When six-year-old Coral Burrows went missing on September 9, 2003, the nation stopped. For 10 days, people flocked to Featherston from all around New Zealand to search for the little girl who had failed to return from school. The truth, when it was revealed, was dreadful. Coral had been bludgeoned to death by one of the few people she should have been able to trust, her stepfather Steven Williams. He then stuffed her in a sack and threw her in a clump of toi toi. Williams blamed his brutality on the drug P, claiming he’d spent the three nights before Coral’s disappearance continuously smoking methamphetamine. However, as Beyond the Darklands reveals, the reality is far more complicated and sinister than that.

Bernard McGrath was born in Christchurch and entered the Australasian Catholic Order of St John of God as an eighteen year-old. In Sydney he underwent religious training and qualified as a teacher. In 1974 Brother McGrath returned to New Zealand to teach at the Order’s school for special needs boys, Marylands School, in Christchurch. However soon after he began working at Marylands, he started sexually abusing the boys in his care. Clinical Psychologist Nigel Latta examines why Brother Bernard McGrath started abusing children, how he managed to silence his victims for, and how he continued to abuse for over two decades.

How could a seventeen year-old boy execute two defenseless men in cold blood? In March 2002 Ese Faleali’i robbed the Pizza Delivery Company in Pakuranga in Auckland. Marcus Doig’s boss had already handed over the night’s takings when, for no apparent reason Faleali’i shot Marcus in the back of the head. A week later Faleali’i held up an ASB Bank. Teller John Vaughan obeyed all Faleali’i’s demands, when without warning or provocation Faleali’i leaned over the counter and shot John in the head.

Not only did he kill two people, he spent almost his entire life persecuting those around him. But he would only ever pick on people smaller than him. Tauranga 24-year-old Natasha Hayden and toddler Aaliyah Morrissey were two such people. Curran strangled Natasha in 2005. Then, when he was on bail for killing her, he murdered his neighbour’s neighbour’s two-year-old, Aaliyah Morrissey. Beyond the Darklands’ forensic psychologist Nigel Latta has worked with criminals for 18 years and describes Curran as one of the worst bullies he has come across.

The murder of Reporoa farmer Beverley Bouma in 1998 shocked New Zealand. It was the first time the idea of “home invasion” seeped into the public consciousness. Suddenly no one was safe in their own homes – and everyone was asking: what sort of criminal would terrorize innocent victims and murder a defenseless woman in cold blood? Beyond the Darklands clinical psychologist Nigel Latta probes the background of Poumako. It’s the story of someone who wanted to be a “big man”.

When Graeme Burton killed Karl Kuchenbecker in the hills above Wainuiomata there was a national outcry; Burton had been released from prison on parole for another murder just a few months before. Clinical Psychologist Nigel Latta explores Burton’s development as he began to exhibit psychotic behaviour, which eventually led to murder. In Beyond the Darklands, Clinical Psychologist Nigel Latta explores Burton’s development as he began to exhibit psychotic behaviour, which eventually led to murder. Burton was just twenty-one when he stabbed Paul Anderson to death in May 1992 in Wellington. His prison term was marked by violence and drug abuse but after 2002, when he was first eligible for parole, Burton’s record was clean and in 2006 the Parole Board released him. So how did this extremely brutal, dangerous man manage to contain his violent tendencies enough to convince the parole board he should be freed?