Brian Schlaepfer, 64, was not a figure anyone expected violence from. He had built a life that radiated community service and family devotion. His hundred-plus acres near Paerata held multiple homes he had constructed for his relatives, keeping the extended family close. He had founded the neighbourhood gliding club, donated a campsite to a local scout troop, and served as scoutmaster. Neighbours described him as well-liked and highly regarded. But as retirement approached, something shifted. Schlaepfer developed what was later described as mild depression and grew consumed by fears of losing control of his farm. He believed family members intended to change the property, and domestic disputes intensified. None of this registered in any official record. When Thomas Thorp reviewed the case in his 1995 Review of Firearms Control in New Zealand, he found that Schlaepfer held a class A firearms licence issued in 1984 with no known history of mental illness or domestic violence in police files.

The killings began with a quarrel in the bedroom, where Schlaepfer stabbed his wife to death. When one son came to investigate the noise, Schlaepfer shot him. He then went to the tool shed and shot another son. A daughter-in-law from a neighbouring house on the property heard the gunfire and ran toward the source, taking gunshot wounds on the way. She managed to reach her own home and dial 111. Schlaepfer shot and stabbed his grandson in bed, then killed the daughter-in-law in the kitchen while she was still on the phone with police. He returned to the tool shed, shot his injured son again, and waited for a third son to arrive home from work. When that son appeared, Schlaepfer shot and stabbed him too. Then he walked into the bush behind the furthest farmhouse and turned the shotgun on himself. Through all of this, Linda stayed hidden in the wardrobe where her mother had been shot, speaking to emergency dispatchers for three hours until police secured the property.

More than 60 police officers responded to the farm, some securing roads to allow ambulances safe passage, others in armed teams approaching the scattered houses and outbuildings. They found the bodies of six family members at various locations across the property. After a six-hour search, they located Schlaepfer's body in an open field behind the most distant farmhouse, a single self-inflicted wound to the head, the shotgun beside him. Linda, the nine-year-old who had described the entire scene to dispatchers from her hiding place, was the only surviving family member. Police believe Schlaepfer died shortly after the last killing. In a gesture that speaks to the complexity of grief, a joint funeral service was held for Schlaepfer and his victims, and they were buried together.

The Pukekohe massacre unfolded under New Zealand's Arms Act 1983, which granted firearms licences for life. Two years earlier, the Aramoana massacre had already prompted calls for reform, including a proposed shift to licences that required renewal every ten years. But the legislation had not yet been enacted when Schlaepfer opened fire. His class A licence, issued eight years prior, had never been reviewed. The case became one of several that Thomas Thorp examined in his 1995 government-commissioned review of firearms control. It contributed to a broader national conversation about how a country with a strong rural tradition of gun ownership could prevent weapons from reaching people in crisis without any system of periodic review. That conversation would continue, through other tragedies and other reviews, for decades to come. For the communities around Pukekohe and Paerata, the massacre left a wound that no policy change could fully address, measured not in legislation but in the absence of a family that had once filled a hundred acres with life.