Two women raped by Malcolm Rewa have gone to court to have their name suppressions lifted. The women say police should prosecute Rewa a third time for the murder of Susan Burdett.

Lying square on the kitchen bench in Tracey Kearney's house is a large piece of cardboard, scrawled with words, daubed with bright pens.

There are circles and arrows all connecting up; evidence to back up the conclusions she's come to, the thoughts she can't get out of her head.

Right in the middle it says: "Me, Fairfax, Rewa and Pora." It's proof that Tracey Kearney has not made this decision easily.



This decision is to enable us to publish her name, to have her automatic right to name suppression lifted and to go public with the fact that she was attacked by serial rapist Malcolm Rewa.



"When I decided I wanted to speak out, I wanted to get clear in my mind everything that had happened and so I drew out this mind map, if you like, so it's joining all the dots," she explains.



Right at the top of the cardboard are her aims for doing this interview. The second one is: "Royal Commission of inquiry into what the f..k happened, why, how and what's changed."





Tracey Kearney has mapped out why she wanted to be interviewed. Photo: PHIL JOHNSON/FAIRFAX NZ



READ MORE: Renewed calls for Police to prosecute Malcolm Rewa



It's typical brutal honesty from Tracey. We first met her about three years ago when we started producing investigative stories on the Rewa case and uncovering flaws.



After one of our stories, she got in contact telling us that what we were reporting on had had a direct impact on her.



Because on June 17, 1995, Malcolm Rewa raped her in her then home on Auckland's North Shore.



Alone for the night, she'd gone to bed early to read. Eventually, she nodded off to sleep, the lights still on.



Suddenly, she was woken when she felt movement. The lights had been turned off. A man in a balaclava was crouched beside her with a knife.



"You die inside a bit and you have fear, a new appreciation for fear, absolute terror and basically your whole life is in someone else's hands," Tracey says.



Back when she first got in contact with us, she agreed to be interviewed on camera. At the time, she didn't want her name used, although she wanted to show her face. It was something she felt strongly about, telling us: "I don't want to be sitting in the dark when I say what I want to say and that's because when I was attacked, Rewa was a shadow to me."



Just recently, Tracey got in contact with us again. She was angry. And this time she has decided to have her name suppression lifted to add weight to what she has to say.



"I think for me it's about getting my power back and having my voice heard. I think as a victim of Malcolm Rewa's I've got a relevant voice to be heard with what I want to say."



She's not alone ­ Tracey and another woman attacked by Rewa have decided to go public to speak out to Circuit.



It's as powerful a statement as you'll get about how strongly they feel - not only about what happened to them, but about what's not happening now.

TOBY LONGBOTTOM/STUFF CIRCUIT The many failings behind the police handling of Malcolm Rewa.

THE MAN POLICE HUNTED FOR YEARS

It was about 11pm on Monday night in autumn, May 13, 1996. The sound of sporadic late night traffic on Auckland's nearby south­western motorway played like a droning soundtrack as police stealthily encircled the corner section in Mangere where Rewa lived with his partner and children.

An undercover surveillance team had spotted him on a bike pedalling towards the home earlier in the evening, about 24 hours after he had attacked a young woman. One last victim. The beginning of the end.



That attack ramped up efforts to catch him, to conclude Operation Harvey, the investigation into 27 separate sex attacks they believed he was responsible for, stretching back to 1987. One of them a murder.



During the day, detectives talked about how best to corner him, how dangerous he might be. They talked about the evidence they needed to collect; about the witnesses they must interview once the arrest was made; about how they should tell his victims of the breakthrough.



Probably none of them talked about the many missed opportunities to catch him; about the decisions made which let him extend his reign of terror.



It was not the time. Right now, finally, they had him, trussed up in handcuffs on the lawn in front of his house. With only a towel wrapped around him, this cunning, meticulous predator was caught unawares.



The man police hunted for years, a self­-styled lone wolf the community feared, had finally been captured, brought down by a police dog's teeth puncturing his bare thigh.



Detective Sergeant Karl Wright ­St Clair, tasked with formally arresting Rewa, brushed past the officers who had taken the rapist into custody, and read Rewa his rights.



Wright St Clair and Detective Sergeant Dave Henwood sat on either side of him in the back of the police car as it took them to the Otahuhu police station, Rewa staring straight ahead and remaining mute the entire journey.



At Otahuhu, Wright St Clair and Henwood attempted to interview him - Rewa taunted his captors but mostly kept up his silence.



Finally, after about 40 minutes, possibly exasperated, Henwood pressed Rewa one last time.



