#372 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Teina Pora

Hey there, it's Laura and I writer. I am here with an update on a case we shared with you back in Season one of False Confessions. It's the story of Tana Porra, which is perhaps the most famous wrongful conviction in New Zealand. Shortly after our episode aired, New Zealand officially opened the Criminal Cases Review Commission or CCRC

I'm Steve Drissen.

So far we've told you false confession stories that span the United States, from urban Chicago to rural Nebraska. Today, we'll take you across the globe to New Zealand with a story that still hits way too close to home. A sixteen year old boy who confessed to a rape and murder he didn't commit. His wrongful conviction allowed the real offender, a prolific serial rapist, to assault dozens of other women, while a teenager languished behind bars after making

Oh God, this guy, this guy was beautiful.

What was his name, Jimond?

His name was Si Simon. Simon. Simon was like a roadie from the nineteen seventies, always wearing black T shirts and deep into the heavy metal scene.

Somehow, poor Simon gets assigned to the lawyers who are traveling around talking about false confessions. One of my personal points of pride though, is that by the end of this trip around Australia, he seemed to like what we were trying to do, so we had a great time with him. But Simon kept asking us, as did everybody else we met around Australia. Have you heard about Tana Pora? Have you heard about New Zealand's Brendon Dassy? And that's exactly who Tana is.

Police officers around the world are often trained in very similar ways about how to interrogate suspects, and so I expected and was beginning to discover false confessions in places like Japan and Korea and other Commonwealth countries like Australia and New Zealand and Canada.

These are stories that hit home around the globe, whether it's for you know, social justice driven lawyers or heavy metal roadies. You know Tanapora, Brendan Dassy. We all know someone vulnerable like them, and we can all see the need to do justice in cases like these. Tanapora's story starts about eight thousand miles away from where Steve and I are sitting right now in the United States. It starts in South Auckland. That's an urban area on the

Well, let's talk about Tana for a bit. Tana had it rough growing up. His mother died when he was a young boy, and his father left shortly afterwards. He then got passed around from family member to family member and ultimately ended up in his aunt Terry's house.

A few days after Susan Burdett's murder made headlines, Tana and some friends found a baseball bat in the local park and they were joking about it being the murder weapon. Back at Aunt Terry's house, Tana kept talking about the bat. Tana had a history of run ins with the law, nothing really serious, but enough for Terry to want him out of her house. She called the police over and over,

Now, let's fast forward almost exactly twelve months to March eighteenth, nineteen ninety three. We're almost a year out now from the discovery of Susan Burdett's body. In the course of police investigations. That's a lifetime and this is the only unsolved homicide from nineteen ninety two.

Tana Pora is seventeen years old. Now he still has that babyface, but his police record has grown. During a routine interview with Tana about a car theft, police get an anonymous phone tip about Susan Burdett's murder. This caller links the murder to a local gang called the mongrel Agang Tana is rumored to have connections with, so the police decide to keep him at the station for questioning. His interrogation begins at nine am and continues for the next four days.

The police have Tana Pora in the interrogation room and he's telling multiple different stories. The stories don't make any sense. It's not an interrogation with banging of the table or raised voices or threats or even promises.

To unite a comment that you're gonna tell us more?

Is that correct?

Okay? Well, tell us this is a seventeen year old kid who is highly suggestible and eager to please the authorities. They're applying him with cigarettes and fast food and drinks.

You head spring raw bodog chips and drink.

Is that correct?

The detectives even mentioned twenty thousand dollars as a reward for information about Susan Burdette's rape and murder. Tana's story keeps evolving, and the camera keeps getting turned on and off.

You said you were going to tell us everything.

First, Tana tells the police that he drove two other men to Susan's house and waited outside while they went into attacker. Are you telling us about a person called dog raping this woman?

Did you hear any more or see any more? It's outside in the caravan.

Eventually he changes that story.

I thought what you've said so fair that you've climbed it in the bedroom window and you've gone through to open the door up for the other two.

All right, now he's climbing in through one of Susan Burdette's windows and letting the other two in through the front door.

