John Hope Muchirahondo has been described as the worst serial rapist since Malcolm Rewa. The now-convicted sex offender was even accused of raping a woman while he was under investigation by police. The 38-year-old Zimbabwean claimed every sexual act was consensual but this week a jury found him guilty on 11 counts of rape and six of sexual violation. Senior reporter Anna Leask spoke to the detective in charge of Operation Hope about how the predator’s decade-long rape spree was brought to an end.
Detective Inspector Nicola Reeves has been investigating adult sexual assaults for much of her career.
She’s been part of locking up dozens of dangerous and disturbing offenders and helping a much larger number of victims get justice.
She’s also headed high-profile homicide investigations including real estate agent Yanfei Bao who was killed and buried in a shallow grave, her remains not discovered until a year after she disappeared.
Reeves has seen all kinds of grisly scenes and been privy to the unthinkable.
But there is only one case that truly haunts her. Muchriahondo.
The story begins in February 2018.
A woman alleged she had been raped by Muchirahondo but chose not to do an evidential interview (EVI) with police that would have formalised her complaint.
“Police still spoke with him and he said it was consensual. Because she didn’t formalise it and she didn’t want to go any further with it – it didn’t go any further for police either,” Reeves said.
“And that’s really common with lots of people that come in.
“Then in March 2019, we had another woman come and report a rape. This woman was a former partner.”
She did an EVI. Police interviewed Muchirahondo who again said sex happened and was consensual.
The case was not strong enough to advance.
Under the Solicitor-General’s prosecution guidelines, a person can only be taken to court on criminal charges if there is enough evidence to provide “a reasonable prospect of conviction”.
A prosecution must also be in the public interest.
“There are difficulties when people are known to each other and it’s a former relationship situation,” said Reeves.
“It was never a case of not believing this complainant – the decision was made not to prosecute because of the inherent challenges that come from these types of investigations sometimes made more difficult when people have been a couple.”
In July 2019 a third complaint was made.
“These investigations can take months, they are challenging,” said Reeves.
“There’s a lot of we don’t have that we usually have in other investigations – we don’t have forensic evidence, we don’t have CCTV ... they can take a bit longer to work through.
“On that occasion, we ended up losing contact with that complainant – and him for that matter. She actually left New Zealand, she’s not from here ... and that complaint got inactivated.”
In May 2020 a woman went to police saying she had been raped by an unknown man five months earlier.
In September police had established Muchirahondo as the suspect.
“This was just some good detective work ... our file manager, who just chugged through all the inquiries to try and work out who the complainant was with at the time, where did they possibly go,” Reeves said.
“She knew one guy who she’d been with that night, so there were inquiries about him and his associates to try and work it out.
“Things that identified (Muchirahondo) was an inquiry at what we thought was the address where it had happened. The landlord made a comment about ‘this other guy used to come around and visit quite a bit’, and that was how we got him.”
The complaint spurred the officer in charge of the case to put Muchirahondo’s name into the police database and alarm bells began ringing.
“It was like – hang on a minute, this guy has been here before, and we’ve had other women complaining about having been raped by him,” said Reeves.
“It was different circumstances – but similar circumstances in that basically these women are very drunk, and then he’s just taken advantage of them.
“The investigator who had that complaint raised it and said I think we need to be looking at what we have here ... that triggered where we are now. That’s the one that kicked off Operation Hope.
“We went back to those original complainants to say we’d like to re-interview or reinvestigate and they were all happy for us to do that.
“We were able to make contact with the lady who’d gone overseas. Yes, she still wanted to go ahead with her complaint. So we essentially made an investigation plan of phases as to how we were going to tackle this.”
Reeves said that, given that Muchirahondo had admitted sexual contact with women who’d made complaints in the past and maintained it was consensual.
So her team needed to be “really, really organised” and “fully prepared” before they brought him in again.
She wanted every i dotted and every t crossed – to be able to “hit him hard with all of the allegations” and “combat” his claims of consent.
Phase one of the operation was to establish a full list of complainants.
The three original women knew of others who’d had experiences with Muchirahondo and passed that information on to investigators.
Some of those women also knew of others.
“We identified about a dozen women that we needed to speak to – all throughout the country,” said Reeves.
“Phase one was trying to identify potential complainants and establishing, if there was an offence, did they want to make a complaint about that.”
As the Operation Hope team worked to build up a case against Muchirahondo – to gather enough evidence to satisfy those guidelines – he struck again.
Reeves said in any investigation, before an arrest was made, there was an “obvious” risk the accused would commit further offences.
