KEY POINTS:
What is there to say about the kind of fate that delivers babies into the arms of their killer? Someone close killed those babies.
The Crown said it was their father, stressed to the point of violent rage.
The defence said, "no", not their placid young client, and
pointed the finger at the Kahui twins' self-centred mother, Macsyna King.
King was among the first of 60 witnesses the jury heard from in the trial of Christopher Sonny Te Aroha Kahui.
Their lopsided relationship ended soon after the twins' died, baby Chris at 5am on 18 June, 2006, his brother, Cru, some 14 hours later.
The twins' parents presumably once loved each other or at least were lovers. By the time they reached Auckland's High Court they were rivals, each dressed neatly, each trying to make the best impression. Self-preservation comes to mind.
Listen to Macsyna King's evidence and you might think her to be any normal mother: she was the one who cared for the twins 95 per cent of the time, who kept the home tidy, the nursery warm, who took them to the doctor.
Chris Kahui, not a talker at the best of times, didn't speak in his defence but was characterised as quiet, an affectionate father who drank little.
And the days leading up to when the babies were fatally injured were, according to available accounts, unremarkable, "a sea of normality", to quote the prosecutor. Well, someone lied, because none of that explains why Courtroom 15 was full for those six weeks, as outside the seasons changed.
The people were there because of the silent evidence. Because of what two tiny lifeless bodies told.
Although they were three months old, adjusted for their premature births they were like newborns, as reflected by their weight at death, Chris 3.5kg, Cru 3.8kg.
Experienced pathologist Jane Vuletic conducted the post-mortem examination. Brain, bone and eye specialists also investigated, as did specialist paediatricians.
Aside from some sign of prematurity in baby Chris' kidneys, the twins appeared to have taken no harm from their early arrival into the world.
Such was the nature of the injuries to each twin's brain and bones that the only possible conclusion was the hurt had been inflicted. The cause of both deaths was "traumatic brain injury".
There were many other injuries that were not fatal, such as the rib fractures - 18 in all between the two of them. Cru had breaks of the third to eighth ribs on his left side and the first, third, fourth, fifth and sixth ribs on the right. Some showed healing, indicating those injuries were old.
Baby Chris had older healing fractures too, on the left fourth and right fifth ribs but also evidence of recent fractures of the same ribs.
His right femur was such a fresh injury it showed complete displacement and no indication of healing. An injury like this in a healthy child would be extremely painful and normally expected to cause significant bleeding into surrounding tissue.
No such bleeding was noted in the post-mortem, prompting Dr Jane Zuccollo, a perinatal paediatric pathologist, to comment: "this suggested that the child may already have been in a collapsed state at the time of the injury and thus did not have the cardiac output to bleed heavily from the fracture site". In other words, baby Chris was already struggling to survive and did not have the ability to bleed normally.
Extensive damage to brain tissue and retina haemorrhages were found in both babies. A 2.6cm by 1.1cm bruise on the back of Chris' head was consistent with blunt force trauma from impact with a firm surface. There was evidence of a previous head injury.
Dr Zuccollo noted the rib fractures in a successive line were by far the most common "inflicted" chest injury in the twins' age group. Such injuries were extremely unlikely to result from cardiopulmonary resuscitation but occurred "most frequently while gripping the chest in either shaking or squeezing the infant".
The trial heard conflicting expert opinion, those called by prosecution and defence tending to fit each side's contention about when the fatal injuries occurred. But what is certain from the medical evidence is that the babies were seriously injured more than once, and that a final assault killed them. Naturally, that led investigators to scrutinise the home environment the twins were born into.
The twins were Macsyna King's fifth and sixth children. Her interests included partying, clubbing, karaoke, alcohol, drugs and sex. Chris Kahui was the third man to father children with her. King's older three children are being raised by their fathers. CYF has placed Macsyna's and Chris' oldest, Shayne (aged one at the time the twins died), in care.
Abandonment, displacement, violence and distress are part of Macsyna King's family history. Both her parents are dead, her father, Mac, as a result of a brain tumour, her mother, Faith Tuhuri, to suicide. Macsyna was a teenager when that happened.
She has two sisters, Emily and Ellen, a brother, Stuart, and older half-siblings Fiona, Denise and Robert.