And you were inlier.

You could see quite clearly what was happening, Is that right?

Okay?

I was just watching and you were just watching.

And in the end, after four days, Tana confesses to being in the room, to actually holding Susan down while his two associates raped her.

And you were in the room some of this time while this was happening. Is that right?

You are holding Susan dan?

And that last story, the one that ultimately seals Tana's fate. It comes after a break in the tea room, where of course, the cameras are turned off at.

The suggestion of the police. Tana identifies this two supposed accomplices as senior members of the Mongrel Mob, that local gang. The police bring in those two individuals that Tana had named, but their DNA doesn't match the DNA found on Susan's body. They're cleared and they're released. Things don't go as smoothly

Now let's stop right here for a minute. This is round one of the battle of these two titans of evidence, confessions versus DNA. DNA seemed to clear Tanapora of any role in this cry, but it's the confessions that ultimately lead to his conviction.

On June sixteenth, nineteen ninety four, a jury took less than ninety minutes to convictaan Apora of rape and murder. He received a life sentence and was shipped off to prison. At the same time, the New Zealand Police are beginning a focused investigation into six rapes that had occurred between nineteen eighty eight and nineteen ninety two in the Auckland area, including Susan Burdette's rape. Now, these attacks were all similar enough that some police officers began to worry that they

Now, who is Malcolm Rewa? First of all, he's twenty years older than Tana Porra. And while I usually try to avoid characterizing my fellow humans like this, Raywa is a monster. He's a terrifying figure, a prolific serial rapist.

He's the kind of predator that women worry about. He's the worst nightmare.

Raywak committed his first rape in the nineteen seventies. His wife was in labor giving birth to their child at the time, so Raywa took the oppertains unity to sexually assault a nurse in a hospital bed.

Unbelievable four and a.

Half years in prison he spent for that awful crime.

So Raywah gets out of prison and apparently rapes again from then on. Over the dozens of rapes that he went on to commit, Raywa started developing a pattern an m O. He'd carefully select his victims, who tended to

And raa would hide in their homes. He would wait for them to get into bed and begin to fall asleep, and then he would attack.

Raywa apparently suffered from a rectile dysfunction, which is why he positioned his victims in a way that allowed him to maintain sexual coind during his attacks. That's also why he acted alone. He didn't exactly want an audience. Ray was arrested on May thirteenth, nineteen ninety six. It's a pretty dramatic sting operation. Actually, the police had been planning this for quite some time. When he tries to run,

Nine, never met him. Now, at this point in time, where you have a prolific serial rapist operating in the same neighborhood as the Burdette murder and his DNA is at the crime scene and he's telling you I don't know Tanapura, most prosecutors and police officers would throw their hands up and say we can't go forward with a reprosecution of Tana Pora. We have to free him.

But instead Tana is retried, and if you've listened to this podcast, you know what's coming. Prosecutors change their theory of the case and argue at Tana's second trial that he and Rewa raped and killed Susan Burdett together, even though Rewa had denied knowing Tana, even though Rewa always acted alone, and even though Rewa would never have wanted some teenager there to witness his sexual dysfunction.

So now we have round two of a battle between confession evidence and DNA evidence, except this time we know whose DNA it is. It's the DNA of a serial rapist named Malcolm Rewa. Will Tana's confession bring him down? Or will the jury side with the science and recognize that Tanapora and Malcolm had never met.

Sure Enough, despite all hopes that the DNA evidence would be enough to clear Tana, Tana was convicted a second time of raping and murdering Susan Burdette and sent back to his life sentence. Meanwhile, Malcolm Raywa himself stood trial for three months in nineteen ninety eight on what amounted to forty five counts of rape, involving twenty seven different women. His trial ended with convictions for sexually assaulting twenty five of them, including Susan Burdett. Just like Tana, he was

Now, who is Tim.

Mckinnal At the moment, Tom is self employed, private and vistageta. But when I finished university. I joined the police as a twenty two year old.

