Top Swedish journalist says David Tamihere conviction doesn't make sense

Tuesday, 28 November 2023

As David Tamihere goes back to court today to appeal his controversial conviction for murdering two Swedish backpackers, Swedish journalist Love Lyssarides is releasing a podcast about the case, and tells Mike White much of the evidence against Tamihere is “completely useless”.

Not long after judges sit, and lawyers rise, in Wellington’s Court of Appeal today , to argue whether David Tamihere murdered two Swedish backpackers 34 years ago, Love Lyssarides will be rising in Stockholm, to begin a manic day of media interviews about the case.

The leading Swedish journalist spent four months in New Zealand earlier this year, investigating the murders of compatriots Heidi Paakkonen and Urban Höglin on the Coromandel Peninsula in 1989, and his seven-episode podcast about the case is creating huge interest in his homeland.

It’s titled “The Swedes” - in English, despite the podcast being in Swedish.

And it opens with Lyssarides, an international correspondent with Sweden’s public radio service, walking into the Thames Workingmen’s Club.

It was in places like these that he sought out information, leads, and contacts, mining the memories of Coromandel stalwarts.

“And when I’d come in and say I was from Sweden - and this happened to me all the time - they said, ‘Oh, do you know about the Swedes, have you heard about the Swedes?’

“And it was so interesting, because usually I’d get, ‘Swedes - ABBA, Ikea, Zlatan Ibrahimović.’

“But when I came to the Coromandel Peninsula, it was like, ‘Swedes - yeah, the murders…’”

According to the police theory that put Tamihere in jail for more than 20 years, Paakkonen, 21, and Höglin, 23, were victims of incredible bad luck.

They were walking a trail to Crosbies Clearing, near Thames, when they crossed paths with Tamihere, who had a previous manslaughter conviction, and was on the run, after skipping bail to avoid being sentenced for a gruelling rape.

Lyssarides walked the same four-hour trail to Crosbies Clearing in April, like Paakkonen and Höglin did; after a cyclone, just like they did; before he flew home to Sweden, just like they had planned.

And as he sweated and trudged his way uphill through bush, an utterly fundamental question emerged - why would Paakkonen and Höglin have come here, with just days left of their holiday?

“Out of all the things you could do in Coromandel? There’s so many other things to do - there’s Hot Water Beach, you can do a tour around Coromandel. It’s a very strange place for someone to go.”

Locals told Lyssarides the same thing: They don’t go there. They never recommend the walk to tourists.

It just seemed an extraordinary choice, Lyssarides says, and one that further disturbs the accepted case against Tamihere, where the evidence is already muddy.

But of course, the Tararu Track to Crosbies became the focus of New Zealand’s largest land search because that’s where Tamihere admits stealing their car from, and items belonging to them were found.

What wasn’t found were their bodies.

And when Urban Höglin’s remains were discovered in 1991, after Tamihere had been found guilty despite resolutely denying he ever met the couple, Höglin’s skeleton was nowhere near here - it was more than 70km away on the Coromandel’s opposite coast.

The other reason police believed Crosbies Clearing was crucial was because this was where two trampers claimed they saw a man they belatedly said was Tamihere, with a blonde woman who seemed scared.

Their controversial identification was originally ruled inadmissible by the trial judge, because it was so tainted by unacceptable police actions.

But it was backed up by one of three jailhouse snitches police produced, Roberto Conchie Harris, who claimed Tamihere confessed to killing the pair, but said he almost got “sprung” by some trampers.

Harris’ testimony was eventually proved to be lies, when he was convicted of perjury in 2017.

Lyssarides says the trampers’ evidence - a critical element of the police case, because it was the only eyewitness sighting putting Tamihere with one of the Swedes - is “completely useless”.

“I suspect it’s an example of police zoning in on something they want to be true so bad, they do everything they can to get it to look good. But you go back and look at it, and there’s just so much about this evidence that doesn’t make sense.”

Resorting to using jailhouse snitches with their unreliable and differing stories showed how desperate police were for a prosecution, to preserve both New Zealand’s reputation as a safe country, and the the prestige of the officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Inspector John Hughes, Lyssarides say.

