Justice Minister Andrew Little announcing Teina Pora is to receive an extra $1 million in compensation. Credit: Mark Mitchell
Napier barrister and spare-time actor Jonathan Krebs isn't too worried he wasn't asked to play the role of himself in a TV movie about the battle to free wrongfully imprisoned client Teina Pora.
Having appeared in several amateur productions in Hawke's Bay, varying from playing a door in a daughter'sballet production to a pantomime role as the mother of Jack (of beanstalk fame), he joked last night: "They couldn't afford me."
In the dramatisation, In Dark Places, on TVNZ 1's Sunday Theatre on July 22, Krebs will be played by Cameron Rhodes, who has appeared in more than 90 theatre productions over the last 30 years, and had roles in TV and movie productions such as Blue Murder, The Brokenwood Mysteries and Mister Pip.
Krebs was one of the three-strong team from Hawke's Bay which investigated and fought the legal battle which saw Pora freed after almost 22 years in jail wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of Susan Burdett in 1992, when he was a 17-year-old from then-notorious South Auckland suburb Otara.
The others were private investigator Tim McKinnel, a detective in the original investigation, and Napier lawyer Ingrid Squires, whose roles are also played by actors in the South Pacific Pictures film.
The Hawke's Bay link has gone almost the full circle with the major role of Pora being played by former Hastings Boys High School pupil Richard Te Are.
McKinnel and Squires both attended the premiere which Krebs bypassed in favour of his daughter's graduation in Dunedin.
The dramatisation focuses on the relationship Pora and McKinnel, described in promotion material as "the gripping true story of an innocent man, imprisoned for two decades for a crime he did not commit, and an ex-cop's heroic battle to win him his freedom".
