Kamal Gyanendra Reddy was arrested for the murders of his girlfriend and her young daughter nearly 3000 days after burying them in a muddy grave at Auckland's North Shore.

The first person he asked to call after police nabbed him was the very undercover police officer who had been coaxing a series of confessions from the 42-year-old.

That wasn't because he wanted to demand an explanation from the man whom had become Reddy's closest confidant.



It was because he needed help. At that time, Reddy was still blissfully unaware that the very reason he'd been arrested was because the friend whose acquaintance he'd made six months previously, was actually a police officer.



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A cop who'd taped hours of confessions from Reddy about how he'd strangled Pakeeza Yusuf with an electric iron cord and then smothered her three-year-old daughter, Juwairiyah Kalim, because she was "evidence" against him.

SUPPLIED Mother Mubarak Yusuf and her daughter Juwairiyah Kalim, 3.

2006

Pakeeza Yusuf and Kamal Reddy met in 2006. Depending on which witness account you believed, the pair were either conducting an affair behind Yusuf's husband's back, or they became romantically involved after meeting when Yusuf and her family moved into Reddy's Otahuhu house. Reddy said it was simply a relationship of convenience to satisfy his immigration requirements.

By her mother Mubarak Rojina Banu's account, Yusuf had no extra curricular hobbies or interests. She had no formal qualifications and had only completed school up to a fourth form level. She didn't have a job, and she collected a solo parent's benefit from the government. She had few, if any, friends. She had a daughter, Juwairiyah, who was three.

Mother Pakeeza Yusuf, 24, who went missing in late 2006 or early 2007.

Reddy was older, a father of two children whose marriage had dissolved years earlier. He moved to New Zealand from Fiji in 2004 and worked for various south Auckland mechanics as a panel beater. Some of his family lived in New Zealand, but Reddy appeared to have few friends and he told the court he had a problem with alcohol.

"I was not very happy (about the relationship)," Banu told the court. "I got the impression that he was not a very good person."

She said Yusuf was starting to realise that herself, her phone calls to her mother filled with complaints about his drinking, swearing, and violence. The last time Banu spoke to her daughter: "She repeated virtually everything she had said before - 'he's drinking alcohol and hitting me'."

SUPPLIED Kamal Reddy standing underneath the Takapuna Landing Bridge where two bodies were later found.

Banu agreed she was unsympathetic.

"I would tell her this was her choice, what can I say to you on this matter? Because I arranged your marriage to (ex-husband) Faizal. If you were still with Faizal I would have the opportunity to speak to Faizal. I'm so far away, what can I do for you?"

It was the last time she spoke to her daughter. She tried to call her several times afterward, to no avail. Reddy later related the mother and daughter relationship break down to undercover police officers.

KEVIN STENT/FAIRFAX NZ Lawyer Jonathan Krebs described Reddy's confessions as "cobbled together".

"All the families never bother about her....Six years. And then they start to looking for her after 2013," Reddy was recorded as saying.

When police did come looking, they were "full force," Reddy complained. "Never give. Early morning comes to my place…they can't find anything and then they stop it.

"They never come to me anymore."

FAIRFAX NZ The trial took place in the High Court at Auckland.

MISSING



Yusuf and Juwairiyah appeared to cease to exist from early 2007. Jojo never returned to the kindergarten she regularly attended before Christmas 2006. Yusuf's bank transactions dwindled - although someone was still withdrawing significant lumps of cash - and in 2007 she failed to renew her benefit.



The Crown said Reddy had set about disposing of any trace of their pair, hiring a storage unit and pre-paying a six month period from December 29, 2006. Although Reddy said it was a place for him to store his tools, he told undercover officers he used the unit to store Yusuf's furniture before getting rid of it. Anything that was small enough to fit into a bin went into the trash, including the iron, Reddy said.



Yusuf's mother remembered the last time she spoke to her daughter was around a celebratory period - perhaps Christmas - but further contact ceased. Reddy told undercover officers he killed Yusuf after a conversation she had with her mother "telling stories" about him.



