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Offender Databases Robin Pitney

Robin James Pitney

Alias

.

Offences

Murder of an 11 year old boy at Caroline Bay, Timaru in November 1991

Victims

Leif Wulff

Offender Affiliations

.

Gang affiliations

none known

Age

Born 1976

Current Location

Corrections facility

Parole/Release Dates

Sentenced to a mandatory 10 year "life sentence" in June 1992
Released on parole 2002, recalled to prison 2003
Paroled March 2004, recalled October 2004
Parole declined November 2011
Due for next hearing November 2012

Background
Timaru Herald story here
From Christchurch Press story October 16th 2004
Child killer Robin Pitney has been recalled to prison for the second time in a year after allegedly breaching his parole by assaulting a woman during a drunken binge in Ashburton in July. The 28-year-old was on weekend leave from his parole residence at the Salisbury Street Foundation house in Christchurch when he went on a drunken rampage in Ashburton.

He is still facing charges after he allegedly smashed bottles, assaulted a woman with a weapon, trespassed, resisted arrest and then escaped from custody. At a Parole Board hearing yesterday Pitney was recalled to prison. Pitney was aged 15 when he murdered 11-year-old Timaru boy Leif Wulff at Caroline Bay in 1991.

Wulff was attacked while walking home about 9pm on a Friday after buying videotapes in central Timaru. He was stabbed in the back, front and hands, eventually dying on the beachfront from multiple stab wounds. Wulff's body was found by two children who thought he was asleep. Pitney, a solvent abuser and drug user at the time of the murder, was sentenced to life in prison in 1992.

He is on automatic life parole and was living at the Salisbury Street Foundation house in St Albans before being taken into custody after the Ashburton incident. The board released him for a second time in March this year. Originally paroled in 2002, he was recalled in 2003 because he posed a risk to society.

From Timaru Herald story March 4th 1998
The mother of 11-year-old murder victim Leif Wulff has reacted angrily to police predictions teenage fighting in Timaru will inevitably lead to another child's death. During sentencing of Leif's teenage attacker in 1992, the judge described the verdict as "inevitable", a word Lucy Wulff feels Timaru police should not be echoing, but acting upon pro-actively.

"Why aren't police doing more about it if they know there's young thugs out there with knives .... does another family have to lose a child before something's done?" she said yesterday in her first interview since the murder.

Leif died of multiple stab wounds on Caroline Bay in November 1991 while returning home about 9pm at night. During the jury trial of Robin Pitney, the 15-year-old accused was linked to solvent abuse. He was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in Timaru's High Court in June 1992.

"Do people want more (children) in the cemetery? They don't want to know about problems until it all blows up in their face," Mrs Wulff said. She questioned if parents really cared for their children's welfare by accepting they were congregating in large groups in town at 6.30am, as reported by police yesterday.

She acknowledged it was not solely a police problem but also a community one, when "parents were not bothered....and let kids run berserk and took no responsibility for them". Social responsibilities had been eroded by the rat race which put flash cars, new clothes and keeping up with Joneses, ahead of children's welfare, she said.

A police option should be to impose across-the-board curfews, target the activities of known troublemakers and if necessary, divert resources back to problems on the streets - rather than wait for another death, she said. More than five years after Leif's death, Mrs Wulff said there was no coming to terms with the loss of a child.

"I grieve and grieve and keep taking flowers out to the grave.......no parent should have to go through that. "For months after the stabbing I just waited for Leif to pop his head around the door and say "Hi Mum"....it took a long time to realise he would never be coming back," she said.

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Corrections and Additional Information
We endeavour to make this database as accurate as possible, but we are at the mercy of whatever information we can find in various online and offline archives. We rely on the public - that is, people like you - to fill in the gaps that we cannot. If you wish to submit additional information or a correction to this file CLICK HERE . Privacy: Trust policy is that all sources are treated as strictly confidential unless we are explicitly told otherwise. If you wish to see a file removed from this database certain conditions must be met by the offender set out HERE Note that this does NOT apply for those that are the primary offender in a murder, rape, or any sexual offending involving minors. We do not enter into correspondence regarding the guilt/innocence of offenders. Such correspondence is not responded to, especially if the offender concerned has a number of prior convictions

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