Arthur Taylor to help crack the Lundy case?

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11639110

By Phil Taylor

Witness C must be the type that people can't help but bare their soul to. He has claimed that two men convicted in separate infamous murder cases confessed to him.

The jailhouse informant faces a private perjury prosecution filed this month that accuses him of giving false testimony at David Tamihere's trial for the murders of Swedish backpacker Heidi Paakkonen and her fiance Sven Urban Hoglin.

The Herald can now reveal the same prisoner claimed Mark Lundy confessed to him too.

Witness C - to use the pseudonym given to him at Tamihere's trial - is accused of concocting a story that Tamihere confessed to raping and murdering the couple on the Coromandel Peninsula in 1989.

He also twice approached police with claims that Lundy had confessed to killing his wife and daughter.

Police did not put his claims about Lundy to a jury after inquiries did not support them.

In 2002 he claimed Lundy had confessed when both men were in a prison chapel.

"He [Lundy] told me then that he could have made a fatal mistake. He said he had given a jewellery box, that had belonged to Christine, to a prostitute in Wellington that he had become more than familiar with."

Then in 2014 - nine months before Lundy was convicted at his retrial - the informant approached police with more information. He claimed another inmate, whom he identified as "Rat", had told him through adjoining cell walls that his prostitute girlfriend had been given or had seen a jewellery box that belonged to Christine Lundy."

Detectives traced Rat's girlfriend. According to police files, she said she had no information about the Lundy case or a jewellery box.

In the case of the Swedish backpackers, the same informant claimed Tamihere told him he'd taken the couple's bodies out to sea and weighted them down, had killed Mr Hoglin by beating his head with a lump of wood and that he had given Mr Hoglin's watch to his [Tamihere's] son.

However, Mr Hoglin's watch was later found with his remains on land behind Whangamata. A pathologist found no physical evidence consistent with such a beating.

Ms Paakkonen's body has not been found.

Tamihere served 20 years in jail before being released on parole in 2010.

Witness C is currently in prison, having twice been recalled to serve a life sentence for a double murder. His last recall came after he indecently assaulted a 14-year-old girl on the day of his release.

The private prosecution is being taken by long-time prison inmate Arthur Taylor, known recently for his command of the law and fighting for prisoner voting rights, assisted by researcher Mike Kalaugher, author of the first book about the Marlborough Sounds murders, The Marlborough Mystery.

Taylor plans to give evidence himself that Witness C admitted to him that he lied at the murder trial.

Controversial cases that featured testimony from jailhouse informants:

Arthur Thomas, murders of Harvey and Jeanette Crewe

Jailhouse informants were not part of the two trials in which Mr Thomas was found guilty but a Royal Commission in 1980 heard evidence from two. It concluded: "We are satisfied that the 'prison confessions never took place, and that evidence of the two prisoners was a tissue of lies. It causes us grave concern that very senior police officers were so ready to place credence on such unreliable, self-interested, and in the case of the first inmate, deluded evidence." The commission found that police had planted evidence.

Mr Thomas was pardoned and paid $950,000.

Teina Pora, rape and murder of Susan Burdett

Mr Pora was convicted in 1994 and again at a retrial in 2000 ordered after semen found in Ms Burdett's body was linked to serial rapist Malcolm Rewa.

At the retrial an informant claimed to have seen Mr Pora and Rewa (who were associated with rival gangs) together, providing a link between the two.

The case against Mr Pora was based on his contradictory and often implausible confessions. The Privy Council quashed his convictions last year having accepted evidence from medical experts that his fetal alcohol spectrum disorder could explain why he made what are now believed to be false confessions.

Scott Watson, murders of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart

Their bodies have not been found. Two jailhouse informants separately claimed Watson made confessional comments to them.

Witness A, who has an extensive criminal and psychiatric history, recanted, then recanted his recantation, then told Herald reporters he'd made it up. In his trial testimony he claimed Watson was disturbed by nightmares about the killings and had admitted strangling Ms Hope.

Witness B claimed Watson had said if he went down for the killings he'd sell information on where the bodies were, and had mentioned "the Sounds ... Cook Strait ... [and] Lyttelton".

Mark Lundy retrial

A jailhouse informant testified at Mark Lundy's retrial that Lundy had confessed to murdering his wife, Christine, and daughter, Amber.

He claimed Lundy had said his wife "had it coming" and that "he wouldn't be in there if his daughter hadn't come in and seen what he was doing to his wife."

The informant, who had 20 dishonesty convictions and several domestic violence protection orders against him, wrote but did not send a letter to a judge that said he had "the smoking gun to end all smoking guns" and asked that he be released on bail.

Lundy was again convicted.

Somebody explained the above information to me over the phone, thinking at the time that Secret Witness C from the Tamihere case had given evidence against Lundy. That didn't make sense as the only secret witness to give evidence against Lundy was at his retrial and the witness was not an a twice recalled lifer. However, the exact story was still very revealing and potentially very helpful to Mark Lundy.

I should first point out a North and South on the Lundy case published by Mike White in 2015. It is very informative in important detail, and something I read for the first time last night. I don't have a link for it at the moment but will endeavour to sort one out. The article didn't discuss the secret witness but gave an insight to the case which was most helpful. Among a number of telling points was that of a defence Scientist Anna Sandiford, who was referenced by France J, the COA President, in her dissenting vote on the admission of the disputed evidence of Dr Miller of Texas. Sandiford expressed doubt that a Jury would be able to follow the complex scientific arguments, and who could not agree when even the Judge appeared lost at times.

