Scientific evidence has been suppressed in the depositions hearing of Dean Stewart Cameron for the rape and murder of Papanui High School teenager Marie Davis.
Justices of the Peace Percy Acton-Adams and Nick Atkins granted the suppression today at the request of defence counsel Peter Doody.
The ordermeans the nature of the scientific evidence cannot be published.
Crown prosecutor Kathy Bell said 33 witnesses would be called at the hearing in Christchurch District Court.
The crown alleges that Cameron, a 38-year-old road worker, met 15-year-old Marie when she stayed at another house not far from her home on Friday night, April 4.
Cameron had asked Marie what she was going to do on Saturday evening and she told him she would be home alone, Miss Bell said.
There would be evidence that he made a phone call to her house before she disappeared.
On Sunday April 6, Marie was reported missing by her mother.
On April 14 a man dirt biking by the Waimakariri River saw bedding floating in the water and his parents called the police. They found the bedding, a sock, rope, a latex glove and a blue bra. The bedding was from Marie's home.
Marie's body was found further down the river on April 18, and the cause of her death has not been determined.
A friend of Marie's - a relative of Cameron - told the court that Marie was interested in photography and wanted to be a forensic scientist.
Marie stayed the night with her on Friday and was dropped at home the next afternoon.
That evening, she texted Marie twice but got no reply to the second message. That was unusual. "Her phone was usually glued to her hand so she would always have it."
She said Cameron would have been the only person at her home that night when a phone call was made from there to Marie's address.
The hearing, for which two weeks were set aside, is continuing.
