City remembers Teresa Cormack

By EUGENE BINGHAM and JO-MARIE BROWN

Dawn Gardner remembers seeing Teresa Cormack as she skipped along in her little pink socks.

Fifteen years on, she also remembers feeling guilty about not asking Teresa why she wasn't at school.

Driving across Napier on June 19, 1987, the vacuum cleaner saleswoman noticed a little girl.

Even though it was after 9am, she was walking away from school.

Mrs Gardner thought to herself: "Where's she off to?"

But she didn't stop to ask.

"I remember at the time when I found out about Teresa's murder, I was saying to myself, 'Why didn't I stop?' and 'What would have happened if I had stopped and questioned her?"'

Mrs Gardner told of her regrets in a statement to the Napier District Court this week.

Evidence from about 30 people was presented during a depositions hearing for Jules Mikus, the man accused of Teresa's abduction, rape and murder in June 1987.

He was committed to stand trial after his lawyer conceded his client had a case to answer.

About one-third of the witnesses talked about seeing a little girl in a raincoat wandering around the streets of the Napier suburb of Maraenui.

The court was told that in 1987, the police believed Teresa vanished around 9am.

Former detective Barry Searle, who spoke to Mikus at the time, said that because of this, the police were concerned with establishing if suspects had an alibi around that time.

Mikus told Mr Searle in a July 1987, interview that he had been at the Social Welfare Department at 9.30am.

Police were able to confirm through staff at the department and from people who saw him there that this was true.

Detectives concluded at the time that this alibi "tended to eliminate him from the inquiry".

Evidence presented to the court this week shows the police now believe Teresa was snatched later than first thought.

Witnesses told the court of seeing a little girl in a raincoat wandering the streets after 10am.

Teresa's mother, Kelly Pigott, saw her little girl off at 8.25am. It was the day after her sixth birthday and she was not keen to go to school, but she went anyway, wearing her red raincoat, a red dress, pink shoes and socks.

Normally, Teresa would turn right out of her house at 14 McLaren Ave and go towards the walkway which was the quickest route to school for her and the other neighbourhood children.

Over at 17 McLaren Ave, Amy Gerbes happened to look out her lounge window and noticed that Teresa had turned the wrong way.

"There were other children in the area at the time, Mrs Gerbes said. "However they were all walking in the opposite direction along McLaren Ave - towards the alleyway."

Near the end of McLaren Ave, 13-year-old schoolgirl Donna Pearce was looking for her friends as she walked to Colenso High School.

"I noticed a young girl in a red raincoat on the corner of ... Cottrell Cres down the Riverbend Rd end," said Ms Pearce.

Benjamin Mitchell was a six-year-old schoolmate of Teresa's.

"She told me she was going back home," he said. "I seem to recall it was something to do with a birthday present."

Just before the school bell rang, 11-year-old Nichola Bailey was on her bike doubling her five-year-old neighbour, Tania, to school.

As she rode along Bledisloe Rd, Nichola saw Teresa near an empty section. She knew her because they sometimes played together.

"She seemed to be wandering about," said Nichola.

About the same time, Eunice Boyd was going to pick up a little boy and take him to his IHC preschool.

As she approached the boy's home in Bledisloe Rd, she saw a young girl.

"I noticed her because she had a long red raincoat on and she was going the wrong way to school," said Mrs Boyd.

Geoffrey Wright remembered heading to the Maraenui shops after listening to the 9am news.

As he was driving down Riverbend Rd, he saw two girls by the pedestrian crossing near Bledisloe Rd.

"It seemed like they were arguing," Mr Wright said. "The girl in the raincoat shot out on the pedestrian crossing."

He stalled his car braking to avoid her.

Angela Torrance was walking to the Maraenui shops with her mother, Jacqueline Heading, when they saw Teresa along Riverbend Rd.

Ms Torrance knew Teresa because she had gone to school with Teresa's mother.

About the same time, Ms Torrance saw a red car driving slowly along the gutter.

"I didn't really notice who was driving the car except that whoever it was had long hair," Ms Torrance said.

"At the time, I may have even said something to Mum like, 'Look at that f ... n' pervert. What's he looking at?"'

Maureen Baird was on the way to the Maraenui supermarket when she saw a young girl in Bledisloe Rd. A receipt from the supermarket showed she had left the shop at 11 am.

"She looked as if she was trudging along," said Mrs Baird. "She did not look very happy."

Brianna Smith also remembered a girl she now believed was Teresa.

An insurance saleswoman, Mrs Smith was on her way to a 10.30am appointment when a little girl bolted across Latham St by St Augustine's Anglican Church.

"I slammed on the anchors - if I had been going any faster I would have collected her."

Mrs Smith was struck by the appearance of a man who was with her.

While the girl seemed tidy and well looked after, the man was scruffy.

"It looked like a street person with the child."

Something else struck Mrs Smith.

"He had Charles Manson eyes, horrible, cold," she said in evidence given on videotape by permission of the court.

Outside the court, she said she taped her evidence because she had cancer.

She had waited 15 years to give evidence to the depositions hearing about her encounter with Teresa. But she was not sure she could make it to the trial.