Tim McKinnell started out his career as a cup, a good cup, one of the best cups. Tim had become a member of the South Auckland Police Force in the late nineteen nineties, eventually rising to junior detective by the year two thousand. That year, the force had been divided over the case of Tanapura.

A lot of chat went on in the police bar at the time, and there was a real disconnect between two different groups of people. People that thought Tana Porter was a guilty man and had been involved in the rape and murder of Susan Bidett, and there was another camp of experienced police officers who thought that he was an innocent man.

In fact, Tim remembers seeing all manner of drunken arguments at police bars and he was struck by the passion of those who believed in Tana Pura.

Tim never forgot those arguments or his own growing doubt about Tana's guilt, even after he eventually left the police force, and as many retired officers do, he became a private investigator. Now in two thousand and seven, Tim attended a local conference on wrongful convictions and false confessions, and that conference brought up those old, lingering questions that Tim had about

But there's the matter of Tana's confession. Tim starts by digging up videotapes of Tina's interrogation, and they're not easy to find. They're on old VHS tapes in boxes in police departments. But he gets them and he sits down to watch them, and he is blown away by what he saw.

When you examine what he was able to say on day one. In the first few interviews on tape, and you compare that to what he was able to say four days later, there are marked differences. There were some very particular things that happened in Susan's house that the offender would know, and it's clear from the interviews that Tana Porter had no idea about any of them.

Despite four days worth of trying, Tina just was not able to tell a story that matched what actually happened. When police asked him to describe Susan Burdette, he says she was chubby, even though she was actually quite athletic. Tina is asked to draw a picture of how he left Susan's body. Remember she'd been found horizontally with her legs dangling over the side of the bed, but he

Bad, and so one of the questions that arises about that is how did he come to know things on day four that he didn't know on day one.

The interrogators take Tina on a field trip to Susan Burdett's street so that he can point out details of the crime to them in person, and they videotaped the whole thing.

He started giving them directions that were taking them away from her house, so though helpfully tried to direct him back towards her house, it was pretty clear on tape that he still had no idea where he was going and wasn't able to identify anything familiar. In the end, they took him to the outside of the house where Susan had been raped murdered and asked him if he recognized anything, and again he didn't, so the police officer

For Tim, that's it. This was a false confession. He was motivated, fired up, and he would not rest until Tina Poora was cleared. But he needs to present more evidence to the lawyers and other people he wants to get involved in this case.

So Tana's case isn't one that was only scarred by false confession. There were the other issues that were beginning to arise with the involvement of Tana's family.

Tina's cousin became a key witness for the prosecution against Tina. She claimed that she had seen Tina with Rewa on multiple occasions, including once at Tina's girlfriend's home.

Tim was able to discredit Martha's testimony.

There was evidence of paid witnesses, including his cousin and his auntie. Those family members gave evidence against him, and we know that at least one of them was paid five thousand dollars for her trouble.

Tim tracks down Fiona, Tina's girlfriend, and Fiona says that she has no idea who Malcolm Rawell was and that he was never in her home. From his time on the police force, Tim was well acquainted with the various gangs operating around South Auckland, so for him, one piece of the prosecution's argument was clearly ridiculous.

Malcolm Rawa was a senior member of the Highway sixty one motorcycle Club, Mortal Enemies of the Mongrel Mob and Sotana Porter as somebody who was supposedly involved with the Mungrel Mob. Going to Susan Burdette's house late one night with a senior member of the Highway sixty one's to commit a brutal rape and murder. Anybody that knows anything about gang culture in New Zealand will tell you that that's just nonsense.

Tim doesn't stop there. He also starts assembling an all star team of experts, starting with an Icelandic professor and former detective himself, Geisley good Johnson, who was a professor by that time in London. Now. Geasley essentially created the

Next, Tim enlists the help of respected local New Zealand journalist named Phil Taylor. Phil had questioned the States case against Tanner for years and is happy to help, and Phil delivers. In twenty twelve, as the case for Tana's innocence is building, Phil releases a bombshell article titled Innocent Man in Jail for twenty Years, and in it Chuck Henwood, the detective who had developed the original criminal profile of Malcolm Rewa says the cops got it horribly wrong in

For somebody like Chuck Henwood come out and express a firmly hell conviction that Tana Porter was innocent was hugely important in terms of public perception and momentum for our appeal work on Tana's case.