Henwood: There are only two questions I want to know. Do you know Teina Pora?



Rewa: No



Henwood: Have you read about Teina Pora being charged and convicted with the [Susan] Burdett homicide?



Rewa: Yeah



Henwood: You don't know him?



Rewa: Never met him. I'm not saying any more.



On the surface, it was a nothing conversation. But when you consider the parties to it, the people they were talking about, and the repercussions of the topic they were discussing, it constitutes one of the most captivating exchanges in New Zealand criminal history.



Artwork: PHIL JOHNSON



It's 20 years since that conversation. But it's still significant.



The homicide case they were talking about was the rape and murder of Papatoetoe woman Susan Burdett, slain in her bedroom after a night out bowling with friends in March 1992.



Two years later, a teenager called Teina Pora was convicted of the rape and murder even though he wasn't there. It took 22 years to clear his name, the Government finally accepting this year that he was an innocent man.



Dave Henwood, a celebrated criminal profiler and old-school south Auckland detective brought in to help Operation Harvey, was convinced from about 1996 that Rewa carried out the attack on Burdett on his own, that Pora was never there. Wright- St Clair had concluded in 1992 that Pora was not involved, writing a report which senior officers later over­ruled.



Henwood's suspicions about Rewa were backed up by scientific evidence - Rewa's DNA alone was found at the scene. And in the other sex attacks he was convicted of he always acted alone.



The Burdett case, though, was always complicated.





Susan Burdett was killed in 1992. Photo: SUPPLIED



After two trials in 1998, Rewa was found guilty of raping her, but neither jury could agree on whether he murdered her too.



Which means, now that Pora has been cleared of any involvement, the Burdett homicide is unsolved, at least officially.



See, the thing is, lots of people know who did it. Even the Police Commissioner, Mike Bush, says he thinks Rewa killed Burdett.



But has he ordered his staff to charge Rewa with murder and send him to trial a third time? No, he hasn't.



All the way round the Burdett homicide case there are people who have their views about what should happen.



And now, firmly and loudly, some of them are speaking up.





Artwork: PHIL JOHNSON



Rhonda McHardy is an articulate, elegant woman who doesn't look anywhere near her 50 years.



As a former ballet dancer and television actor, she's used to being in the public eye.



But this is a stage she never expected to be on, a performance she never wanted.



Rhonda McHardy was brutally bashed and raped - twice - two weeks before Susan Burdett was raped and murdered in 1992. Rhonda's attacker was Malcolm Rewa.



To read her police statement from the time is to get a spine-chilling insight into the kind of monster he was.



She'd just got cash out of an ATM in Parnell and hopped back in her car when she was hit violently and repeatedly on the back of the head with a blunt weapon. She made the possibly life­saving decision to pretend to be unconscious as the attack unfolded.



Now, she's made a life-changing decision to speak publicly about it.



To do so, she had to apply to the High Court for her name suppression to be lifted. In her moving affidavit she says: "I no longer wish to be known as 'victim number 9' of Rewa but rather by my own name".



You might think going public with something so, well, personal, would be a hard decision - but for Rhonda McHardy, the time is right.

PHIL JOHNSON & TOBY LONGBOTTOM/Stuff Circuit "This is what happened to me, this is who I am."

"For me there's something incredibly empowering about being able to stand up and say 'this is what happened to me, this is who I am' and not need to hide behind that [suppression] because other people feel uncomfortable, because our society has a problem with talking about rape and sexual abuse.

"I'm sort of done with worrying about what other people think."

And so, emboldened, she doesn't hold back on telling it like it is.

PHIL JOHNSON & TOBY LONGBOTTOM/Stuff Circuit "He was capable of killing me."

"I knew that he [Rewa] was capable of killing me. I knew by how I was attacked. I knew by just being in his presence. And I know that's not scientific evidence, but I wouldn't have responded the way I did if I didn't think my life was in danger. That's total survival instinct.

"I know the police have all the evidence and they took my statement and they've seen what he did. But they don't know what it was like to be in that position for two hours, to be in his presence, to actually have been attacked by him. I do.

"I can't obviously speak for Susan Burdett but I'm probably the closest alternative at this point to knowing how violent he was and what he was capable of."



She says it, but you can also see it in her eyes: she knew she could have died. It's a powerful message but one that's been years in the telling. In an age when grievances are displayed daily on social media, hers is a story that's been locked away.



She's telling it now, being so candid for multiple ­ and altruistic ­ reasons.



Mostly, it's in the hope that Malcolm Rewa is retried for Susan Burdett's murder.



"I have the greatest of respect for the New Zealand police, I think they do a phenomenal job.



