David Tamihere appeals to Supreme Court in Swedish backpacker case

Sunday, 22 September 2024

David Tamihere has always maintained he did not kill Swedish tourists Urban Hoglin and Heidi Paakkonen.

Convicted double murderer David Tamihere isn’t giving up his fight to clear his name, and has asked the Supreme Court to hear his appeal.

Tamihere was found guilty of the 1989 murders of Swedish backpackers Heidi Paakkonen and Urban Höglin, in what has become one of the country’s most controversial cases.

He was granted a second appeal, after it was proven one of the witnesses at his trial, jailhouse snitch Roberto Conchie Harris, had committed perjury and given false evidence.

Swedish tourists Urban Hoglin and Heidi Paakkonen had been travelling in New Zealand for five months before they disappeared in April 1989.

But in July, the Court of Appeal agreed that while this evidence shouldn’t have been heard by the jury, there was still sufficient proof Tamihere killed the couple.

This followed a hearing where the Crown presented a new scenario of how Tamihere murdered the tourists, including a new location for the crime, on the other side of the Coromandel Peninsula.

Thirty years after being convicted of the murder of two Swedish tourists, Sven Urban Hoglin and Heidi Paakkonen, David Tamihere will have his case re-considered by the Court of Appeal for the second time (First published in April 2020)

Tamihere’s lawyers have now asked the Supreme Court for leave to appeal to the country’s top court. In what is a two-step process, leave must be granted before any appeal is heard.

Speaking from his Auckland home, Tamihere, who spent more than 20 years in prison for a crime he insists he didn’t commit, told the Sunday Star-Times he had predicted the Court of Appeal’s decision, and there was never any hesitation about lodging a further appeal.

“At this last appeal hearing, the Crown put up version three of what happened. From the get-go, we’ve argued the evidence that was presented at the trial that convicted me - but the Crown have been allowed to argue other things as well, where we’re not.”

Police, led by formidable detective John Hughes, originally claimed Tamihere abducted and killed the couple on a tramping track near Thames.

Court of Appeal judges, from left, Forrie Miller, Christine French, and David Collins said there was still strong evidence David Tamihere murdered Urban Hoglin and Heidi Paakkonen.

But a year after Tamihere was convicted, Urban Höglin’s body was found more than 70km away, wearing a watch police had insisted Tamihere had stolen and given to his son.

Heidi Paakkonen’s body has never been found.

The latest Crown theory is that Tamihere encountered the couple near where Höglin was buried in the Wentworth Valley, which was close to where Tamihere, who was on the run from police, had a bush campsite.

Tamihere says all he wants is another trial, where the Crown’s new theory and evidence can be tested.

“They can come up with as many versions as they want, but we should have the right to argue it in front of a jury.

“Hopefully, one day, the judges will say, ‘Enough’s enough, let’s have a retrial.’”

Tamihere’s lawyer Murray Gibson declined to comment.