Others in the King family have lived on society's fringe - Robert admits to a violent past, Emily lives with a former Black Power gang member.
The Crown acknowledged Macsyna was "no angel"; defence counsel described her as a failed mother who had abandoned her older children.
In June 2001 she was in the news when the father of one of those children took Macsyna and the child hostage at gunpoint after finding her in bed with a gang member.
The inference is that Macsyna King is someone who responds to base impulses, whose bond with her babies is questionable. She has visited her infant son Shayne just once in the two years since he was put into care.
She admits using P during the twins' short lives and a couple of days after they were buried partied all night and allegedly tried to seduce Chris Kahui's younger brother, Elvis.
Not long after the murder of her babies, King had a short relationship with Eru Tuari, a bouncer at a bar she frequented. Tuari testified about a possible confession. "I did it. Chris didn't do it." Tuari claimed King had told him.
King's first contact with the Kahui family was with Chris' father, Banjo, at a party in 2004, reportedly soon after she was released from jail.
Banjo Kahui, 50, was born at Pukekohe's public hospital to Peter Kahui and Charlotte Tuhara, both full-blooded Waikato Maori. Banjo, like his son Chris, is small. But whereas Chris was described as not much of a drinker, alcohol was a fixture of Banjo's world.
A Maori farmer in rural Te Kohanga, north of Pukekohe, told the Weekend Herald Kahuis had farmed in the area for generations but, like many Maori families, drifted towards the city and the prospect of jobs.
Many Maori farmers couldn't afford to mechanise and their farms become uneconomic. That's where some Maori hit problems, according to the farmer who asked not to be named, as they lost contact with their tikanga.
Many lost jobs when big employers such as Westfields, Hellabies and Southdown closed their Otahuhu freezing works. Some, the farmer suggests, lost their values but found alcohol.
Banjo Kahui told the Weekend Herald he went to Pukekohe North Primary school but otherwise declined to answer questions.
He has 13 grandchildren and six children four to Chris Kahui's mother, Gwen, two from a previous relationship. (Gwen also has two children to a previous partner.)
There were often parties at Banjo's place but not necessarily at the Housing New Zealand house at 22 Courtenay Crescent, Mangere, where the twins spent their short lives outside of hospital - between discharge after their premature births and being admitted with fatal injuries.
The official tenant was Gwen Kahui, but she was seriously ill in Middlemore Hospital. Living in the house with the twins were Chris, Macsyna, their toddler Shayne, Chris' sister Mona Kahui and her partner at the time Stuart King (Macsyna's brother) and their baby, Cyene.
Chris Kahui was 19, seven years younger than Macsyna, when they got together, as naive as she was worldly-wise. Within a year Shayne was born; his first child, her fourth. The twins arrived a year later. The twins' middle names, Arepa and Omeka, symbolise the beginning and the end. They are Maori transliterations of the Greek symbols, Alpha and Omega, and appear throughout the Ratana Church. Some of the Kahui, King and Hetaraka families follow the Ratana faith. One of Macsyna's uncles would preach Ratana gospel at the Otara markets.
Chris Kahui never preached at anyone. He is remembered at James Cook High School as an unremarkable student, definitely not a leader. That's how he seemed, sitting silent through six weeks in the dock, his Servilles-styled hair groomed to peak performance.
"He wouldn't speak unless spoken to," recalls Terresa Linder, a teacher aide in Kahui's Year 9 class, the first year of secondary school. He was academically average, tidily dressed and groomed and above all very, very, quiet. "He didn't stand out at all. When the news broke [of his arrest] it was like 'good grief, he would be the last person you would expect'."
In court, he was characterised as affectionate, a follower who didn't respond to Macsyna's verbally abusive tirades. If the case boiled down to an argument between the two, it may be the first he has won.
But popularity has nothing to do with the jury's task to weigh evidence.
The jury didn't have any doubt the case against Kahui hadn't been established beyond reasonable doubt. They lost no time returning their not guilty verdicts.
Which leaves everyone where we were one year, 11 months and six days ago: with clear evidence of a horrendous double killing but without explanation or anyone held accountable. It is unlikely, now, that anyone ever will be.
