Only David Tamihere could have killed Swedish backpackers, says Crown

Thursday, 30 November 2023

Swedish tourists Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen disappeared in April 1989. David Tamihere served more than 20 years in prison for their murders, but has always insisted he is innocent.

Even without controversial jailhouse snitch evidence, there remains clear proof David Tamihere killed two Swedish backpackers in 1989, Crown lawyers say.

At the second and final day of Tamihere’s appeal against his murder convictions, Crown lawyer Rebecca Thomson said the court could be “positively sure of Mr Tamihere’s guilt”.

“Only Mr Tamihere knows how, and why, and where he killed Heidi Paakkonen and Urban Höglin. But only he can be the killer.”

David Tamihere, now 70, admits stealing the Swedes’ car, but says he never met them.

The controversial case was back before the Court of Appeal this week, after a jailhouse snitch, Conchie Harris, who claimed Tamihere confessed to killing the Swedes, was found to have lied at Tamihere’s trial, bringing the conviction into doubt.

But Thomson insisted Harris’s evidence was “inconsequential” and “can never have been given any great weight by the jury”.

She characterised the use of Harris’s false evidence, as part of the Crown’s efforts to convict Tamihere, as “an irregularity”.

However, even when that was excised, there remained numerous other pieces of evidence pointing to Tamihere’s guilt.

Crown lawyers Rebecca Thomson and Fergus Sinclair argue David Tamihere’s conviction is safe, despite some evidence from his trial now being proven to be false.

First among these was the discovery of Höglin’s body in the Wentworth Valley on the Coromandel Peninsula’s east coast.

Tamihere, who had been on the run from police for more than two years after skipping bail before being sentenced for a brutal rape, had spent considerable time in the area, and had a camp about 1km from where Höglin’s body was found in 1991.

Tamihere had been seen in the area by mountain bikers days before the Swedes disappeared, Thomson said.

While Urban Höglin’s body was discovered in 1991, Heidi Paakkonen has never been found.

He had lied about his movements, and Thomson argued it was much more likely Tamihere had remained in the Wentworth Valley, rather than embarking on a “bordering-on-impossible” trek across the Coromandel to the west coast, as he claimed to police.

Tamihere has always admitted he found the Swedes’ white Subaru at the start of a tramping track on the Coromandel’s west coast, near Thames, and stole it and some of the couple’s possessions but never met them.

David Tamihere’s lawyer James Carruthers.

However, Thomson questioned why Tamihere would have spent time cutting the brand labels from clothes after discovering the car, rather than making his escape before the Swedes returned, unless he knew the couple were already dead.

She also raised doubts Tamihere could have broken into the car using a piece of wire slipped through the top of a window, as he described, given several witnesses said the car’s windows were closed.

The three Court of Appeal judges considering David Tamihere’s appeal. From left, Justice Forrie Miller, Justice Christine French, and Justice David Collins.

And Thomson said Tamihere’s explanation that he found a spare key for the Subaru in the glovebox didn’t match evidence there was only one key for the car, making it more likely Tamihere got the key from Höglin when he killed him.

If the Swedes got another key cut after they bought the car, Thomson asked why they hadn’t kept it with their passports and valuables, which they always carried with them.

In response, Tamihere’s lawyer James Carruthers pointed out the Crown theory of how Tamihere killed the couple had changed markedly since his trial, following the discovery of Höglin’s body, more than 70km from where police suggested it would be.

He said there was no evidence the Swedes had travelled to Wentworth Valley after they were last seen on April 7, 1989; nobody saw them there; and it contradicted plans they had outlined to another witness.

Carruthers also questioned why Tamihere would kill Höglin on the Coromandel’s east coast, then drive back to where the Swedes had been last seen, raising “the risk of so blatantly associating yourself in Thames, with the car of two people you’ve apparently just murdered”.

Justice Christine French said it would take significant time for the three judges to review the material, and reflect on both sides’ arguments, and there wouldn’t be a judgment before February.

“Obviously, we want to get this right, and we need time to do that.”