In an eerie way it could have been a rehearsal for murder.
Twelve days before a Scottish visitor was battered to death in Taupo, 19-year-old trainee chef Zara Schofield was brutally bashed as she walked home from a party in the lakeside tourist town.
She lived, despite terrible injuries, fighting back fiercely before managing to get to a nearby house for help.
Less than a fortnight later Karen Aim, 27, from the Orkney Islands, died only metres from her flat after returning alone on foot from a night out with friends.
Ms Schofield was hit with a rock and Ms Aim with a baseball bat, both whacked forcefully and repeatedly in the head without warning.
The then 14-year-old responsible for the two unrelated beatings early last year was Jahche Broughton, who lived with his grandparents and was already in a pattern of nocturnal roaming, using alcohol and cannabis.
According to his lawyer, Chris Wilkinson-Smith, the teen had "rage and frustration tendencies" he could not control.
Broughton pleaded guilty last month only days before he was due to go on trial.
Today he was sentenced in the High Court at Rotorua to life imprisonment for murder and six years in jail for injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
Both terms will be served concurrently and Justice Graham Lang set a non-parole period of 12-1/2 years.
Now 15, Broughton is one of the youngest convicted criminals in this country to get a life sentence.
Zara Schofield was there to see justice done. So too were Karen Aim's parents and brother, on the eve of their return to Scotland.
They came to New Zealand for a murder trial, having originally planned the trip to see Karen alive and loving life in Taupo.
Meanwhile, Ms Schofield has been left with a slow-healing brain injury, diagnosed with post traumatic stress and is too frightened to walk out alone. She worries what strangers might do.
On learning that she felt guilty she was still alive while Ms Aim had died, Justice Lang said in court: "Guilt rests in one place alone," indicating the prisoner in the dock.
The Schofield and Aim families have since become friends.
"The Aims are lovely people. Things like this always happen to the good people," said Ms Schofield after the court proceedings.
And Karen Aim's father, Brian, said his family would be back in the future.
"We have one person that has given us bad memories of New Zealand. Everyone else has left us with good memories. I cannot express the kindness that has been shown to us. We have made lifelong friends in Taupo."
Despite the tragedy, the mention of his vibrant, adventurous daughter's name could still make him smile, said Mr Aim.
Thanks to Broughton's actions, she would never finish the book she was writing, never go into business as planned with her brother Allan, not get married, become a mother or a granny. But she left a legacy of making faces light up at her memory.
