An elderly man charged with murdering his partner at a Raumati Beach retirement village has been found unfit to stand trial. The finding was made at the High Court in Wellington on Friday, about Edmund Alan Jenkins, 75, who had cognitive impairment due to dementia, and was not going to improve. Edith Roderique, 70, of Ōtaki, died on March 4 or 5. Roderique and Jenkins had been in a relationship for about three years and she often visited him at the retirement village where he lived, and sometimes stayed the night, a court decision said. In her judgment Justice Rebecca Ellis said after spending the night together Jenkins woke to the alarm at 7.30am on March 5. He got out of bed and found a knife that had not been put away, went back to the bed and stabbed Roderique repeatedly in the chest. A medical alarm was set off and Jenkins showed the body to the first staff member to attend. Jenkins had blood on him and told the first person, and others, “I did it, I did it, I did it”. Later Jenkins told police he just meant to scare her with the knife as a joke but she jumped at him and screamed. He was said to have a hazy recollection of what happened after that, but acknowledged he stabbed her, a police summary of witness accounts said. The judge said Jenkins was unfit to stand trial and made him a special patient. Name suppression was lifted. He sat in the dock with a nurse while lawyer Janine Bonifant represented him during the court hearing. At the end of the hearing the judge asked the nurse if Jenkins had understood what had happened at the hearing on Friday. “As well as he can,” the nurse replied. Two psychiatrists gave evidence that Jenkins probably had frontal lobe dementia, and his thinking and language were impaired.
