In those 27 years, Teina Pora was found guilty, twice, of her murder, and jailed for 22 years, until his conviction was exposed as a gross travesty; and two juries were unable to reach a verdict when Rewa was charged with her murder, in two trials held in 1998. Wanted, after 27 years: one maniac to be held responsible.
"You killed your mother," Rewa's lawyer, Paul Chambers, accused Burdett's son, Dallas McKay. "Nah mate," said the son.
"There were other people involved!" Rewa stated, in Crown prosecutor Gareth Kayes' cross-examination. Unfortunately he wasn't given the opportunity to tell the court who these other people were or the extent of their involvement. Perhaps Chambers will illuminate the jury on this small matter during his closing address.
Chambers called Burdett's best friend, Winsome Ansty, to give evidence yesterday. She told the court that she thought she remembered Burdett telling her she was in a secret relationship with a Māori man affiliated with gangs and drugs and who went by the name "Mike".
The descriptions match Rewa, who claims he was Burdett's lover, a romantic who gazed at sunsets with her on top of Māngere Mountain, not her murderer, not some maniac swinging a baseball bat and raping his victim.
In cross-examination, it was revealed that Burdett's friend only remembered all of this in 2012.
Twenty years after the murder. Twenty years after she first spoke to police. "Memories come," she said, "and memories go."
But some memories remain. Throughout the trial, witnesses talked fondly of a woman who loved tenpin bowling, who prided herself on a tidy home, who was straight-up, who wasn't any kind of pushover, who baked things like chocolate slices and bright-eyed Susans ("It's a biscuit rolled in egg white and coconut, and you put jam in it," a policewoman helpfully explained in court), who had leftover fudge in her car to take to work when she parked in the garage of her home 27 years ago on Monday night, March 22, 1992. Susan Burdett was 39.