A New Zealand teenager pleaded guilty on Thursday to the slaying of a Scottish woman during a working vacation to New Zealand last year.
Karen Aim, 26, from the Orkney Islands, was attacked on Jan 17, 2008, while walking home after drinking with friends in the North Island town of Taupo.
Police responding to reports of vandalism at a Taupo high school found her lying in a pool of blood on a street corner just yards (meters) from her apartment. She had died of serious head injuries inflicted by a weapon, likely a baseball bat.
Jahche Te Manawa Kaha Broughton, now 15, pleaded guilty in the Rotorua High Court to Aim's murder, said a court official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to talk to the media.
He will be sentenced on March 6.
Aim's father Brian, who attended the trial on Thursday with his wife Peggy and son Alan, said he was relieved the guilty plea had spared the family the ordeal of a trial.
"The outcome today would surely be thanks to the good police work within the New Zealand force," he told reporters outside the court.
{{/usCountry}}"The outcome today would surely be thanks to the good police work within the New Zealand force," he told reporters outside the court.
{{/usCountry}}He said the family would stay in New Zealand for the sentencing. Aim's death shocked her small home community in Orkney and hundreds attended her funeral when her body was flown home for burial.
In February, prominent British composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the queen's master of music, said he had written a composition in Aim's memory after being "moved and shocked" by her death.