Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
Speaker 1: writer and I'm Steve Drisan. So far, we've told you
Speaker 1: false confession stories that span the United States, from urban
Speaker 1: Chicago to rural Nebraska. Today, we'll take you across the
Speaker 1: globe to New Zealand with a story that still hits
Speaker 1: way too close to home. A sixteen year old boy
Speaker 1: who confessed to a rape and murder he didn't commit.
Speaker 1: His wrongful conviction allowed the real offender, a prolific serial rapist,
Speaker 1: to assault dozens of other women, while a teenager languished
Speaker 1: behind bars after making a murderer. Came out season two,
Speaker 1: Steve and I have had an opportunity to travel around
Speaker 1: the globe talking to audiences about the problem of false
Speaker 1: confessions and the need for criminal justice reform. We've spoken everywhere,
Speaker 1: you know, from the United States to the United Kingdom,
Speaker 1: to Ireland to Australia. Do you remember this guy, Steve,
Speaker 1: who traveled around Australia with us? Oh God, this guy
Speaker 1: was This guy was beautiful. What was his name? His
Speaker 1: name was Simon. Simon. Simon was like a roadie from
Speaker 1: the nineties seventies, always wearing black t shirts and deep
Speaker 1: into the heavy metal scene. Somehow, poor Simon gets a
Speaker 1: signed to the lawyers who are traveling around talking about
Speaker 1: false confessions. One of my personal points of pride though,
Speaker 1: is that by the end of this trip around Australia,
Speaker 1: he seemed to like what we were trying to do,
Speaker 1: so we had a great time with him. But Simon
Speaker 1: kept asking us, as did everybody else we met around Australia,
Speaker 1: have you heard about Tana Poora. Have you heard about
Speaker 1: New Zealand's Brendan Dassy And that's exactly who Tana is.
Speaker 1: Police officers around the world are often trained in very
Speaker 1: similar ways about how to interrogate suspects, and so I
Speaker 1: expected and was beginning to discover false confessions in places
Speaker 1: like Japan, in Korea, and other Commonwealth countries like Australia
Speaker 1: and New Zealand and Canada. These are stories that hit
Speaker 1: home around the globe, whether it's for you know, social
Speaker 1: justice driven lawyers or heavy metal roadies. You know Tanapoura,
Speaker 1: Brendan Dacy. We all know someone vulnerable like them, and
Speaker 1: we can all see them need to do justice in
Speaker 1: cases like these. Tana Pura's story starts about eight thousand
Speaker 1: miles away from where Steve and I are sitting right
Speaker 1: now in the United States. It starts in South Auckland.
Speaker 1: That's an urban area on the southern edge of New
Speaker 1: Zealand's largest city, Auckland. It's home to a large minority population,
Speaker 1: including Mao Reads, the indigenous Polynesian population of New Zealand.
Speaker 1: Parts of South Auckland can have negative connotations too often,
Speaker 1: it's associated with poverty and crime. When our story starts
Speaker 1: in South Auckland was home to a three nine year
Speaker 1: old woman named Susan Burdette. Susan lived alone in a
Speaker 1: tidy house on Paw Road. She worked days as an
Speaker 1: account's clerk at a chemical manufacturing company, and on the
Speaker 1: evening of March Susan leaves her weekly bowling league meet
Speaker 1: up and drives home under a night of beautiful stars.
Speaker 1: Susan's a hard worker, so when she doesn't show up
Speaker 1: at work the next few days, her colleagues get concerned.
Speaker 1: They call her friend Steve eventually to find out if
Speaker 1: he knows where she is. Steve gets worried and he
Speaker 1: ends up going over to Susan's house that Wednesday, March
Speaker 1: at about p m. He finds the front door unlocked,
Speaker 1: goes inside and is greeted with a horrible sight. Susan
Speaker 1: is lying horizontally on her water bed and she's clearly dead.
Speaker 1: The upper half of her body is wrapped in a
Speaker 1: duvet and there's a wooden baseball bat lying on the
Speaker 1: bed next to her. Her legs are dangling off the
Speaker 1: side of the bed and they're crossed. Someone who ever
Speaker 1: did this had positioned her that way. The police arrived,
Speaker 1: they removed the duvets, and they find that Susan had
Speaker 1: been beaten badly about the head, very likely with the
Speaker 1: baseball bat. She had also been sexually assaulted, and there's
Speaker 1: plenty of DNA left behind semen, as well as a
Speaker 1: bloody smudge mark on a light switch. Susan's hands were
Speaker 1: covered with defensive wounds, which indicates that she had fought
Speaker 1: back against her attacker, and her friends later identified the
Speaker 1: baseball bat as belonging to Susan. She had kept it
Speaker 1: next to her bed for her own protection. The police
Speaker 1: begin by investigating Susan's other friends, but DNA and alibis
Speaker 1: clear them all and the investigation quickly stalls. The pressure
Speaker 1: is building building, that is until about a week after
Speaker 1: the murder. That's when police get a call from a
Speaker 1: woman named Terry McLoughlin, and she tells them a story
Speaker 1: about her then sixteen year old nephew, a shaggy haired,
Speaker 1: baby faced Mauori kid named Tana Pora. Now let's talk
Speaker 1: about Tina for a bit. Tina had it rough growing up.
