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Home / New Zealand

Homing in on Teresa's killer

10 Aug, 2001 06:29 AM13 mins to read

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By SCOTT INGLIS

As he helped lift her tiny body from the shallow, sandy grave, Brian Schaab promised Teresa Cormack he would catch her killer.

It was a bleak winter's day in June 1987. Hours earlier a woman walking her dog had stumbled across the missing girl's body on Whirinaki Beach, 16km
north of Napier.

A police team, including Schaab, had been working on the 6-year-old's disappearance for a week and quickly moved into the area.

They methodically sealed it off, marking the position of her body, photographing it and carefully searching for any clues that might lead them to her killer.

Their grim work took hours as the sea relentlessly pounded the beach. Schaab thought of his own two teenage daughters, counting his blessings but feeling utter despair for Teresa's family.

Eventually, as police moved Teresa's body from Whirinaki's black sands, Schaab made his silent promise.

What he didn't know was how hard it would be to keep his vow. Despite an intensive manhunt, one of the biggest in New Zealand, more than 70 investigators were unable to find Teresa's killer.

The crime stunned Napier, stealing from it - and the rest of the country - a sense of innocence, a willingness to let youngsters walk to school without adult supervision.

It sparked near panic, with parents making sure they accompanied their children to and from school in case the predator struck again. This fear has subsided but the Cormack case remains ingrained in the minds of many parents today. Many still wonder if the killer is a local, still in the area.

It also prompted demonstrations across the country and a $25,000 reward was quickly offered.

Over the next 14 years, the Cormack case would turn out to be a rollercoaster of highs and lows for Schaab and the others who worked on the case. They interviewed 15,000 people and compiled a list of 950 suspects, of whom 23 were considered prime suspects. But promising leads evaporated into thin air and there was never enough evidence for an arrest.

Frustrated detectives were forced to turn to what was then a crime-fighting tool still in its infancy - DNA analysis. The case became the country's first in which samples were sent overseas to be analysed.

But these tests failed to produce a result, because the samples from Teresa's body did not contain enough DNA, and police and Teresa's family faced the wait for better technology.

This week, police revealed they now had that technology - a breakthrough that has given Schaab and his colleagues the killer's genetic identity. All they have to do is match it with the right man.

Never has this detective sergeant been so tantalisingly close to making good his promise to Teresa.

Schaab is a likeable extrovert, who smiles a lot and likes jokes. With grey receding hair, a blue suit, rust-red shirt and blue tie held down by a gold pin, he has a warm handshake and the respect of colleagues.

After more than 33 years in the force, he stands tall at 1.93m and can be an imposing figure.

But his genial personality can, in a split second, give way to a look of iron determination. It is easy to imagine the hardest of criminals melting as Schaab's blue eyes, which sit below heavy, arching brows, drill through them during interrogation.

Schaab was born in Timaru 50 years ago, and went to the then boys-only St Patrick's College at a time when young men and women had plenty of jobs to choose from. Schaab says he picked policing partly because it seemed like a good job.

In January 1968, he joined the force, spending time in Wellington and Dunedin before coming to Hastings in the Hawkes Bay in 1985.

He has worked almost exclusively in the CIB and covered several homicides other than the Cormack case, but none have been as high-profile. While the public might associate senior detectives such as Rob Pope, Graham Bell or Mark Franklin with big murder cases, Schaab has until now been relatively unknown on a national scale.

For the past 14 years, he has thought about Teresa every day. He has thought about his promise to her and, when he took over as the head of the case, he kept the updated file on his desk where he could always see it.

Now, his determination is greater than ever.

"It's a matter of pride to think we should be able to catch this guy and now we've got a really good chance of doing that and he's not going to get away with it," he says firmly.

So what has driven him all these years? "Pride, unfinished business. The inquiry has been stonewalled so many times ...

"It's hard to work on inquiries where people have become victims a lot of the time through their own fault - but poor Teresa, you know, none of it was her fault."

