A one-armed hitchhiker killer has been recalled to prison to serve his life sentence after allegedly failing to comply with the rules of a rehabilitation centre. 

Shane Hoko was sentenced to a minimum of 17 years in prison for strangling teenage hitchhiker Jennifer Hargreaves in South Auckland in December 2001. The sentence was later reduced to a minimum of 15 years on appeal. 

He pointed a gun at a motorist and his two boys when he tried to help the young woman. 

Shane Hoko murdered teenage hitchhiker Jennifer Hargreaves in Auckland in December 2001. Photo / Kenny Rodger 

At the time of the killing, Hoko, a Black Power associate, was on parole for detaining a person in a house in Meremere. 

Hoko claimed another man killed Hargreaves and left him to take the blame. 

Hargreaves was hitchhiking to Invercargill for a reunion with her birth mother’s family when she was picked up by the pair. She was killed in a ditch in Cuff Rd, Patumahoe. 

The Herald earlier revealed that Hoko was facing charges in relation to allegedly being ejected from the Salisbury Street Foundation in Christchurch on August 29 for not following the rules of the programme. Attending the rehabilitation centre is one of the special conditions of his parole. 

Corrections then applied to the New Zealand Parole Board to have Hoko recalled to prison. 

Hoko appeared before the Parole Board on September 21 at Christchurch Men’s Prison. 

The board’s report, released to the Herald, said he was released from prison on February 1, 2023, with standard and special conditions for life. 

The grounds relied on for the recall application were “undue risk to community safety and breach of release conditions”. 

Jennifer Hargreaves was hitchhiking to Invercargill for a reunion with her birth mother’s family. 

The report said Hoko had been kicked out of the programme because he had “persisted in a failure to comply with the rules and expected standards of behaviour”. 

Hoko’s lawyer acknowledged no other accommodation was available at this stage. 

Hoko therefore accepted he was not in a position to oppose the final order for recall. However, he did seek a hearing for further consideration on parole in three months’ time. 

His lawyer said he expected there would be no custodial penalty in respect of the breach charge that was before the court. 

“The absence of accommodation, on its own, is sufficient for us to be satisfied that risk to community safety is undue and we are therefore making a final order for recall,” the board said. 

The board would see Hoko again in January. 

During Hoko’s sentencing, Justice Rhys Harrison allowed Hoko to address the court, but Hargreaves’ adopted mother, Val, broke down weeping uncontrollably. 

As Hoko turned around in the prisoners’ dock to face the back of the crowded court, he said: “My heart goes out to all of yous [sic]. All I can say is, I didn’t do it.” 

Justice Harrison said aspects that set the offending apart were its sheer brutality and that it was most likely to be sexually motivated. 

Hoko, the judge said, had a lengthy list of previous convictions for relatively minor offending, except for a “sinister charge” of kidnapping in 1999 for which he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, reduced to two years by the Court of Appeal. 

Hoko was on parole at the time of the murder. 

Outside the court, Hargreaves’ adopted father, John Hargreaves, said he found it hard to grasp how a person in jail for a kidnapping offence could be “let out to commit another such crime”. 

Sam Sherwood is a Christchurch-based reporter who covers crime. He is a senior journalist who joined the Herald in 2022, and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.