Speaker 1: His mother died when he was a young boy, and
Speaker 1: his father left shortly afterwards, and then got passed around
Speaker 1: from family member to family member and ultimately ended up
Speaker 1: in his aunt Terry's house. A few days after Susan
Speaker 1: Bardette's murder made headlines, Tina and some friends found a
Speaker 1: baseball bat in the local park and they were joking
Speaker 1: about it being the murder weapon. Back at Aunt Terry's house,
Speaker 1: Tina kept talking about the bat. Tina had a history
Speaker 1: of run ins with the law, nothing really serious, but
Speaker 1: enough for Terry to want him out of her house.
Speaker 1: She called the police over and over, insisting the Tina
Speaker 1: knew something about Susan Burdette's murder. But police quickly come
Speaker 1: to the conclusion that Tana and his buddies were just
Speaker 1: over excited teens who are talking shit. They interview Tina
Speaker 1: they take his d n A. They even execute a
Speaker 1: search warrant, but Tina and his friends are ruled outcome
Speaker 1: conclusively as Susan Burdette's killers. The DNA doesn't match, the
Speaker 1: search warrant turns up nothing, and while Tina does have
Speaker 1: a record, there is nothing in his background that would
Speaker 1: suggest this level of violence or depravity. Now let's fast
Speaker 1: forward almost exactly twelve months to March eighteen. We're almost
Speaker 1: a year out now from the discovery of Susan Burdette's body.
Speaker 1: In the course of police investigations. That's a lifetime and
Speaker 1: this is the only unsolved homicide from Tina. Porra is
Speaker 1: seventeen years old. Now he still has that baby face,
Speaker 1: but his police record has grown. During a routine interview
Speaker 1: with Tina about a car theft, police get an anonymous
Speaker 1: phone tip about Susan Burdette's murder. This collar links the
Speaker 1: murder to a local gang called the Mongrel Mob, a
Speaker 1: gang Tana is rumored to have connections with, so the
Speaker 1: police decide to keep him at the station for questioning.
Speaker 1: His interrogation begins at nine am and continues for the
Speaker 1: next four days. The police have Tana pour in the
Speaker 1: interrogation room, and he's telling multiple different stories. The stories
Speaker 1: don't make any sense, and it's not an interrogation with
Speaker 1: banging of the table or raised voices or threats or
Speaker 1: even promises. You're a comment that you're gonna sell us more.
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Okay? Well, tell us this is a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old kid who is highly suggestible and eager
Speaker 1: to please the authorities. They're plying him with cigarettes and
Speaker 1: fast food and drinks. You had spring row chips and correct.
Speaker 1: The detectives even mentioned twenty dollars as a reward for
Speaker 1: information about Susan Burdette's rape and murder. Tina's story keeps
Speaker 1: evolving and the camera keeps getting turned on and off.
Speaker 1: You said you're gonna tell us everything. First, Tina tells
Speaker 1: the police that he drove two other men to Susan's
Speaker 1: house and waited outside while they went into attacker. You
Speaker 1: were telling us about a person called dog raping this woman.
Speaker 1: Did you hear anymore or see anymore? It's outside. Eventually
Speaker 1: he changes that story. I thought what you've said so
Speaker 1: far that you climbed in the bedroom window and you've
Speaker 1: gone through to open the door up for the other two.
Speaker 1: Now he's climbing in through one of Susan Burdette's windows
Speaker 1: and letting the other two in through the front door.
Speaker 1: So when you were in there, you could see quite
Speaker 1: clearly what was happening. Is that right? It's just watching
Speaker 1: and you were just watching. And in the end, after
Speaker 1: four days, Tina confesses to being in the room, to
Speaker 1: actually holding Susan down while his two associates raped her.
Speaker 1: And you were in the room some of this time
Speaker 1: while this was happening, that right, you were holding Susan down?
