992 victim was attacked after leaving the Gluepot Tavern in Ponsonby.
In health assessors' reports read out at the sentencing, Auckland Regional Forensic Psychiatry services clinical director Dr Jeremy Skipworth said Mitchell was assessed as highly likely to reoffend against vulnerable females.
He had expressed no empathy at all for his brutal attacks on his victims, Skipworth said.
On Friday Justice Fitzgerald detailed Mitchell's clear and disturbing pattern of serious sexual offending.
"Your offending demonstrates that your sexual deviancy has not diminished over time, and in a sense, the seriousness of your offending has escalated, while accommodating your advancing age.
"While you continue to deny your offending, and minimise the seriousness of any offending you are prepared to acknowledge, effective treatment is likely impossible," Justice Fitzgerald said.
"You have not, voluntarily or otherwise, engaged in any professional treatment in connection with any of your prior offending."
In court on Friday, the Riverhead quarry victim and another one of Mitchell's victims held each other's hands as they re-lived the harrowing ordeals they'd been subjected to.
The 24-year-old Riverhead victim emotionally read out her victim impact statement and detailed how the brutal attack had had a physical, emotional, psychological and financial effect on her.
Her mother and other family members wiped away tears as she bravely detailed how a man she did not know abducted her and left her for dead at a quarry.
Mitchell remained emotionless throughout.
RIVERHEAD ATTACK
In an emotional interview with police days after she was attacked, his victim spoke of what happened in the early hours of February 26 last year at the Riverhead quarry in north Auckland. She said she was covered in blood, her attacker was nearby and she thought she would die.
When the flashing police lights finally broke the darkness, she ran towards them wanting only one thing — a hug.
She had been at the Pride Parade in Ponsonby with her friends. She said she had been drinking - that only made Mitchell's plan easier.
In the early hours of February 26, the woman became separated from her friends and began walking alone down Great North Rd in Grey Lynn in central Auckland.
It was at this point, Mitchell — who was driving around the city — either coaxed or forced the woman into his car.
The woman told police she couldn't recall much from that evening.
One minute she had been on Karangahape Road, the next thing she was in what seemed like a quarry with a masked man standing over her.
"I woke up in a gravel area and I can remember feeling this side of my head and it was just covered in blood. I think I had my undies on but I am not sure. I definitely did not have my dress on," she said.
"There was a man with a mask and so I think it was some kind of softball or baseball bat and I was crunched up on the ground and I thought he had an accent, but because of the mask it might have been muffled.
"He sounded very strange and wanted me to turn around and I refused and I just kept begging. I just said 'No, Im not, I'm not, this isn't going to happen to me'."
"I think I was saying to him, 'You don't have to do this. You don't have to be this person', he just kept saying 'You stupid b.....'
"I don't know if he said you are going to get yourself killed, or I'm going to kill you but he was threatening me with the bat and he kept asking me to turn around and I just kept saying 'No, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not', so he hit me again.
What happened next remains a mystery. Somehow the woman managed to get away from her attacked. The victim remembers running through a dark and dusty yard. She had no idea where the attacker was, and had somehow managed to call police.
On Friday, she emotionally read out her victim impact statement in court, its contents was suppressed.
As she walked back to her seat in the public gallery, she acknowledged a passive and emotionless Mitchell with a slight nod.
UNSOLVED RAPE
Mitchell, a Jekyll and Hyde figure who still maintains he was at home watching a Garfield movie, and later went to bathe his legs in the waters of the Onehunga beach when the Riverhead quarry attack happened, has a sinister past.
The trial heard that when police began DNA testing of the evidence found at the quarry, two black gloves produced a match with DNA collected from an unsolved 1992 rape.
At trial, Mitchell fought the allegations relating to the 1992 rape and the more recent Riverhead attack.
He claimed that in 1992 he had consensual sex with the woman. For the Riverhead charges he went further - arguing he was not the attacker at all, despite his DNA being at the scene.
During the trial, the 1992 victim came face to face with Mitchell.
While she was not present at the sentencing on Friday, she waived her right to be hidden from Mitchell's sight during the trial.
She had looked over her shoulder for more than 25 years and finally had some closure so she stared Mitchell straight in the eyes when she gave her harrowing evidence at trial.
