David Tamihere’s last chance to prove innocence in Swedish backpacker case

Sunday, 17 August 2025

David Tamihere, who has spent half his life trying to prove he didn’t kill Swedish tourists Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen.

For 36 years, David Tamihere has sworn he didn’t kill Swedish tourists Heidi Paakkonen and Urban Höglin. Jurors and judges have never believed him. On Monday, in the Supreme Court, Tamihere has one last chance to prove his innocence. Mike White investigates.

David Tamihere reckons he was stitched up. By crooked cops, by jailhouse snitches, by tampered evidence, by a system that wanted someone hung for what had happened.

What had happened was Swedish tourists, Heidi Paakkonen, 21, and Urban Höglin, 23, disappearing in the Coromandel.

They didn’t rendezvous with friends, they missed their flight to Rarotonga, nobody heard a word from them again.

Tamihere insists he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He admits stealing the tourists’ Subaru, but Tamihere says he never set eyes on Paakkonen and her fiancé Höglin, and certainly never killed them.

Nobody in the justice system has ever believed him, though.

Swedish tourists Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen, who disappeared in April 1989. Paakkonen’s body has never been found.

Where did they go?

On Friday, April 7, 1989, Paakkonen and Höglin got their hair cut in Thames around lunchtime, and posted a letter.

The previous day, they’d chatted with the guy at the Four Square about their tramping plans, and indicated they wanted to go up a track at nearby Tararu Creek Rd, to Crosbies Clearing with a panorama over the Coromandel.

But where the Swedes actually went that Friday afternoon, nobody knows.

What is known is that two days later, their Subaru was seen at the end of Tararu Creek Rd. And the next day, Tamihere drove it into the nearby Sunkist Lodge backpackers, checking in under a false name.

Using an alias wasn’t surprising: Tamihere had been on the run for more than two years after jumping bail while awaiting sentence on a rape conviction. Since then, he’d lived rough in the Coromandel, where his family had land.

He says he found the parked Subaru, broke in, and nicked it.

Police eventually caught up with Tamihere in Auckland, and when they raided his house, found Höglin’s jacket and binoculars.

David Tamihere had been on the run from police for more than two years, after skipping bail before his sentencing for rape.

Under the guidance of tough but polarising detective John Hughes, the case against Tamihere gradually came together: He had met the tourists on their way to Crosbies Clearing, murdered them, stolen their car and possessions, kept some, and given Höglin’s watch to his son.

Tamihere was convicted of the double murder in December 1990, despite there being no bodies, and no murder weapon.

But a year later, Höglin’s barely-buried body was discovered by pig hunters. Not around Crosbie’s Clearing or Tararu Creek Rd where police insisted the murders took place - more than 70km away, near Wentworth Valley, on the other side of the Coromandel.

What’s more, Höglin’s watch, which police claimed Tamihere gave to his son, was still on his wrist.

But despite these damning revelations, the Crown and Court of Appeal explained it away. They said Tamihere must have simply driven Höglin to Wentworth Valley, and killed him there, before returning to Crosbies Clearing with Paakkonen on the Saturday afternoon, where two trampers controversially identified him.

Notorious jailhouse snitch, double murderer, and perjurer, Roberto Conchie Harris, who died in prison in 2021.

So Tamihere stayed in jail. Stayed there for 20 years, before being paroled in 2010.

But in 2017 everything changed. Because that’s when it became clear someone had lied.

The liar

To help convict Tamihere, Hughes had used three prison informants, or “jailhouse snitches”.

All three said Tamihere confessed to the murders while in prison with them.

One was a notorious snitch who’d made similar claims for the police in another murder trial earlier that year.

Another was double murderer Roberto Conchie Harris, who claimed in harrowing detail what Tamihere had done to Höglin and Paakkonen.

But it was all a lie, and in a private prosecution by jailhouse lawyer Arthur Taylor and justice campaigner Mike Kalaugher, Harris was convicted of perjury.

So Tamihere’s case was referred back to the Court of Appeal for reconsideration.

In July 2024, the court acknowledged Harris giving false evidence at Tamihere’s trial was a miscarriage of justice.

However, it said the other evidence against Tamihere remained overwhelming, and they were convinced he was guilty, so dismissed his appeal.

But their decision relied on a new theory by the Crown, revealed shortly before the appeal, of how Tamihere had met and killed the Swedes.

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)

This was the third theory the Crown had come up with over the years, their hand forced by shifting evidence such as the discovery of Höglin’s body far from where police claimed he’d been killed.

According to Tamihere’s lawyers, this new theory is so fundamentally different to the one Tamihere was convicted on at trial, buttressed by new affidavits, that it needs to be tested in court.

