Qualla: Pukekohe Massacre

Pukekohe Massacre: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For three hours on the morning of 20 May 1992, a nine-year-old girl named Linda hid inside a wardrobe and spoke to police on the emergency line. Outside the wardrobe, on a hundred-acre farm in Paerata near Pukekohe, her grandfather had just killed six members of their family. The call she made, steady and descriptive despite the horror unfolding around her, guided officers through a scene they could not yet safely enter. It remains one of the most harrowing emergency calls in New Zealand's criminal history.

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Pukekohe Massacre: The Man the Neighbours Trusted

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Brian Schlaepfer, 64, was not a figure anyone expected violence from. He had built a life that radiated community service and family devotion. His hundred-plus acres near Paerata held multiple homes he had constructed for his relatives, keeping the extended family close. He had f...

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Pukekohe Massacre: A Morning That Would Not End

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The killings began with a quarrel in the bedroom, where Schlaepfer stabbed his wife to death. When one son came to investigate the noise, Schlaepfer shot him. He then went to the tool shed and shot another son. A daughter-in-law from a neighbouring house on the property heard the...

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Pukekohe Massacre: Sixty Officers and One Survivor

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

More than 60 police officers responded to the farm, some securing roads to allow ambulances safe passage, others in armed teams approaching the scattered houses and outbuildings. They found the bodies of six family members at various locations across the property. After a six-hou...

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Pukekohe Massacre: A Country Reckoning with Its Gun Laws

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Pukekohe massacre unfolded under New Zealand's Arms Act 1983, which granted firearms licences for life. Two years earlier, the Aramoana massacre had already prompted calls for reform, including a proposed shift to licences that required renewal every ten years. But the legisl...

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