In the meantime back to Phil Taylor's article above. It is now known that there were at least 3 attempts to introduce secret witness evidence to the Lundy trials. 2 were not successful  and were apparently instigated by the same man Arthur Taylor is attempting to convict of perjury because of clearly false, fabricated, evidence given in the murder trials of David Tamihere. I don't know much about the Tamihere case but it was revealed to me that the COA relied upon witness C to uphold the Tamihere convictions. Of course the graphic lies witness C told not only resulted in what may be a false conviction but also an extraordinary long sentence such were the horrific details witness C invented.

That invention was given full rein again in 2002 when witness C made an attempt to verbal Mark Lundy. The chances are that he may have never met Lundy. To some degree I am surprised police didn't risk banking on the professional liar witness C. I doubt that they rejected his evidence because of it's content and the decision may have been made by Crown Law owing to the coincidence of witness C appearing something of a 'professional' liar for hire. What we don't know, but may do in the next year or so as Taylor continues his research into witness C by way of discovery and inquiries, is whether witness C was courted by Palmerston North police to entrap Lundy. That would appear highly likely, as would be the knowledge that witness C was a perjurer although his name remained secret from the public. That reason alone may have made it a close call not to call the same man in the Lundy trial. In other words police may have been able to use witness C again despite evidence that he was a liar because Lundy's defence would presumably have had no way of knowing that witness C had given false testimony before. It stinks, the current Lundy secret witness X adds to that.

But let's step back a little and assume, because we don't know otherwise at this point, that Lundy's defence team at the retrial had been made aware of witness C's 2 attempts to sell Lundy down the river - even to the point of it being revealed that the decision not to use witness C at the first trial was taken by Crown Law after a proposal by police that he be used as a witness. Shortening that, police desperate enough to use the witness who claimed to have seen a fat lady running from the Lundy household, who insisted on a neck breaking trip at speed  that few New Zealanders believed only to drop it after a dozen years, who insisted on a 7am time of death only to re-calibrate that by 8 hours at the retrial in a late change that left the defence unprepared, who insisted that a tiny spot was human central nervous system found on Lundy's shirt to the exclusion of a shower of blood that flew against the walls in Christine's bedroom - but the speck when analysed was 'washed,' had no blood or neurons and tested for faint animal cns, in fact a very desperate prosecution after an inquiry in which critical evidence was thrown out and somehow brain samples disappeared a short time before Lundy's shirt was taken to the USA after no NZ scientist would agree to test the downgraded spots found on the left breast area of the shirt. Things lost, witnesses having visions, a single spot in a blood bath, full stomachs at 3am after eating at 7pm the  previous evening and they wouldn't entertain a lying witness with a smooth as velvet credibility? A man who invented that Lundy 'was more than familiar' with 'rats' girlfriend.

Even without that assumption, do we imagine that had Hislop and Burns known about witness C that they would not have called him in order to display to the Jury exactly what kind of liar he actually was and invite the Jury to consider that X was no better - that in fact the Crown were desperate for evidence because their case had fallen over and facts such as evidence being thrown out, witnesses no longer being called, brain samples disappearing, a man unauthorised to give forensic evidence or do forensic testing in America called as an 'expert' in NZ only to produce manipulated samples devoid of blood and neurons laughing all the way to the bank, overalls that were never found, a car without a single trace of forensic evidence, a motel the same, just nothing able to withstand clinical scrutiny and thus a smokescreen from a paid informer who said he met Lundy in a sentenced prisoner's yard before Lundy had even been tried. And much more of course. Important to the lack of credibility of the Crown case - you bet ya.

Will witness C not spill the beans on who asked him to say what in his original attempt to frame Lundy, or that the police attempted to get him to set up Lundy as he had also set up Tamihere decades earlier? Who knows, but any police who've trusted a snake in order to frame Lundy should be very worried right now, because there are people on their case that are unlikely to rest, unlikely not to delve under every rock - very, very, bright people and Taylor is one of them.

Before finishing I would just like to mention the Mike White North and South article again, in it he gives a picture that fills out between the lines and gaps in the Lundy case, particularly in his summary of key evidence and facts. He also mentions that Grantham was not in charge of the retrial investigation so I was completely wrong on that - he does however say that he gained the impression that the new officer in charge was not looking beyond proving that the first case and investigation was right, in other words influenced in some direction at the outset.

As I slowly learn more about the Lundy case, try to get right to the middle of it I'm beginning to see an innocent man, trapped not once but twice in deceit and by witnesses who lied and prevaricated in 2 trials. This allows me to think about the man Lundy and consider what shines through both in photographs of he and his family and in videos, a man capable of saying that he'll always love his brother despite his brother saying publicly that he hates Mark. Need a reason to want to find the truth in this case, well I already have one.

I close using a quote from the 1980 Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Thomas case, words that echo down the years and sharp in truth and insight.

"We are satisfied that the 'prison confessions never took place, and that evidence of the two prisoners was a tissue of lies. It causes us grave concern that very senior police officers were so ready to place credence on such unreliable, self-interested, and in the case of the first inmate, deluded evidence." The commission found that police had planted evidence.