Mom saw daughter stabbed 216 times by boyfriend

Wellington: A mother told a New Zealand court Monday that she saw her 22-year-old daughter being stabbed 216 times by the daughter's former boyfriend and university tutor, news reports said.

Lesley Elliott was giving evidence at the pre-trial hearing of Clayton Weatherston, 32, who is charged with murdering her daughter, Sophie, Jan 9 at her family's home in Dunedin.

Police said a post-mortem showed 216 separate stab wounds in Sophie Elliott's body.

Lesley Elliott said she ran upstairs when she heard her daughter cry out and saw Weatherston, an economics tutor at Otago University, kneeling over her lifeless body and still stabbing her.

"He was straddled across her legs, and she had blood around her neck," she told the court. "The whole room to me seemed like it was red."

Lesley Elliott said she had long been worried about details of her daughter's on-again, off-again relationship with Weatherston.

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