"But they are human... the right thing to do is say 'ok we we made this mistake, we're going to fix it'. Because Susan Burdett deserves justice."



And there's another, more personal motivation she has for speaking out.



Rhonda wants to put a face and a name to her story, and what happened to her, to "reduce some of the stigma associated with being a victim of sexual offending. Victims of sexual offending often feel alone and ashamed. I hope by speaking out about what happened to me, I can raise awareness and provide hope for at least one other person that they still have a promising future".



As Rhonda does. She's recently retrained as a life and nutrition coach, with an interest in eating psychology, because she knows from personal experience the connection between sexual abuse and eating disorders.



That's the thing about this case. There are concentric circles of consequence, as well.





Artwork: PHIL JOHNSON



It's been 21 years since that night Tracey Kearney was woken to discover the lights were out and see a man with a knife. Yet while Rewa was convicted of attacking her, she remains suspicious of the police and scathing of the investigation.



And she thinks the police decision to not pursue Rewa now makes a farce of the justice system.



"Susan Burdett was murdered and the police have come out finally and said it wasn't Pora. So where does that leave her family and where does it leave the justice system if we say 'yes we know Rewa did it but we're not gonna prosecute him'?



"Someone has to be responsible; it was a woman's life she had family, friends, to say 'oh we believe it was him but we're doing nothing about it'...it's a bit scary."



On the mind map she's drawn on cardboard, Tracey highlights several areas of particular concern.



One is the unanswered question of how Rewa was allowed to get away with his first rape for so long ­ his victim had given police his name after recognising him, but they failed to properly follow up.



Next is the fact he was arrested and questioned about another attack in which the victim had identified him from photographs ­ but allowed to walk free from the police station.



A week later, he raped Tracey.



Last year, one of the most senior police in the country, Assistant Commissioner Malcolm Burgess visited her to apologise.

PHIL JOHNSON & TOBY LONGBOTTOM/STUFF CIRCUIT ‘Why was he able to walk out the police station and go on to rape me?’

"I talked to Malcolm Burgess about that, why [Rewa] was able to walk out of the police station and go on to rape me. And he didn't really have an answer for it. But when you think about it, he was picked up, brought into the police station, he was already wanted for questioning for another case at that point and he was let go. And they can't tell me why."

She shrugs her shoulders. But that's not a sign of defeat. Nothing about Tracey exudes any sign of a woman prepared to give up on her quest for answers.

Two years ago she complained to the Independent Police Conduct Authority about the Rewa investigation. It initially responded by saying the events were too long ago and it wouldn't investigate. The uproar that ensued when we broadcast that fact - and more issues with the investigation ­ brought about a change of heart, and the IPCA decided to act.

Its report criticised the police for failing to properly follow up when the first victim identified him. But while it identified other shortcomings in the police investigation, it concluded "there is insufficient evidence that any of the identified failings impacted on the ability of police to identify Mr Rewa earlier as the serial sex offender".

Unsurprisingly, Tracey (who, by the way, was never interviewed by the IPCA despite being the complainant), was not satisfied.

"The IPCA report was so limp-wristed and the terms of reference were so narrow," she says.

"There needs to be a royal commission into what happened, and why...because Malcolm Burgess went on about how much things have changed but I can't see that."

Particularly when she can't get out of her head why on Earth the police failed to follow up when Rewa's first victim gave them his name.



Artwork: PHIL JOHNSON

31 December, 1987, Panmure. Eight and a half years before Rewa's arrested.

A young woman is home from Australia for a holiday, staying at her friend's mother's house. It's 3am and the lights are out when a man comes into the bedroom and tries to suffocate her with a pillow.

It's a violent rape.

In what may have been a life-saving stroke of luck she'd recently watched a documentary about rape and remembered the advice not to fight back. It's dark but she sees his ponytail.

You can't see her eyes because she's crying when she tells us how, five days later, while staying at a friend's house in St Mary's Bay, supposedly safe harbour, she recognises a man's voice - then walks into the dining room and comes face to face with her attacker. The man with the ponytail.

But she's only told his gang name, 'Hama', which is what she tells the police.



The first victim of Malcolm Rewa's 25 sex attacks gave police his name. Photo: 3D INVESTIGATES

And they tell her they "don't have a list of gang members' nicknames". Rather than investigate, they tell the rape victim that she needs to find out her attacker's real name.

Within two weeks, she's done that: it's Malcolm Rewa.

So she's come home for a holiday, been raped, has to look her rapist in the eye, finds out his name, and tells the police.