“We’d identified eight complainants. We had interviewed six of them, and we still had two to go,” said Reeves.
“Then our worst case scenario happened – he allegedly attacked another woman.”
In the early hours of February 21, 2021, the woman called 111 to report she had been raped about 10 minutes earlier.
“I didn’t consent, I woke up to him … Oh god… he raped me …,” she said, sobbing and fighting for breath.
“I can’t believe it … he said he didn’t want to get in trouble … I drank too much … I didn’t mean for it to happen. I just woke up ...”
She later gave police the man’s name – Hope – and the address she’d been at with him.
As she underwent a forensic medical examination, Muchirahondo’s flat was searched.
“And he was arrested and charged,” said Reeves.
“I distinctly remember it was a Sunday. I wasn’t working, and I got the phone call from one of my detective sergeants to tell me.
“I think it’s probably the most distressed I have been in my career – in that, a worst-case scenario had happened.”
Reeves is a robust, stoic character, but she is clearly emotional when discussing the woman’s complaint.
The jury could not reach a verdict on the charge in court but the woman was adamant when giving evidence that Muchirahondo was the man who assaulted her.
“It doesn’t sit very well with me – and it just never will. It’s horrible,” she said.
“It’s always the risk that we carry ... but I’ve certainly looked back at whether it could have been done differently. I’ve looked at that a lot.
“It was early days. (Operation Hope) was evolving – we knew this guy needed to be looked at, but we didn’t quite know how extensive this was or how long it had gone on for. We can always surmise but we needed evidence and that was the initial process that we were working through.
“On a personal level, I’ll never make peace with it because I feel very personally, very responsible for what happened.
Muchirahondo was charged with raping the woman.
Photos and video uncovered on Muchriahondo’s devices were proof, police said, he had raped and violated multiple other women.
Reeves said videos showed women clearly unconscious – one even snoring.
The difficulty was, that some would not be aware of what had happened to them and others may doubt their experience or memory of it.
Reeves issued a public appeal for other women to come forward. And they did.
“These women were really intoxicated ... these women are waking up and having these moments of ‘Oh my God’ – and because he’s still there, it makes them think ‘did I consent to this ... I don’t know’,” said Reeves.
“There is this real confusion about what’s happened and that’s why a lot of the time we don’t necessarily get complaints immediately because these women have to go away and think what actually happened – ‘Did I ask for that? Was I actually consenting?’
“They’ve got memories of being in and out of consciousness and saying stop and get off – and he just carries on.”
The case against Muchirahondo snowballed and by the end of 2021 he was facing 39 charges of sexually assaulting 19 women.
Each charge was an investigation in and of itself – investigators working with the complainant and relevant witnesses including friends and associates connected to the time or place of the alleged offending, bar staff, taxi drivers, bar staff.
And then there was the footage.
“We found a lot of photos and videos - we would say that we’ve got rape videos,” said Reeves.
“He films himself, films his woman. We’ve got women who are clearly unconscious in videos.
“We identified probably about maybe 12,14 women in there who we didn’t know who they were. So then we had a phase of trying to identify these women so that we could go to them and say ‘we found your photo, is there anything you want to tell us about it?’.
“Some we identified, some we didn’t.”
Approaching women out of the blue, said Reeves, was “a really horrible part” of Operation Hope.
“There is always a moment when you are about to make that phone call – what am I about to tell this woman? She won’t be expecting this phone call, what am I about to do to them?
“That weighs really heavily on all of us.
“We have to decide what time of the day we ring - do we ring in the day when this woman’s probably at work? Is that a good place to upset her, versus, do we ring in the evening and she’s got children, a partner who she may or may not have disclosed any of this to?
“There’s a lot of things that we consider. We certainly don’t open with, ‘there’s an investigation into John Hope Muchirahondo and he’s been charged with rape – has he raped you?’
“It’s very broad questioning – it is a case of ‘do you know this man?’ And most of the women did know him. Some said they’d had consensual sex with him and that was fine.
“Others wanted to make a complaint, some didn’t. It was a bit of a mixed bag.”
By the start of the trial, there were 15 complainants.
Reeves said two women had pulled out – which was their choice.
“They were not emotionally well enough to go through with it, it’s as simple as that,” she said.
“Charges were laid many years ago, and in that time it’s been a real rollercoaster for all of these complainants. And for these two in particular, it was simply just doing more harm than good.
“So, we lost them, and that’s okay because it’s actually got to be what’s best for them.”
Reeves said Muchirahondo steadfastly refuted any wrongdoing, against any woman. He was adamant every sexual encounter police questioned him about was consensual.
