This year the Herald’s award-winning newsroom produced a range of first-class journalism, including exploring the NCEA and UE results of every college around NZ, the collapse of the Du Val property empire, revealing claims a former funeral director at Tipene Funerals was swindling grieving clients and charting the 10-year police probe that brought down Wayne Doyle and the Head Hunters.
This summer we’re bringing back some of the best-read Premium articles of 2024. Today we re-visit eight of the year’s biggest criminal trials.
Sex, drugs and despair: Inside the Polkinghorne murder trial
Pauline Hanna had been catching up with two of her oldest friends at a Hawke’s Bay restaurant in January 2020 when the light-hearted nature of the dinner and drinks took an abruptly dark turn. The then-61-year-old - who had about 14 months left to live - was silent as she outstretched her thumbs and put both hands around her neck.
“He tried to strangle me,” John Riordan recalled Hanna explaining as she broke the silence, moments after saying that she “had to be very, very careful” around husband Philip Polkinghorne because she wasn’t ever sure when he “would blow up”.
Both Riordan and his wife, Pheasant, shared similar accounts of the chilling moment as they took turns giving evidence in August at the Auckland eye surgeon’s murder trial, one of the nation’s most salacious and closely followed criminal cases in recent memory.
But it wasn’t the only hair-raising outcry jurors would learn about as they spent eight weeks sifting through whiplash evidence - facts, recollections and innuendo that jerked back and forth into one of two camps, a ceaseless tug-of-war of two starkly different narratives.
Murder or suicide?
After 10 hours of deliberations spanning two days, jurors rejected the Crown’s case that it was murder - or even manslaughter.
Craig Kapitan and George Block examine the eight-week trial which gripped the nation.
Capturing a killer: How a phone led police to a shallow grave
A day after Yanfei Bao went missing, flashlight-wielding cops were picking their way through a grassy patch at the edge of Christchurch’s Southern Motorway. Her phone had been tracked to the area and the hunt for evidence was in full swing.
A man wandered out from the cul-de-sac that edges the verge.
“Are you here about that car that was here last night?” he asked.
An officer replied: “Maybe, maybe not - could you tell us what you know?”
He said the night before he’d disturbed a person behaving “oddly” on the street - “hiding beside the car” and driving off with their lights off when approached.
The man decided to follow him and when the car pulled over, took down the licence plate and typed it into a vehicle information website to see if it was stolen.
The car drove off and the man went home. But when he saw the cops rummaging in the grass he assumed that’s why they’d come.
By midnight police knew the car was registered to a man named Tingjun Cao and a homicide investigation was underway.
Christchurch real estate agent Yanfei Bao met Tingjun Cao just weeks before he stabbed her to death and buried her body in a shallow grave. Senior journalist Anna Leask spoke to the senior detective on how the police got their man.
Serial rapist detective’s ‘worst-case scenario’
The story begins in February 2018.
A woman alleged she had been raped by John Hope Muchirahondo but chose not to do an evidential interview (EVI) with police that would have formalised her complaint.
“Police still spoke with him and he said it was consensual. Because she didn’t formalise it and she didn’t want to go any further with it – it didn’t go any further for police either,” Detective Inspector Nicola Reeves said.
“And that’s really common with lots of people that come in.
“Then in March 2019, we had another woman come and report a rape. This woman was a former partner.”
She did an EVI. Police interviewed Muchirahondo who again said sex happened and was consensual.
The case was not strong enough to advance.
In July 2019 a third complaint was made.
Reeves has been investigating adult sexual assaults for much of her career, has seen all kinds of grisly scenes and been privy to the unthinkable.
But there is only one case that truly haunts her. Muchriahondo.
Muchirahondo has been described as the worst serial rapist since Malcolm Rewa. The now-convicted sex offender was even accused of raping a woman while he was under investigation by police. The 38-year-old Zimbabwean claimed every sexual act was consensual but in September a jury found him guilty on 11 counts of rape and six of sexual violation. Senior reporter Anna Leask spoke to the detective in charge of Operation Hope about how the predator’s decade-long rape spree was brought to an end.