Police don't know it yet, but the fate of at least 24 other women, including Susan Burdett, is in their hands.

And for reasons they've never been able to explain to us, it takes them six months to go and see Rewa. Even though he had already served a prison term for attempted rape by that stage.

From notes police made at the time, here's how the 'investigation' played out:

Detective Constable: I'm here to talk to you about when ** was raped.

Rewa: Oh, yeah, I thought you guys got the guy, the one that worked at the petrol station.

DC: No, we have spoken to him. Where were you on the night?

R: I was with ****. We were on the booze in town. **** wanted to get his bike fixed as he was going on a trip with the boys and me and another mate were helping him. We then went into town and then stayed at a place in Otara.

DC: Did you see ** that night?

R: No.

DC: Have you seen her before?

R: Yes, we had a bit of a "do" round there when **** got back from Aussie and I've seen her a few times since.

DC: Do you know who did it?

R: No, but I'd like to find out.

The alibi named by Rewa was living in Australia at the time. Police didn't contact him to try to verify Rewa's story. They believed him: they didn't believe the woman he raped.

As best we know, she was his first victim in this series of attacks. It takes until 1996 before he's arrested, and her first knowledge of his arrest is seeing the news on television.

She rings the police, and Detective Sergeant Dave "Chook" Henwood answers the phone. She still recalls his greeting: "We've been looking for you".

She speaks highly of Henwood but scathingly of Detective Inspector Steve Rutherford, who headed the inquiry and who she feels treated her as though she was "guilty by association", because of the tenuous connection she had with Highway 61 gang. She thinks they didn't take her seriously, from day one.

To make matters worse, under an arrangement with the then DSIR (now ESR), forensic samples from rape scenes would only be analysed if there were samples from nominated suspects to compare them with.

No samples were supplied for comparison ­ no one bothered getting one from Rewa - and so the medical evidence was destroyed.

Think about that: not only did they not do their job properly in the first place, they destroyed what clues they had.

To this day, she feels hurt that Malcolm Rewa was able to keep hunting and attacking women for eight and a half more years after she'd given police his name, and he was let go.

And now that Susan Burdett's murder is unsolved, she has a very simple but oh-so-powerful message to the police.

"You failed me, you failed Teina Pora, you failed all those other women. Don't fail Susan Burdett".



Artwork: PHIL JOHNSON

So, just what is the police position on the Burdett homicide?

After the Cabinet accepted Teina Pora was innocent and offered him compensation, the police issued a press release but refused all interview requests (including ours). Then, on June 29, Police Commissioner Mike Bush was questioned by the media on the way out of a Parliamentary select committee meeting.

It was what's called a "door-step" where reporters catch someone on the hop, but as Newshub political editor Patrick Gower launched into a grilling of Bush, the police's top man was unflappable - despite the enormity of what he was announcing.

Essentially, it came down to three significant points:

1. The police finally accepted that Teina Pora was innocent, the first time they had said this publicly (if you don't count a press release on the day the compensation was announced which stated that police accept "Mr Pora's version of events regarding the rape and murder of Susan Burdett made in his confessions cannot stand up to critical scrutiny").

2. The police have conducted a review and do not believe there is any new evidence.

3. They've taken advice from Crown Law and concluded that a stay of proceedings prevents Rewa from being tried a third time.

This gave us more questions: why did it take so long for the police to realise Pora was innocent? Who conducted this review and when? How can you say there's no new evidence when, last year, we found witnesses who told us a number of significant new aspects to the case? How can you find new evidence if you don't re­open the case?

What was this advice from Crown Law and when was it received?

A month after asking the police a series of questions, they got back to us with some answers.

In short, a police spokesman said there had been an on-going "revisiting of the facts" in light of the Privy Council decision and the Hansen reports.

"This is not a re-investigation or review of Ms Burdett's murder - it has been an ongoing assessment of the known facts. No new evidence has come to light regarding Malcolm Rewa since Mr Pora's release from prison," the spokesman said.

This process has been overseen by Detective Superintendent Andy Lovelock, which is significant because he has had a long involvement with the case - in other words, no one has been brought in to cast fresh eyes over the case.

The police, meanwhile, refused to say anything about the advice from Crown Law, citing professional privilege. So we went to Crown Law.

A spokeswoman confirmed that the agency had given the police advice about the stay of proceedings. She could not provide a firm date for when that was, although confirmed it was "some time after the Privy Council decision [quashing Pora's convictions] came out early March 2015".

This timing is important.

Because if it was last year, that was before former High Court judge Rodney Hansen, QC, delivered his report to the Cabinet, demolishing the Crown case and finding Pora innocent to a higher standard of proof than he needed to. In other, less legalese words - there's no doubt he didn't do it, he wasn't there.

