A fine film of sawdust, like sea spray, wafted in the gracious foyers of the High Court of Auckland yesterday morning. Workmen are slowly going about creating new offices on the ground floor.
Now and then someone will pick up a power drill and make it scream, and occasionally there is the lazy tok-tok-tok of a hammer. Further inside the courthouse, in courtroom seven, another sound could be heard on another slow project: the snap of ringbinders, signalling that an end was nigh in the latest and possibly last saga in the long, sad case of the murder of Susan Burdett.
Burdett was raped and killed in her home in Papatoetoe in March 1992. Malcolm Rewa has sat in the High Court this past fortnight to plead not guilty to her murder. The prosecution wrapped its case on Friday; the defence rested yesterday morning.
Few professionals in New Zealand charge more to snap shut their ringbinders than lawyers and they went at it with great aplomb in courtroom seven after Justice Venning confirmed to the jury that all the evidence in the criminal file CRI-1997-404-198997 had been heard.
Only the closing addresses remain, and the judge's summing up. Next month, March 23, will mark the 27th anniversary – it hardly seems proper to use that happy word to mark such a brutal and horrible event – of Burdett's killing. She was bashed to death by some kind of maniac too low or afraid to ever confess.