And in the middle of this, there's this remarkable moment when Susan Burdett's brother Jim comes forward and says, I too believe that Tana Pora is innocent, and he actually meets with Tana Pora. It's this incredible moment of reconciliation and grace.

Momentum is building a across the board, but there's still one more piece. Can Tim provide a better understanding, a better explanation of why Tana confessed to a crime he didn't commit.

We had a documentary maker called Michael Bennett making a documentary about Tana's case. Perhaps the most significant development in twenty years occurred because the person that had been watching it was a woman called doctor Valerie McGinn.

Doctor McGinn provides Tim with the answer he needs. She writes report, saying, your clients, mister Tana Pora sounds very similar to many people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. She even attaches a journal article that details how individuals with FASD are at an increased risk of getting arrested. And more importantly, people.

That have it can be impulsive, they suggestible, they eager to please figures of authority. And so when you look at those types of behaviors and then you consider the position Taner was in when he was in the police station in nineteen ninety three, it almost makes it inevitable that he was going to confess to something.

Doctor mcginnon confirms categorically that Tena suffers from an FASD disorder, he was uniquely susceptible to falsely confessing in the interrogation room.

One of the things that really bothered me about Tana's case is we could never understand why he did what he did, the things he said, and the people he implicated. It just none of it made sense to us, and we couldn't explain that to the courts, and so once we got this diagnosis of feder Welck whole spectrum disorder, it all became clear. It was the final piece of the puzzle and we finally understood what it was we were dealing with.

And that does it. All the pieces are assembled for Tim and his team to appeal Tena's conviction and they bring the case in November of twenty fourteen to the Privy Council in London, the final Court of Appeal where Commonwealth countries like New Zealand can bring cases like Tena's.

It's the court of last resort and it's staffed with senior judge some of the best and brightest minds in the entire Commonwealth.

Now this is Tana's last shot, and his lawyers put his FASD disorder at the front of their case, arguing that judges in the nineteen ninety four and two thousand trials weren't aware of his disability and if they had been, they would have ruled differently.

There was a big group of people that gathered at Michael Bennett, the documentary maker's house, waiting for that decision to be announced, and it was an extraordinary moment. We only got to tell Taneer about an hour before the whole world found out that he had his conviction quashed and he was no longer a rapist and murderer. It was incredibly emotional for him.

On March third, twenty fifteen, in the case of poorra Versus the Queen, the Council of rules that Tina's confessions must be thrown out, and they quashed his conviction for the rape and murder of Susan Burdett. Two weeks later, the Crown prosecutors dropped their case and declined to reap Tina, and after more than twenty years, tana Pora was officially exonerated.

You know what his first concern was for was for the police officers that had interviewed him. He didn't want their reputations to be tarnished because of what had happened. One of his first thoughts was for other people, and that was that was pretty cool.

In so many of these wrongful conviction cases, you see people go through so much pain, and they have every right to be bitter, resentful, angry, all of those things, but so often you see them express, at least publicly, these incredible acts of grace. It's almost as though they've lived through so much pain they don't want to cause anymore.

In twenty sixteen, Tana received a sum of money to compensate him for the time he had spent in prison for a crime he did not commit. He also received an apology from the New Zealand government.

Tana grew up in prison. He was there for twenty two years and he struggles every day. We keep in contact, but life isn't great for him. The money makes some things easier, but it doesn't repair the psychological damage. It doesn't bring the years back, and it doesn't make his life easy now. It is incredibly difficult to watch him struggle through life after everything he's been through.

Tana, we salute your sheer endurance, your will to keep on fighting and surviving and living through this ordeal from the other side of the planet. Know that we won't forget your name or what you've been through, and all of us together, we're fighting to make sure it doesn't

Can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.

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