Right up until Hansen's report came out, the Crown position was the opposite. Hansen's report, now that it has been accepted by the Government, is a game-changer.

It means the Crown case that Rewa attacked Burdett with Pora is null and void, that whole scenario put to juries at the two murder trials in 1998 was wrong. It's no wonder neither of those juries could decide if Rewa was guilty.

The Solicitor General's prosecution guidelines on this point say that when two juries haven't agreed on a verdict, "a stay will normally be directed unless the Solicitor General is satisfied that...new or persuasive evidence would be available on a third trial, or there is some other exceptional circumstances making a third trial desirable in the interests of justice".

There are plenty of people who cannot see how the Crown or police position on a retrial can be justified any more.



Artwork: TOBY LONGBOTTOM

Circle completely round the other side of the Burdett homicide case and you arrive at Team Pora.

For the past seven years, a group led by private investigator Tim McKinnel, lawyers Jonathan Krebs and Ingrid Squire, has campaigned to prove Pora was wrongly convicted.

They were vindicated, initially last year when the Privy Council quashed Pora's convictions, and finally this year when Cabinet accepted he was innocent and offered him compensation.

You'd think that after all that effort they'd want to move on. But, still, there's unfinished business.

You figure that out within minutes of talking to Ingrid Squire about the case; her sense of justice is almost palpable. She's primarily a family lawyer in Hawke's Bay but she jumped at the chance to join the team in 2013.

"I like to think that I help my clients in my day-to-day work in family law but this case had such a clear tangible benefit to Teina that it was impossible not to join the team."

Yet, even now that Pora's name has been cleared, she doesn't think the fight has ended.

"There were flaws along the way in our justice system that led to Teina's wrongful imprisonment for 22 years. We need to know that those flaws have been remedied and another young man - or woman - doesn't suffer the same fate. I'm not sure that that message has filtered through to the people who need to make the changes – although I believe most of the rest of the country acknowledges it."

Remedying those flaws, to her, starts with lifting the stay of proceedings.

"I think for Susan's family and friends, and even for the wider public, there's a real need for resolution. We don't know what the police have done at this stage. We've asked the questions, we don't know what inquiry they've made, and we don't know what steps the Solicitor General has taken and what she's turned her mind to".

She points out that the guidelines say that the stay can be lifted, in "exceptional circumstances", and she contends this case easily meets that threshold.

"What I think we have to remember is that the two juries that considered the [murder] charge against Malcolm Rewa were of the belief and understanding that another man had confessed to Susan's murder, and secondly that that other man, Teina Pora had been found guilty. What we now know is that those confessions weren't worth the paper they were written on. [They were] utterly wholly, unreliable. And secondly, Teina Pora has been found to be innocent, so it's a whole new ball game. The information a jury would receive today if they were considering a charge against Malcolm Rewa is completely different to what the jurors heard in 1998".

And as to the contention that there's no new evidence, Squire argues that the vastly changed circumstances constitute exactly that.

"The fact that [the jurors] were told that he'd co-offended with a man 20 years younger than him from a different gang, we now know that none of that happened... the scenario was so wrong and we now have a clearer idea of what happened that night".

For Squire, like so many involved in this case, the next step - a third trial for Rewa - is fundamental to justice.

There's something else too. A more personal undertaking, given to Susan Burdett's brother, Jim, by Tim McKinnel.

"I told Jim that if we were successful in having Teina's convictions quashed, we would do all we could to make sure Susan's killer was identified and held to account," he says.

"We hope that Justice Hansen QC's report [into Teina's innocence] has gone a long way to achieving that - but much could and should be done by Police and Crown Law. They really should not need to be shamed into doing more ­- a vibrant intelligent woman was raped and killed in her own home. I know from our work that much, much more could be done - but it seems to me that authorities just want the case to go away, and for us all to forget what happened to Susan and her family."



Artwork: PHIL JOHNSON

It's impossible to know what Malcolm Rewa makes of all of this. If he ever thinks about it at all. If he holds any guilt about what he did to Susan Burdett that night.

He did take the stand to give evidence in his own defence during the first trial. But he admitted nothing.

And so, there is silence. Still. And a circle of people around him, looking to him to set right the wrongs done on a late summer's night in Papatoetoe 24 years ago.

* Stuff Circuit is a team producing video-led, quality longform journalism for Stuff. The team includes Paula Penfold, Toby Longbottom, Eugene Bingham and Phil Johnson, who have a background in high-profile investigative stories.