{"id":18479,"date":"2026-09-10T12:15:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T00:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=18479"},"modified":"2026-09-10T12:15:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T00:15:25","slug":"police-apologise-to-mother-of-rachel-molloy-who-died-after-supposed-fall-down-concrete-stairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=18479","title":{"rendered":"Police apologise to mother of Rachel Molloy who died after supposed fall down concrete stairs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Police have apologised to the mother of a woman who died after a supposed fall down a flight of stairs for their handling of the case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Late on 4 May 2022, Rachel Molloy was found at the bottom of the 10 concrete stairs that led up to her central Auckland flat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Despite knowing the 30-year-old was both the alleged victim and central witness in an upcoming sexual assault trial, the fall – and her death – were treated as an accident.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Earlier this week, more than four years after Rachel’s death, her mother Mandy received a personal apology from Auckland police.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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‘It needed to be done’<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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On Thursday morning, Mandy told RNZ’s John Campbell the apology “far exceeded” her expectations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“They said that the investigation was not at a standard anyone should expect from New Zealand police.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I think the biggest feeling I got from that was that it was genuine.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She was asked about the drive behind her tenacity regarding the case and why she didn’t give up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It needed to be done, Rachel deserved that… I couldn’t leave it, it didn’t feel right and I wanted to make it feel right.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She said while her mind and body might have wanted to give up, her heart didn’t and she was “in it for the long haul”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I was devastated, I kept second-guessing myself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“My instinct kept telling me this isn’t how my daughter worked, this isn’t right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Everything screamed to me that I wasn’t being told the truth.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After years of fighting, the apology was unexpected closure for Mandy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It felt like that part had closed for me, which I don’t know I ever thought would.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mandy agreed that at it’s core this had been a story of love for her daughter, whom she “adored”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I think for myself and my family, we just would like to get into a place where we can think of all of the wonderful things she did and the wonderful person she was.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The fall and the police response<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Following the fall at her flat, Rachel’s skull was smashed. She was dying.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Police attended the scene. Information flagged in the police system shows that at some stage on that night, police knew Rachel was both the alleged victim and central witness in a sexual assault trial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The alleged crime had taken place in her previous home, while she was unconscious and almost everything she owned was being stolen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Her death was immediately treated as an accident – the result of a drunken fall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Police did not take fingerprints and did not seek CCTV footage from adjacent properties to definitively establish what happened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Few neighbours – including the one who found the dying woman – were formally interviewed for the investigation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A\u00a0TVNZ report showed<\/a>\u00a0one of the police officers dispatched to the scene emailed a colleague at the end of their shift: “Just letting you know we attended an incident tonight, where Rachel Molloy appears to have been drunk and fallen down the stairs to her unit. She has received critical injuries and will not survive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“The doctors are keeping her on life support until her family arrive from Levin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I see she is a victim of yours, so just giving you a heads up.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Rachel<\/div>
Rachel Molloy was 30 years old when she died in 2022.<\/p>\n

TVNZ\/Supplied<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A mother takes action<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Rachel’s mother Mandy was not satisfied with the police investigation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She did not believe police had considered her daughter’s sudden and violent death could be connected to what police had called a “home invasion” two years earlier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“She was drugged and sexually assaulted, and everything she owned was stolen,” Mandy told John Campbell for his TVNZ series\u00a0The Woman at the Bottom of the Stairs<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Security camera footage from 2020 shows Rachel, who lived in a high-rise central Auckland apartment building at the time, had been approached by a woman claiming to be in distress and asking for help. Rachel invited the woman in. Rachel ended up unconscious, and the woman invited four more people into her apartment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Four out of the five people left, having taken her property from her apartment. The sole male offender stayed behind with the unconscious Rachel, alone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After the incident, Rachel emailed police and asked if anyone was going to come and fingerprint her apartment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Police responded: “If you remember who it was that came into your house please advise police and we will reopen the case.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Rachel<\/div>
Rachel was found at the foot of these stairs to her Mt Eden flat.<\/p>\n

1News\/TVNZ<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Eventually, police apologised for what they called “below standard service”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The investigation that followed saw four out of the five people plead guilty to various burglary charges. The first woman in the incident had been set to go on trial in June 2022 on sexual assault charges. A month before the trial, Rachel died. The trial never happened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mandy asked authorities to prove they had done enough to ensure Rachel’s death was not something more sinister than a drunken fall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It took more than three years for police to speak to the offenders involved in the home invasion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mandy continued to ask for definitive proof. It never came.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2025, a complaint was filed with the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now, Mandy has received a personal apology for how it was handled.<\/p>\n

Source: RNZ<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police have apologised to the mother of a woman who died after a supposed fall down a flight of stairs for their handling of the case. Late on 4 May 2022, Rachel Molloy was found at the bottom of the 10 concrete stairs that led up to her central Auckland flat. Despite knowing the 30-year-old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18479","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\/18479","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=18479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18481,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18479\/revisions\/18481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}