A man who has admitted to murdering a woman at her Mt Pleasant home in Christchurch was a Hillmorton Hospital mental health patient, it can now be revealed.<\/p>\n
At Christchurch’s High Court on Friday, Elliott Cameron pleaded guilty to murdering 83-year-old Frances Anne Phelps, known as Faye, in October last year.<\/p>\n
Phelps was found dead on 7 October but police believed she was killed days earlier on 4 October.<\/p>\n
The summary of facts remained suppressed, with Cameron to be sentenced in June.<\/p>\n
Karen Phelps said her mother’s death had felt “surreal” and she was pleased the court process would not be drawn out.<\/p>\n
“I miss my mum terribly and it’s so upsetting to think that she died in such an awful way,” she said.<\/p>\n
There were many unanswered questions about her mother’s death, Phelps said.<\/p>\n
“She was a sweet, innocent lady. She didn’t deserve that, nobody does,” she said.<\/p>\n
Phelps last year told RNZ her mother was a kind and gentle soul who was treasured by everyone.<\/p>\n
“It’s obviously very difficult to have someone wrenched away from you so suddenly and unexpectedly in such circumstances. It feels like being in the middle of a movie, surreal and unbelievable,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s had a wide-reaching effect with my mum having touched so many lives with her generous nature. Everyone is struggling to cope and understand how something so horrible could have happened to such a lovely person.”<\/p>\n
Phelps’ daughter said her mother gave a lot to her community and was a keen singer and actress with a strong Christian faith.<\/p>\n
She had lived in the same house for 50 years with her husband Bill, who died two years earlier.<\/p>\n
Source: RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A man who has admitted to murdering a woman at her Mt Pleasant home in Christchurch was a Hillmorton Hospital mental health patient, it can now be revealed. At Christchurch’s High Court on Friday, Elliott Cameron pleaded guilty to murdering 83-year-old Frances Anne Phelps, known as Faye, in October last year. Phelps was found dead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13279,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13277\/revisions\/13279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}