Secret witness murder link

By TONY WALL

Police paid rapist Travis Burns $30,000 to become a secret witness in the Tania Furlan murder case - and then moved him to the area where he later murdered Joanne McCarthy.

Both young mothers were bludgeoned to death in their homes while their children played nearby.

Burns is now a suspect for the 1996 Furlan murder, to the embarrassment of police who put their trust in the career criminal and helped him start a new life on the witness protection programme.

The secret witness, whose identity was suppressed until yesterday, had a history of violent assault and intruder rape.

Burns, previously based in South and West Auckland, was placed in a safe house in Orewa. Joanne McCarthy was bashed to death with a hammer in front of her toddler son at Whangaparaoa in November 1998.

In the Furlan case, Burns was to have testified that Christopher John Lewis - notorious for firing a shot near the Queen in Dunedin in 1981 - confessed to him that he went to Mrs Furlan's Howick home and bashed her to death with a hammer before snatching her baby Tiffany in a botched kidnapping.

Lewis killed himself in Mt Eden Prison in 1997 before he could stand trial. He maintained Burns was the real killer.

The Herald can finally reveal Burns' link to the Furlan case after fighting for over a year to publish the information.

Burns went to the Court of Appeal to keep his name suppressed. The court yesterday ruled in favour of the Herald and Television New Zealand.

Police who reinvestigated the Furlan murder say they do not have enough evidence to charge Burns with the killing but they are keeping an open mind.

A Herald investigation has discovered that Burns' alibi for the Furlan murder is now in doubt.

Burns says that at the time of the murder on Friday, July 26, 1996 - between 4.32 pm and 4.50 pm - he was at the Waipareira Trust's prisoner rehabilitation centre in Massey, 40km from the murder scene in Howick.

But the Herald has learned that Burns had been granted weekend leave. He was signed in as present at 4.45 pm in the centre's "verification chart", but former manager Charles Hohaia says the chart was misleading and far from precise.

And the guard who signed Burns in now believes Burns used him.

In an exclusive interview, former guard Wayne Heremaia admitted he was on friendly terms with Burns, the centre's first resident.

"I used to try and help him out a bit because he was the first guy with us in the centre and we wanted it to work."

Mr Heremaia said he did not remember signing Burns in knowing he was elsewhere, but believes Burns somehow "manipulated" him to gain an alibi.

The officer in charge of the re-investigation, Detective Superintendent Nick Perry, said there was "considerable doubt" about Burns' presence at the centre based on the recording procedures at the time.

"The alibi is not airtight by any stretch of the imagination. It would appear that in reality Burns was probably last sighted shortly before 4 pm and was seen again back at the trust some time after 7 pm."

Mr Perry said police hoped to question Burns further on his alibi in prison - where he is serving a life sentence for Ms McCarthy's murder - but so far he had refused to cooperate.

He said the reinvestigation had strengthened the case against Lewis. His alibi - that he was taking his girlfriend to yoga at the time of the murder - had been proved false.

Mr Perry defended the police payment to Burns. The Furlan case had been unsolved for three months and police were ready to post a reward anyway. If Burns had not come forward, the crime might never have been solved.

"It was a significant amount of money, but it was a significant offence - it was a vicious murder which I would say in the circumstances justified the payment to Burns."

Auckland's Crown Solicitor, Simon Moore, tried unsuccessfully to have Burns' involvement in the Furlan case introduced as similar- fact evidence in the McCarthy trial, arguing that the second murder was a copycat, "modified to make improvements to the original blueprint".

Lewis' supporters have described the saga as a miscarriage of justice, and describe Burns as a "state-protected killer".

Ian Wishart, publisher of Lewis' posthumously released autobiography, Last Words, said Joanne McCarthy need not have died.

"Police were blinded by the fact that they wanted to get some revenge on Lewis, whom they hated, and were blinded also by the fact that Burns was a paid informant."

* tony_wall@nzherald.co.nz