Schaab and detective Keith Price are the only remaining sworn officers still on the case. Schaab says the inquiry has had an impact on his life but he has managed to keep it in check and not let it consume him. When he goes home to his wife Jude and their children, he mainly forgets work, goes for a run, has the odd beer or wine.

This balance has allowed him to stay on the case, keep it in perspective and survive in the frontline, he says.

Schaab's boss, Napier CIB Chief Detective Senior Sergeant Bill Gregory, praises him for this quality, saying other officers over the years have let big cases take over their lives, ultimately resulting in their early retirement.

Schaab agrees: "You can't let it affect you to the extent where your own personal life suffers and your family ... catching Teresa's killer is one of my priorities in life but not at the expense of my family. It doesn't consume you, but you take every chance you get to work on it or progress it further."

He has up to a decade before retirement, and expects to have solved the case "well and truly" before then.

The murder that has taken up so much of his life began on June 19, 1987, when dark-haired Napier-born Teresa Maida Cormack was abducted on her way to Richmond School.

It was the day after her 6th birthday, and she had dressed in an oversized full-length red raincoat, white skivvy, pink shoes and socks and blue schoolbag.

In her bag, the normally bright and sometimes cheeky little girl had her lunch wrapped in a plastic bag, with a stick of celery and a carrot, and a small amount of money to buy soup at lunchtime.

She left her mother Kelly Pigott at the wooden McLaren Cres home they shared with Teresa's maternal grandfather, Roger Pigott, and set off on the short journey to school.

She was to meet her best friend Maria as usual - but on this day never did.

Instead, she was plucked off the street by a man who police believe took her to Whirinaki where he played games with her before sexually assaulting and suffocating her and hiding her body under a tree on the dunes of Whirinaki.

Her raincoat and bag were never found.

Oblivious to her daughter's plight, Kelly Pigott was at home with her younger daughter, 1-year-old Sara. She had been separated from the children's father, Ross Cormack, for about two years. He had been working in Auckland but was on his way down to Napier to be closer to his daughters when the tragedy happened.

About the time Teresa would have been abducted, Kelly Pigott, for some inexplicable reason, wrote an unfinished poem to her daughters:

"Two little girls who brighten my day

Two little pearls shining light on my way

Where would I be without your company ... "

When Teresa failed to arrive at school, staff were not alarmed, believing she was probably sick. Back in those days, there were no fears that children might be kidnapped on the way to class.

This communication lapse had catastrophic results- and Napier schools now always try to contact parents if children do not arrive. The school thought she was at home; her mother thought she was sitting in Room 1, being taught by her teacher, Hazel McLaughlin.

In the afternoon, Pigott waited at home ready to play with Teresa. She thought it odd when she did not arrive and started to check with friends and their parents, walking the streets of Maraenui and eventually learning that Teresa had never been at school.

Her life began to crumble.

A huge police inquiry swung into gear, with 700 police and civilian volunteers searching every property, street, walkway and park in the area.

Neighbour Brian Bottomley, who still lives in McLaren Cres, remembers searching homes. "Nobody turned us down - everyone opened up their homes, which was good."

A week after Teresa vanished, everyone's worst fears were realised when her body was found.

The crime was horrific and had a huge impact on Napier, with Richmond School principal Trevor Campbell protecting his small community, taking the brunt of the media onslaught and outpouring of grief and anger.

He retired early shortly afterwards for other reasons, but admits the murder took its toll on him. Now living near Levin, he still thinks of Teresa and visited her flower-adorned gravesite nestled among the hills around Napier only a few weeks ago.

Schaab was in charge of suspects and the beach scene, and police and scientists found three foreign hairs and a small amount of seminal fluid on Teresa's body.

Police compiled their 950-strong suspect list, taking comprehensive blood samples from 23 prime suspects. They and some of the others had hair samples taken to see if they could be matched with the three hair strands that were found.

