Convicted murderer 'trying his luck'

Convicted murderer Jules Mikus - seen here at his 2002 trial for the murder of Napier schoolgirl Teresa Cormack - is asking for further DNA smaples to be taken. Photo / Mark Mitchell

A former detective who arrested Jules Mikus for the murder of Napier six-year-old Teresa Cormack is not surprised by the man's latest denials, but believes he is "trying his luck".

Keith Price said when he and colleague Brian Schaab went to Mikus's Lower Hutt address in February, 2002, he immediately denied responsibility for the murder almost 15 years earlier. "He did keep saying: 'It wasn't me'," Mr Price told Hawke's Bay Today.

Later he was charged and asked for body samples, which Mr Price says Mikus was "quite happy" to provide. The beneficiary had provided samples just a month after the six-year-old was abducted and killed on June 19, 1987. A jury agreed with prosecution evidence that both matched the killer in testing procedures which weren't available in 1987, and established Mikus was in Napier at the time of the murder. And in October 2002, he was found guilty of rape and murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The analysis of the samples, and those taken from Whirinaki Beach north of Napier where the body was found eight days after the girl's disappearance, is at the centre of Mikus' latest denial.

In the Court of Appeal in Wellington yesterday, via a video link from jail, Mikus, now 52, told the Court he needed more time to prove his innocence, a lawyer assigned to help, and more tests, because, he said, the first two "do not match".

He claimed a recent blood test "shows a different DNA profile" and alleged offender hair found with the body was light brown with red or yellow tones while he had dark brown hair.

But Crown prosecutor Lisa Preston said the two DNA samples were identical and Mikus had misinterpreted the tests results.
Advertisement
"There is not enough evidence to suggest a miscarriage of justice."

Justices Susan Glazebrook, Simon France and Ellen France reserved their decision.