While 25 years had passed since the ordeal, she recalled it in great clarity. On the night of her rape she had been drinking at Ponsonby's Glue Pot bar at a Blues Brothers review.
After the gig, she began to walk home along Great North Road. At one point a man pulled over and asked if she wanted a ride, which she declined.
"I carried on walking and I got down a bit further towards where Western Springs and MOTAT is... Another man stopped and asked if I wanted a ride. I said yes to this one.
"He looked very harmless, and I was cold."
Shivering and wanting to get home to Kelston the woman accepted the ride. The man behind the wheel was Mitchell.
"I remember he looked like he was in his thirties and forties, kind of dishevelled, but not grubby."
She thought he looked "safe".
The woman recalled Mitchell told her he was going to Avondale. The woman could not remember which route they took, but recalled they chatted a bit before he dropped her off near Rosebank Rd.
The man turned around at the end of the road and drove back past her. The woman began walking towards the main road when she thought she saw a man in the distance.
"I was walking along and looked and I thought I saw a man in front of me to the left side wearing wet-weather type gear," she said.
"I walked a little bit more. He was there again. He punched me in the face and in the head."
The woman told the court that after the man hit her, he tried to put her in a headlock.
That man was Mitchell.
Mitchell walked the woman behind a factory where he made her take items of clothing off, and assaulted and raped her.
"I was terrified. I was wondering if I was going to get home or not, whether it was the day I was going to die. I was quite terrified, I was thinking about my children, I was talking about my children," the woman said.
Following the rape, Mitchell lay on her and asked her how old her children were. After getting up, he began to tie and gag the woman.
"He said to stay there for 20 minutes. He said, 'Don't scream, don't make a noise, if you do I will find you'.
"He was going to throw me into the dumpster if I didn't do what I was told.
"After he tied up my hands and put something in my mouth he told me to stay there and he left."
The woman managed to untie herself. She sat where the attack took place and rolled a cigarette, fearful if she moved Mitchell would find her again.
"I was grateful to be alive but I was really scared, really scared I might make a noise and he could come back. There was a long way left to go home."
The woman managed to find a pay phone and called police to tell them about her ordeal. She was taken to a station and questioned by officers.
It was here the waters began to muddy.
To avoid embarrassment, the woman told police she had been picked up by a woman and dropped off in Avondale. She was unsure if the man who had given her a ride was the attacker, and didn't want to come across as an idiot
Last year, police visited the woman again with news she never thought she'd have - her attacker had been found.
She recalled to police she had seen media reports about the Riverhead case and wondered if it was her attacker.
At trial, when questioned about the rape, Mitchell told the jury he had consensual sex with the woman, that they had discussed having sex after he offered to give her a ride and that the act took place in the back of his car.
The victim was not present at the sentencing on Friday and did not provide a victim impact statement.
RAILWAY YARD RAPE
Stuff can also reveal an incident in 1984 that Mitchell was convicted of and spent time in prison for. This victim was present in court on Friday and embraced the 2017 survivor.
In a manner strikingly similar to the 2017 and 1992 incidents, he picked up a woman in the middle of the night, took her to a secluded place and raped her.
On July 23, 1984, a 19-year-old woman was working as a prostitute on Queen St.
Shortly before midnight, Mitchell pulled up in a white station wagon type car and spoke to the woman.
"She got in the car and discussed a price for sexual activity but not including intercourse with Mr Mitchell," court documents said.
He then drove her to a secluded location near the Mt Eden railway yard.
Mitchell then attacked her by grabbing her by the neck and squeezing her throat.
She was ordered to remove her clothes and get out of the car. Mitchell then assaulted and raped her.
"While raping [the woman] Mr Mitchell told her he would like to bottle her but he didn't have a bottle.
"When he finished Mr Mitchell told her that he would get about 10 of his friends to do the same thing only worse to her is she were to go to the police.
"He went to his car, threw all of her clothes on the ground, and went through the contents of her bag.
"He told her to pick everything up and gave her a cigarette which he lit with a lighter while she was still naked."
Then he drove off leaving her in the yard.
In 1985, Mitchell was convicted of the charges of rape, sodomy and indecent assault.