Other samples were sent to Britain for testing but turned up nothing and were destroyed in the process.

Science had failed Teresa.

The case fizzled over the next few years but kicked into life in 1996, when a thief took a letter from a Hawkes Bay farm only to discover it contained the first names of three people connected with the case. Hopes were raised and the author was eventually tracked down, but the letter was found to be irrelevant.

In November 1998, a coroner's inquest was held.

Again, the case essentially sat dormant, but then in March this year came the breakthrough.

Scientists at New Zealand's Institute of Environmental Science and Research told police they had new technology called SGM+, which allowed them to lift a genetic profile of Teresa's killer from a minute DNA sample.

Over the next few months, Schaab asked experts to see if the profile matched any of the DNA provided by the 23 prime suspects and the 18,000 people on the 6-year-old national DNA database.

But all tests returned negative, prompting Schaab to widen the net and go public.

It turned out to be a poorly kept secret, breaking in the media two days before a planned announcement on Tuesday.

But the press conference went ahead. Schaab sat before the country and categorically stated that he would catch the killer now he had this genetic fingerprint and would begin to tackle the remaining 927 suspects and anyone else nominated by the public.

He said he would keep testing men until he came face-to-face with the killer, who is probably a local.

Nominations have already started flooding in, with up to 40 within a few days. Two Operation Cormack rooms have been set up in the Napier police station. One is an old file room where Schaab works. A picture of Teresa is pinned to the door, and inside is a red cabinet containing 49 duplicate suspect files.

As news of the development spread, the Cormack case once again became a major source of conversation in Napier.

At Richmond School, principal Harry Findlay was taking media calls, the horror of 14 years ago brought up again.

By his office, in the foyer, hangs a 25th jubilee school photograph, with Teresa in the second row, ninth from the left. "That's a special photo," he says, pointing to it.

A memorial kowhai tree is planted near one of the playgrounds. McLaughlin, Teresa's teacher, is still at the school but refuses to talk publicly.

The DNA development is good news but has also picked the scab off a painful wound for Teresa's parents.

They spoke to reporters this week to generate publicity, "simply to find Teresa's killer, to widen the net. That's why we're here, we want to know what happened. Somebody knows," Pigott said.

The pair talked about having their hopes raised, that fateful day, the pain they have endured and their attempts at trying to lead relatively normal lives.

"It's a daily thing," says Pigott. "Getting closer to knowing the truth is rather frightening, too, because we're going to have to face the fear she felt that day ... what she actually went through."

At her home in Napier, she has a large photo of Teresa over her fireplace and countless other belongings, such as paintings.

Cormack - who now lives in Morrinsville, teaches music at Huntly College and is married with a family - has a scrapbook to reflect on.

While they have moved on to an extent, they still get angry.

"It's not there all the time but the more you think about it the more angry you get," says Pigott, who has had another daughter, Hanna, now aged 7. "I get to a certain point and I'm able to put a cap on it. I don't know if it's healthy but that's the way I deal with it."

Cormack: "We've all got families and lives to lead. They've got a right to have us normal as possible ... "

Both try not to dwell on the "what ifs" but wonder how they could have protected Teresa.

"For me, it's a paternal thing," says Cormack. "It was as if I should have been there to protect her ... "

Teresa's mother feels the same. "I just wished I could have saved her ... there is an amount of guilt, even though you know only one person is to blame."

Both families get together on special occasions associated with Teresa but "it's always a tough time of year, her birthday and anniversary, in the middle of the bleak June," says Pigott. "It brings back a lot of memories, every single time."

Her favourite memories of Teresa are the little things. "Looking at her little shoulder blades, wearing a little summer dress, patting the back of her head, brushing her hair."

Both parents say they have been overprotective of their other children as a result of Teresa's death, and Teresa's younger sister Sara has grown up angry that she never got to know her.

They say an arrest will help them understand what happened to Teresa and why it happened.

Their hopes rest with modern science - and Schaab's promise.

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