That’s all he wants, says Tamihere. Just let another jury hear all the new evidence, and the new Crown scenario, and see what they think.

Different story, same result?

But to get there, Tamihere needs the Supreme Court to first quash his conviction and order a retrial - hence this week’s appeal in Auckland.

The Crown argument at the hearing will be that, far from undermining their case, the discovery of Höglin’s body nowhere near where police originally said he was murdered, actually makes it more likely Tamihere is the killer.

Forensics show Höglin was killed where he was dumped.

That location is close to where Tamihere had a bivouac.

Crown lawyers Rebecca Thomson and Fergus Sinclair, who argue David Tamihere is guilty, and his Supreme Court appeal should be dismissed.

Tamihere was allegedly seen in this area shortly before the Swedes went missing.

So the Crown now argues the Swedes didn’t go directly to Tararu Creek Rd, a few minutes from where they were last seen in Thames, but instead drove across the peninsula and encountered Tamihere near Wentworth Valley.

Tamihere killed Höglin, dumped his body in a hurry, then drove Paakkonen back across to Tararu Creek Rd where the Swedes had indicated they were heading, marched her up to Crosbies Clearing, and killed her somewhere there. Her body has never been found.

“The body’s location does not help Mr Tamihere. It reinforces the conclusion that he is guilty,” the Crown says in its Supreme Court submissions.

David Tamihere’s lead counsel, Murray Gibson.

It argues Tamihere told different stories about his movements, concocted an “implausible” trek, and lied about being near Wentworth Valley, to divert police from where Höglin’s remains were.

“An innocent man would have no reason to do that. It is the conduct of someone who knew where the body lay.”

The Crown says it is “beyond coincidence” that Höglin’s body would be found so close to where Tamihere camped and was recently seen; would be seen with someone resembling Paakkonen at Crosbies Clearing; and randomly end up stealing the Swedes’ car, if he wasn’t the culprit.

Moreover, brazenly staying in the area after stealing the Subaru, suggested Tamihere knew the couple were dead and weren’t going to come looking for their car or possessions.

The Crown also downplays the impact of Conchie Harris’s lies, saying Tamihere’s “trial was fair”, and another jury wasn’t needed to consider the case.

But Tamihere’s lawyers stress so much of the Crown case has been “discredited and abandoned”, that a new trial is the only way to test the new scenario’s validity.

Its submissions quote a Privy Council decision from David Bain’s case that, “Where issues have not been fully and fairly considered by a trial jury, determination of guilt is not the task of appellate courts.”

A plaque for Heidi Paakkonen and Urban Höglin at Crosbies Clearing in the Coromandel. Police and the Crown have now been forced to admit Höglin was actually murdered more than 70km away.

In accepting the Crown’s new story “wholesale”, without Tamihere having the chance to respond, the Court of Appeal had taken “a profoundly unfair approach”.

Tamihere’s submissions question the quality of the court’s fact-finding, alleging unsupported suppositions are made; inconvenient issues are glossed over; and witnesses are judged to have been mistaken when their evidence doesn’t fit the Crown narrative.

His conviction had been secured on a “tainted basis”, relying on “cynically fabricated” evidence, and faulty premises, Tamihere’s lawyers say.

Now this had been revealed, they say, he was being deprived the opportunity to test the Crown’s new “true case” in front of a jury, and cross-examine witnesses.

The submissions also note extensive DNA testing the Crown conducted on evidence in the lead-up to Tamihere’s appeal, which didn’t show any connection between Tamihere and the Swedes.

And the fundamentally different Crown theory of the controversial murders means other witness sightings of the Swedes, which the Crown rejected at Tamihere’s trial, now had to be reassessed.

The Supreme Court will also consider evidence that Hughes allegedly admitted to Sir Bob Jones that he stitched up Tamihere, as revealed by the Sunday Star-Times in 2023.

The Crown argues Jones’ affidavit is irrelevant and inadmissible, but Tamihere’s lawyers say there’s no reason to doubt the late businessman’s recollection.

David Tamihere isn’t sure if he’ll attend the hearing, but says his case should never have taken so long to be considered by the country’s top court. “But that’s the way life goes.”

At his trial, the judge reminded the jury where there was only circumstantial evidence, the weight of the case had to be borne by the strands of many arguments.

“Well, the rope’s been falling apart,” Tamihere says. “But they still insist it’s accurate.”

Despite having fought the accusations for half his life, 71-year-old Tamihere says he’ll happily face another trial, to prove his innocence, to hold those responsible to account, and to expose the justice system’s failures.

“It’s taken this long. A bit longer doesn’t bother me - it’s somewhat academic.”

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