Skinks, hiccups and assault: The Liz Gunn sentencing
“Ugly c***,” howled some old bag attached to the tiny remains of those who follow Liz Gunn. It was a lovely sunny Tuesday afternoon outside the Manukau District Court. Gunn, famous as the leader of the NZ Loyal Party, a merry band of conspiracy hobbyists who attracted 34,000 votes in the last election, had just been sentenced to a conviction without discharge by Judge Janey Forrester in courtroom 2.
She had sought discharge without conviction. The judge met her halfway but Gunn took it as an attack on her political freedoms and issued dark warnings to all New Zealanders that they, too, were at risk of losing their liberty that brave men and women fought to uphold in two world wars or whatever.
A Judge found Gunn guilty of assault following an eventful trial of the former TVNZ host and anti-vaccination campaigner. Steve Braunias followed the “prolonged and fantastically meaningless ordeal”.
Read his full opinion piece here.
The colourful life and tragic death of a pensioner
Herbert Bradley told an old friend last year he was worried he was going to be stabbed by a homeless person on Karangahape Rd around the corner from his Auckland apartment.
A week later, he was stabbed in the neck and killed by Sergio Williams, who had been living in his car when Bradley offered him a place to stay in what was described as a characteristic act of generosity.
Bradley has been remembered as a kind, funny and hospitable man and a good storyteller who loved his children.
In November Sergio Williams was found guilty of murder after plunging a knife into the neck of pensioner Herbert Bradley in his Auckland apartment. Archival court documents and press clippings along with previously unpublished trial evidence have shed new light on the life and death of the loved and respected 70-year-old. George Block reports.
Judge cites Ghahraman’s ‘vicarious trauma’ in sentencing
Former Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman stood in an Auckland courtroom in June to be sentenced for shoplifting nearly $9000 worth of retail items from high-end stores.
Judge June Jelas denied the 43-year-old former barrister’s request for a discharge without conviction, decreasing her odds of being allowed to revive her legal career after a seven-year hiatus prompted by her ascension to Parliament.
Ghahraman, who was allowed to sit in the courtroom gallery rather than the dock, lowered her eyes and looked towards a supporter as the decision was announced.
The judge imposed fines totalling $1600 and court costs of $260. Supervision was not imposed.
Her once-promising political career now in tatters, the conviction was another blow for Ghahraman. Craig Kapitan covered the former MP’s court appearances.
Guilty verdict in meth-laced beer death
A Fonterra manager who gave a young employee a slab of imported beer contaminated with a deadly dose of concentrated liquid methamphetamine has been found guilty of manslaughter and possession of methamphetamine for supply.
It took jurors in the High Court at Auckland only two hours to reach their decisions regarding Himatjit “Jimmy” Kahlon, 41. He was acquitted of one major drug charge: possession of cocaine for supply.
The family of Aiden Sagala, who was 21 years old when he died of a massive overdose in March last year, also sat in the courtroom as the verdict was announced. His sisters wept as the decision was announced.
“Thank God,” Sagala’s mother whispered under her breath.
Craig Kapitan was in court for the duration of the trial.
Teens guilty of murder for road rage stabbing attack
A 17-year-old and 14-year-old accused of inflicting a co-ordinated, frenzied stabbing attack on a stranger after a minor traffic accident in a North Shore, Auckland suburb have both been found guilty of murder.
The teens, now 19 and 15, both wore white t-shirts - the older defendant standing directly behind the younger - today as jurors in the High Court at Auckland returned the verdicts after eight hours of deliberations over two days.
The younger defendant appeared to shift nervously as the guilty verdict for his co-defendant was read aloud by the jury foreman.
The courtroom gallery, filled with family members for the defendants and the victim, remained quiet save for one person who yelled out, “Love you, son”.
The duo, who continue to have interim name suppression, were arrested in March last year after Joshuah Tasi, 28, bled to death next to his crashed silver van on Beach Haven Rd.
Moments earlier, Tasi had honked at the duo’s BMW and called the older defendant a “dickhead” as he drove around them at an intersection they had been blocking, a witness testified shortly after the trial began last week.
The older defendant then allegedly sped to catch up with Tasi and cut in front of him - resulting in the minor crash, which caused Tasi’s bumper to fall off.
“They acted in unison,” Crown prosecutor Brett Tantrum said during his closing address, explaining that both defendants took off their shirts and got out of the BMW before approaching both front doors of Tasi’s vehicle - giving him no means of escape.
Craig Kapitan was in court for the trial.