The former employer of convicted murderer Paul Tainui has told a court they weren't fully aware of his criminal history before he went on to rape and kill another employee.
The dual coroners' inquest looking at the double murderer's lead-up to his second murder while on parole is in its final days in Christchurch.
Newshub can't name Tainui's employer, but the small Christchurch business took on the life parolee where Tainui subsequently met his second victim, office worker Nicole Tuxford.
A manager there recommended Tainui to not tell his colleagues about his past.
"We discussed with Paul that perhaps to try and integrate him in that it would be beneficial if he didn't talk directly about his offending," one witness said.
They also told the coroner they knew about his murder, but knew next to nothing of his violent sexual past, despite details being publicly available.
"I do remember reading about a rape but I also knew that he hadn't been convicted of that," the witness said.
Tainui raped and murdered two women, with the second woman being killed while he was on parole.
The father of his first victim, Gary Schroder, who fought to keep him locked up, died of a suspected suicide.
While on parole, his employer helped him change his name by deed poll. Then even after his colleagues discovered his past and were upset, they held a meeting to talk to staff about giving people second chances but never spoke about Tainui's offending or risk factors.
"In fact, he wasn't specifically mentioned. He didn't need to be," the witness said.
But probation had also never talked to them about risk factors.
"Were you left to work out for yourself what the risk was, rather than someone sitting you down and saying this is what you need to be aware of?" coroner's counsel assistant Tim Mackenzie said.
"Yeah, we definitely didn't have a, 'This is what you need to be aware of'," a witness said.
When they found out Tainui was visiting his much younger colleague Nicole Tuxford's house, they talked to Tainui about it but never to Tuxford - or probation.
"I think we'd made it very clear to Paul what we expected," a witness said.
Tuxford's family told Newshub they didn't hear a word from her employer after her brutal rape and murder.
Not a phone call, not a card, flowers, nothing. Despite Tuxford's manager telling the court what a model employee she was for many years, in the family's words, "it was as if she'd never worked there".
Criminal psychologist Professor Devon Polaschek told the court it's extremely rare for a stalking murderer to repeat the crime years later.
"It's less than one percent, it's got to be something like 0.4 percent," Prof Polascheck said.
But it's that small percentage the coroner is examining to determine any way possible to avoid this happening again.
