Tag Archives: innocent

Aug 23 2011

Murder Most Foul #2 in a series


I could add Scott Watson, and  David Tamihere, as cases that raise eyebrows.

Scott Watson currently serving time for the murder of Ben Hope and Olivia Smart. There appears to be so much wrong with the case, with no bodies and identification of the offending boat difficult to ascertain.  In deed there are mystery men, secret witnesses and all the associated conspiracy.

David Tamihere, convicted in 1990 of the double murder of Heidi Paakonaan and Urban Hoglan. The body of Urban was found nearly a year later, but not that of Heidi. Tamihere is currently on release as he’s terminally ill.

These are cases that test the patience of many people. I’ve no first hand knowledge of either of Watson or Tamihere, but I have enough faith to say that if they weren’t inside for this these crimes they would be for another.  However being a bad sort shouldn’t be enough of a reason to be in prison. And you’d think that with the high profile re-trial of Bain that Watson and Tamihere would at least be mounting a charge. As far as I am aware they aren’t.

Tamihere will take his secret to the grave with him, Watson will get out of prison, take up on his boat again and live out his life. Or at least we can hope. Having done time they’ve paid their price. It might not be closure to the parents and friends but it is what we call justice served.

Aug 1 2011

Murder Most Foul #1 in a series


There are many murders that get your attention and pique your interest. Fortunately there aren’t that many that go unsolved. And even the solved ones can twist like a snake when you take what is mostly a superficial look at them. But we have to have an opinion and we have to have questions, it’s the human condition, and you can believe one way or the other that justice was served, or that by your own view it hasn’t.  I can think immediately of two that I have a view on.

Away: Peter Falconio.  (20 September 1972 – c. 14 July 2001)  disappeared in the Australian outback in July 2001, while travelling with girlfriend Joanne Lees and is now presumed dead. It’s rather contentious and tonight (1st August) it was again alleged on TV that Peter Falconio did a runner and is still alive, and has been seen by 4 people no less, since he was allegedly killed. There was a bit of twitterage about this and seems that there is more than a little doubt that he was killed and that he chose to be disappeared. The whole story seems a little improbable, and they did convict someone of a murder.

It’s not possible to put your own reasonings on this, you probably wouldn’t stage your own murder/disappearance. Can you imagine living ‘on the lam’ as it were for what is now a decade? I’m not an expert on this, but how would you survive with a foreign accent in a foreign country, It is possible, people have done it, and will do it again, but I don’t recall any background that would indicate Peter F had a bag of cash and the means to get away with it. Improbable but not impossible.

Home: David Bain. Convicted in May 1995 of the murders of his parents and siblings in Dunedin on 20 June 1994. He was acquitted when retried on the same charges 14 years later.

Never has an event really split people so widely. It is my opinion only that the truth hasn’t been told in this. The police really stuffed it up from the get go. But after a re-trial where the only possible witness, David Bain, didn’t testify what can you conclude?

My two favorite things that are wrong so wrong are; Problems with “index time” that is a central time piece against which everything is timed. What should happen is the lead detective declares the time, and everything you do should be based on the time of that watch/clock/device despite what your watch says. Your watch, my watch, the computer time, the oven, the microwave, the dvd player they all have different times on them, you therefore need a central time clock where you reference too. The police didn’t. Big mistake.

And some really weird way in which you can tell when a computer was turned on. Even if you could, and I still don’t know how you can, particularly if you turn the computer off and then back on again, what use is forensically diagnosing the time, if the time you arbitrarily decide does not match any reference time, it’s just the time you decide on your watch, and not the reference watch. So the forensic test of time will return a time, which is completely arbitrary since there is no way of knowing what time that really is, it could be 10 minutes fast or slow, who knows? Big mistake.