“He’s just stuck to that,” she said.
“He’s quite cool ... and it’s very much his way or the highway, and he won’t entertain anyone else’s point of view.
“He thinks these women are just out to get him.”
Reeves said there was nothing to suggest Muchirahondo had published or shared the images and footage he has of countless women.
“It was all saved in a private vault, it was all collected in one place – so you’d assume that it’s for his own personal use,” she said.
“I think it’s trophy-gathering. It’s in a secure vault, an app, so it’s not just sitting there on his phone for anybody to pick up and look at. So, we tend to lean towards the theory that it’s personal collection.”
She believed Muchirahondo was a dangerous offender who would have continued to harm women for many years had he not been stopped.
“He has this mindset of dominance – treating women like they’re completely worthless and they’re here for his satisfaction,” she said.
“He’s treated these women like they’re second-class citizens –- and even worse than that. His view of women is very much that they are secondary, like chattels.
“He’s a dangerous offender. He’s been convicted of offending within a relationship. He’s been convicted of offending against women that he just meets in town, in a nightclub. There’s no boundaries.
“He’s plying these women with alcohol. I think it’s case of, he sets out at the beginning of an evening (thinking) this is what’s happening tonight, and he throws drinks around, and then thinks ‘right, who’s the most intoxicated? Who am I going to have the most control over here?’
“I think it’s all very deliberate, very intentional.”
Operation Hope is the biggest case of its kind that Reeves has worked on – possibly in New Zealand.
“When I think about serial rapists, I’m thinking back to Malcolm Rewa ... and Operation Sinatra would be the most current one. But there’s not any I’m aware of at this level,” she said.
Rewa was convicted of attacking 45 women and the assault and murder of Susan Burdett in her South Auckland home.
Operation Sinatra was the prosecution of Christchurch brothers Danny and Roberto Jaz who were jailed in 2023 after being convicted of 69 charges between them, including rape, sexual violation, indecent assault, stupefying, disabling, making intimate recordings of women without their knowledge or consent and supplying illicit drugs.
The brothers, described in court as prolific and predatory offenders, targeted female patrons and staff at Mama Hooch and Venuti – their family-owned bar and nearby restaurant – drugging and sexually assaulting them.
“Muchriahondo is different because he’s really sort of insidious,” said Reeves.
“It’s just really sinister – he sets out to do this.
“It’s predatory.”
Reeves said the best way to sum up Muchirahodo’s modus operandi is that he “intentionally makes women vulnerable”.
“You go out, you’re having a good time, you have a couple of drinks and you think you’re safe, and you think everyone’s on the same page as you – but he’s not,” she said.
“He’s a friend of a friend or part of the wider circle and you’re like ‘yeah, I’ll have another one, sure, totally’. And then all of a sudden, it’s the next morning and you’re thinking ‘wait, no ... I didn’t like you that much ... I didn’t want THAT.
Muchirahondo is yet to be sentenced but Reeves said it “feels good, really good” to know he had been convicted on the bulk of the charges.
“It is immensely satisfying to know that all of these women came together - they don’t know each other - but they came together to actually hold this guy to account,” she said.
“All that we did, really, was we carried their stories for them and helped corroborate their stories – but they’re the ones that did it.
“And I am immensely proud of the Operation Hope team who have been absolutely incredible.
“The team have done an amazing job of supporting our complainants and getting us to this point, it’s been a long time coming for us, and even longer for our very brave complainants.”
Reeves has little to say to the offender.
“He got this superiority complex ... he thinks he’s better than everybody else,” she said.
“But you have no right to treat anyone the way that you have treated those women.
“Their voices have been heard – they’ve been believed.
“I can’t see him actually accepting a conviction though – I believe he will forever think that this has been a farce and corruption and that he’s been stitched up, that the women are all colluding.
“It’s great to get him convicted and locked up for a while, hopefully a long while. We’ll draw a line in the sand now – you’re in jail now, see you later.
“It’s actually about celebrating the strength of all of these women who have come forward – that’s probably the thing that we need to remember most.
“He’s just a vile human ... he’s a wrecking ball – no one can stand in his way, as far as he’s concerned. He takes what he wants, does what he wants, has absolutely no care, empathy, normal human feelings towards another human ... certainly women seem cheap to him, absolutely just a commodity.”
Anna Leask is a Christchurch-based reporter who covers national crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2008 and has worked as a journalist for 18 years with a particular focus on family and gender-based violence, child abuse, sexual violence, homicides, mental health and youth crime. She writes, hosts and produces the award-winning podcast A Moment In Crime, released monthly on nzherald.co.nz