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Mistress, Mercy; The Renee Chignell Story

03/07/2018
In 1989 the story of the teenage dominatrix and the cricket umpire’s body found floating below the Huka Falls catapulted the names Renee Chignell and Peter Plumley Walker into the national consciousness. Nearly 30 years later, the showcase docu-drama Mistress, Mercy dives beneath the sensational headlines to unravel the truth in a murder case that rocked New Zealand

Coming Soon to TVNZ Sunday Theatre.

 

 When 18 year old Renee Chignell discovered the lifeless body of cricket umpire Peter Plumley Walker in her homemade B & D dungeon in 1989 her life changed forever, and so did New Zealand society.

 Charged with murder, Renee and her much older boyfriend Neville Walker were arrested and tried three separate times in a headline-grabbing court battle that ran two-and-a-half-years from 1989 to 1991. It was a sensational case the likes of which New Zealand had never seen before with secret witnesses, courtroom theatrics and questions raised about police interrogations and payments to jailhouse informants.

It was also one that also exposed the nation’s underbelly. Forced to look up the word ‘dominatrix’ in the dictionary, middle New Zealand would never be the same, and the case left an indelible imprint on the national psyche.

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