Lyssarides likens the late Hughes, who had a fearsome reputation of doing whatever it took to get his man, to controversial Swedish detective Hans Holmér, who led the inquiry into the 1986 murder of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme.

There was much swaggering, and macho posturing, but in the end, Holmér likely focused on the wrong suspects, Lyssarides says, and Sweden’s most famous crime remains unsolved.

In the search for Paakkonen and Höglin’s killer, the police evidence contained an amalgam of anomalies, which they could only explain by painting Tamihere as an unpredictable psychopath, Lyssarides says.

“It’s like making pancakes, and they put curry on it, and people are like, ‘No, that’s disgusting.’ And they say, ‘Well, it’s supposed to be disgusting…’

“The story the police are telling is basically so stupid that they have to say, ‘We’re talking about a monster. I know it doesn’t make sense, but David Tamihere doesn’t make sense. And if he doesn’t make sense, then anything could happen.’”

However, Lyssarides accepts there are also things that David Tamihere and his supporters have never been able to adequately explain, and which still leave questions about his behaviour.

In his telling of it, Tamihere stumbled on the Swedes’ car, kept some items, and stole it when he found a spare key in the glovebox.

Why did he then drive to a backpackers lodge just 3km away to stay the night, knowing the Swedes could come past looking for their car any time? (Police say this is because Tamihere had already killed them and knew they wouldn’t be coming.)

Why did he immediately cut out labels from their clothes?

Why did he say the exhaust on the car was warm when he discovered it, when police tests, and even Lyssarides’ own experiments, showed that couldn’t have been possible?

Throughout his time in New Zealand, Lyssarides listened to countless theories and conspiracies about the case.

“I’ve heard 10 different explanations of where Heidi’s body is, I’ve heard 20 different stories about who did it, and this person and that one, and it was about cannabis growers, and whatever.”

But, ultimately, he blames a flawed investigation for the enduring uncertainty and doubt about the case.

“This is the big failure about this whole story - that the police haven’t been able to solve this, so, 34 years after, people are still having all these theories.

“It just creates this distrust in the system, and I think it’s really dangerous.

“That’s why we pay our taxes, and that’s why we have the police, so they will sort this out for us, so journalists like you and I don’t have to do it.

“They say it’s solved, but I think everyone knows now that whatever happened didn’t happen the way police say it happened. For so many different reasons - the body, the watch, the secret witnesses.

“It’s a big mess.”

For that reason, Lyssarides finds it incomprehensible that the Crown is still fighting to say nothing is wrong with Tamihere’s conviction, and strongly opposing his appeal this week.

“What’s the point in defending it?

“I feel like this is one of those things where everyone would be so much better off if we just said, ‘Okay, we f…ed up this, let’s do it again.’

“If we treat this seriously, we’re not going to hang on to an old conviction that was - I don’t want to say the word corrupt - but a conviction that was really bad. Because it’s so obvious now that it doesn’t add up.”

Lyssarides says the case is known about in Sweden, and will be in headlines this week when Tamihere’s appeal begins.

“It really is a spectacular story, and I think it’s even more spectacular than the Swedish people know. I think it’s going to be a huge story.”

That will mean the pairs’ families will again have to relive it, and at times, Lyssarides wondered if he should be delving back into the tragedy.

But in a case riddled with fragile and fickle evidence, where someone may have been wrongfully convicted, and when Paakkonen’s body still hasn’t been found, he believes it remains a story that has to be retold.

That said, Lyssarides feels deeply for what the families have gone through.

“It just never ends for them, and goes on and on and on.

“I really hope it will be solved, I can’t even imagine how painful it must be for the families to not know.”

Lyssarides admits the case evolved into an obsession for him during his time in New Zealand.

“I just feel like this became really, really, really personal for me, in a way I didn’t expect.

“But I would do it again, because this is a really important story. And I get really frustrated by these things.

“This is not supposed to happen. New Zealand is a country like Sweden - we have institutions that are meant to fix this, and they just mess it up.”