The lawyer who represented David Tamihere in the Swedish backpacker murder case says the latest disclosures throw the Crown's case into greater doubt.
The man convicted of the murders, Tamihere, has always maintained his innocence, and now a book claims another man with psychopathic tendencies is the killer - and has confessed.
Tamihere was convicted of murdering Swedish backpackers Urban Hoglin and Heidi Paakkonen in 1989.
His trial lawyer, the now retired judge Colin Nicholson, always believed there were doubts about the Crown's case, especially when Hoglin's body was found after the trial in a place that didn't match the prosecution's theories.
“This latest information may add substantially to this element of reasonable doubt,” says Mr Nicholson.
Journalist Ian Wishart has written a book, Missing Pieces, suggesting there was another man who could have committed the murder. Huia George Foley had escaped a mental institution and attacked a Catholic priest.
“He fled into the bush when police were called, and he was on those bush trails where Urban and Heidi were at the time they disappeared,” says Mr Wishart.
“He turned up in Whitianga after their murders carrying a European sleeping bag and robbed a couple using a European baseball bat, stole their car.”
In his book, Mr Wishart claims Mr Foley, who later lost his arm in a traffic accident, confessed to the killings to his mother. Both are dead, but Mr Wishart has another witness too.
“A woman contacted us to say she was a district nurse and a one-armed man had made a deathbed confession to her, she didn't know what was in the book,” he says.
“I called her up and asked her a series of questions and managed to establish we were talking about the same person, which is Huia Foley.”
As recently as last month Tamihere was maintaining his innocence.
3 News contacted the family of Tamihere, who's suffering from ill health, and his brother John said that David had asked his family not to comment on these latest revelations publicly.
Mr Nicholson himself concedes the possibility of a false confession.
“It exists with any witness for any number of reasons, they may confess to a crime they didn't commit. On the other hand there's a possibility it might be true.”
For their part, police say Mr Wishart has not provided them with the material he referred to in the media release promoting his book, but is welcome to do so.
3 News
source: newshub archive