Years later Banu moved to New Zealand from Fiji with the view of finding her daughter. She'd heard rumours that Yusuf had remarried and moved to Australia, but she didn't really believe them.



By chance, she saw Reddy in a fruit and vege shop in south Auckland one day. She initially didn't recognise him, but when she did the first thing she asked was where her daughter was. "He told me that she is no longer with me and that she has got married to a European man and she has left. I thought, this can't be."



Reddy told her he and his son were going hungry because he had no money. She offered to cook them meals and the next day Reddy visited her at her home to collect the food. Again he brought up the topic of Yusuf, Banu told the court. "He told me that Pakeeza is married to a taxi driver, sometimes he would say she's married to a European and that she had gone to Niue."



They didn't meet again until 2013, in another south Auckland grocers. This time, Reddy was angry.



"(He) started screaming at me and started saying I have gone to the police and the police are hassling me."

LITTLE EVIDENCE

Banu visited the Otahuhu police station in January 2013 to officially report Yusuf missing.



It's not unusual for police to look closely at the partners of suspected foul play victims and police cast their suspicions on Kamal Reddy early in their missing persons investigation. In a statement given to police on March 27, 2013, Reddy said the last time he spoke to Yusuf was years before, when she phoned to say she was going to the airport.



Her aunt was flying in from Australia and the aunt had offered to give her a ticket across the ditch too. Reddy later drove to her Juliet Ave home in Howick, east Auckland, but seeing the curtains closed, realised she must have gone away, he told police.



That didn't satisfy investigators, and police later obtained a surveillance warrant to intercept Reddy's communications. Reddy didn't give much away. Following the police attention he organised for a friend to get rid of a flowery couch which matched one seen in photos of Yusuf's family, including one with a young Jojo sitting on it.



Police seized the couch but no physical evidence was discovered on it. They later searched Yusuf's last address, to no avail. Investigators analysed Yusuf's bank accounts, and Reddy's. He had hardly touched his, while hers had several conspicuous cash withdrawals. They stopped when Yusuf's benefit was cancelled.



While Reddy's varying accounts of where he thought Yusuf had gone, and the lengths he went to dispose of the couch, were suspicious, in April 2014 police agreed there wasn't enough evidence to charge Reddy.



THE OPERATION

CHRIS SKELTON/STUFF Kamal Reddy during his trial in the High Court at Auckland.

The doors of courtroom six at the High Court at Auckland were closed to the public for several days during Reddy's autumn trial. So top secret was the evidence of the people testifying, court staff covered the windows of the courtroom doors with plastic panels so the faces of the witnesses would never be revealed to anybody who happened to peek through.

For days, undercover officers gave evidence as to how they spent six months coaxing a confession from Reddy. Reddy's lawyer Jonathan Krebs put to the officers that the confessions were "emotional blackmail," "manipulation," "grooming" and the result of "intense pressure".

Prosecutor for the Crown, Luke Clancy, said jurors should consider them as logical, plausible accounts of a double murder - because they were true.



Weeks before the trial, the Crown applied to the court for the confessions to be admitted as evidence, which Krebs objected to.



Krebs submitted that the admissions had been made after being "influenced by oppression" during one of his meetings with an undercover officer. However after hearing the evidence that would be presented to jurors, Justice Woodhouse ruled that the officers' actions "fell well short of oppressive conduct".



Little can be revealed about the logistics of the operation, except to say that Reddy began to trust undercover police officers following his participation in a series of staged criminal scenarios. It was the first time an undercover operation of this kind had been the subject of detailed evidence put to a jury.



'A PRETTY BIG TICKET SCAM'

Confessions obtained following undercover investigate methods must stand the test of the 2006 Evidence Act. Under the Act, defence counsel can argue that confessions made during undercover operations are unreliable, improperly obtained or made following oppressive tactics.

"The basic objection... is that in essence you create a situation where the suspect basically has no choice but to confess," University of Auckland law academic Scott Optican says. "In essence, the guy is faced with a situation where, if he wants the goodies...he'll confess, (but) the argument is, if you don't have any criminal activity to confess, you will, because that's what they're expecting to hear."

Critics also argue that it's a "circumvention" to police rules governing the questioning of police suspects, including their right to remain silent, their right to a lawyer, and rules which stipulate suspects should be informed of these rights before being questioned, Optican says.



"It's a pretty big ticket scam and it's only used in pretty significant cases, when they're run out of other options. But the debate in terms of policy comes down to two things. One, do you think this kind of scam, or scenario, is just clever policing which gives a person an opportunity to confess to something they really did? Or, does it put unsurmountable pressure on someone to confess to things they didn't do, because they think it's what the other person needs to hear from them? It really comes down to perception."



In the Reddy case, Optican said the corroboration of certain aspects of evidence provided a strong case that Reddy's confessions were reliable. "They not only got confessions, but he showed them where the bodies are. In terms of a successful (undercover) operation, this is right up there."



THE DEFENCE

Reddy's defence counsel, Jonathan Krebs, was part of the legal team instrumental in seeing Teina Pora's conviction for the murder of Susan Burdett quashed, based on Pora's unreliable confession which ultimately lead to the Privy Council ruling that his "implausible" admissions gave rise to a miscarriage of justice.

In that case, Krebs highlighted Pora's previously undiagnosed foetal alcohol syndrome, his low IQ, and his desire to please others. His confession was motivated by the possibility of being rewarded $50,000, the Privy Council heard.

To the jury in the Reddy case, Krebs described his client as giving a "cobbled together" confession which only sounded plausible because of his inside knowledge of the crime.

"What if, in fact, a person didn't commit the crime but knew enough about the commission of the crime to give a plausible narrative? What if, in fact, immense pressure was put on them to confess? In circumstances in where they were lead to believe there would be no consequences?

"At that point, the gold plating on the confession effectively falls off," Krebs told the court.

In fact, Reddy testified, another man called James, had confessed the crime to Reddy in order to receive help to dispose of the bodies. Coincidentally, the very place James wanted to bury the bodies was the site a distant uncle of Reddy's was managing the construction of and it was this connection that gave rise to Reddy's "stunning lapse of judgment", Krebs told jurors.



The Takapuna Landing Bridge was perfect because the construction area was dark, secluded, and there were no cameras around. Later, Reddy would take undercover investigators to the spots where the women lay. He didn't know it, but he was being photographed.



But despite Reddy's protestations Walker, for the Crown, highlighted what must have been remarkably good guesses by Reddy when he described to undercover officers how the women were buried.



Although he told jurors had nothing to do with the victims' burial, he had accurately described to investigators the women being buried in a single grave together, in their own clothes - Pakeeza in pants and a top, and Juwairiyah in her nightie. He had also detailed the method of burial which would ensure the bodies remained in place, and investigators later found stones on top of the bodies, just as Reddy had said.



AFTERWARD

In October 2014, hives of police set upon an unlikely spot for a burial. Adjacent to the Takapuna Landing Bridge is the northern motorway, where cars whip past, bound for the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

Passers-by might notice the Akoranga Bus Station. Just beyond it, an innocuous bridge. Underneath its muddy foundations lay two women, time eroding any suggestion of how they died. Although pathologists were unable to determine the victims' cause of death, Reddy had by then filled in the gaps of information.

While police painstakingly recovered the bones, Reddy was in a custody cell. After attempting to call the undercover officer who had been so kind to him earlier, he likely got the shock of his life when he received a reply.

In a 21 second audio clip given to Reddy by police, the officer told him that the name Reddy knew him by was fake. He was a police officer, he said, and he'd been investigating the disappearance of Pakeeza and Juwairiyah.

According to arresting officer Detective Neil Truman, Reddy returned to his cell wordlessly.