Speaker 1: Is there? And that last story, the one that ultimately
Speaker 1: seals Taina's fate. It comes after a break in the
Speaker 1: tea room, where of course, the cameras are turned off
Speaker 1: at the suggestion of the police. Taina identifies this to
Speaker 1: supposed accomplices as senior members of the Mongrel Mob, that
Speaker 1: local gang. The police bring in those two individuals the
Speaker 1: Taina had named, but their DNA doesn't match the DNA
Speaker 1: found on Susan's body. They're cleared and they're released. Things
Speaker 1: don't go as smoothly for Taina. He's arrested based on
Speaker 1: his confession. He's charged with Susan Burdette's rape, and murder,
Speaker 1: and fourteen long months later, prosecutors try Tina Pora for
Speaker 1: participating in the murder of Susan Burdette along with two
Speaker 1: unknown accomplices. And let's stop right here for a minute.
Speaker 1: This is round one of the battle of these two
Speaker 1: titans of evidence, confessions versus d N. A DNA seemed
Speaker 1: to clear Tina Por of any rolling this cry, but
Speaker 1: it's the confessions that ultimately lead to his conviction. On
Speaker 1: June sixteenth, a jury took less than ninety minutes to
Speaker 1: convicting a Pora of rape and murder. He received a
Speaker 1: life sentence and was shipped off to prison. At the
Speaker 1: same time, the New Zealand police are beginning a focused
Speaker 1: investigation into six rapes that had occurred between night and
Speaker 1: nine two in the Auckland area, including Susan Burdette's rape. Now,
Speaker 1: these attacks were all similar enough that some police officers
Speaker 1: began to worry that they had a serial rapist on
Speaker 1: their hands. All of them involved a lone wolf attacker
Speaker 1: who broke into women's homes, wrapped their heads in blankets
Speaker 1: or debay's, and repositioned them so that they lay sideways
Speaker 1: across the edge of the bed. During the Attack Act,
Speaker 1: and by April nineteen ninety six, a few years after
Speaker 1: Taina's conviction, the investigation into these rapes linked them all,
Speaker 1: including Susan Burdett's attack, to the DNA of the same person,
Speaker 1: a man named Malcolm Raywa. Now, who is Malcolm Raywa?
Speaker 1: First of all, He's twenty years older than Tana Poorra.
Speaker 1: And while I usually try to avoid characterizing my fellow
Speaker 1: humans like this, ray What is a monster. He's a
Speaker 1: terrifying figure, a prolific serial rapist. He's the kind of
Speaker 1: predator that women worry about. He's the worst nightmare. Ray
Speaker 1: What committed his first rape in the nineteen seventies. His
Speaker 1: wife was in labor giving birth to their child at
Speaker 1: the time, so ray What took the opportunity to sexually
Speaker 1: assault a nurse in a hospital bed. Four and a
Speaker 1: half years in prison he spent for that awful crime.
Speaker 1: So ray What gets out of prison and apparently rapes
Speaker 1: again from then on. Over the dozens of rapes that
Speaker 1: he went on to commit, ray Was started developing a
Speaker 1: pattern and m o. He'd carefully select his victims who
Speaker 1: tended to be single women, professionals who are home alone.
Speaker 1: He'd stake out their homes in advance and plan his
Speaker 1: attacks meticulously, and then always the same thing, a surprise
Speaker 1: attack after the woman had fallen asleep, a physical attack
Speaker 1: first to subdue her, then the blanket or duvet around
Speaker 1: her head, and a rape at the side of the bed,
Speaker 1: and we we would hide in their homes. He would
Speaker 1: wait for them to get into bed and begin to
Speaker 1: fall asleep, and then he would attack. Rea apparently suffered
Speaker 1: from erectile dysfunction, which is why he positioned his victims
Speaker 1: in a way that allowed him to maintain sexual contact
Speaker 1: during his attacks. That's also why he acted alone. He
Speaker 1: didn't exactly want an audience. Ray was arrested on May six.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty dramatic sting operation. Actually, the police have
Speaker 1: been planning this for quite some time. When he tries
Speaker 1: to run, police dogs wrestle this guy to the ground. Now,
Speaker 1: the police remember that Tina Pora had already confessed to
Speaker 1: one of the rapes to which Rewa is tied by DNA,
Speaker 1: so they immediately asked him if he knows Tana Pora.
Speaker 1: Rewa is crystal clear never met him. Based on the
Speaker 1: arrest of Malcolm Rewa, the Court of Appeals throws out
Speaker 1: Tana's conviction never met him. Now, at this point in time,
Speaker 1: where you have a prolific serial rapist operating in the
Speaker 1: same neighborhood as the Burdette murder and his DNA is
Speaker 1: at the crime scene and he's telling you I don't
Speaker 1: know Tana Pora, most prosecutors and police officers would throw
Speaker 1: their hands up and say, we can't go forward with
Speaker 1: a reprosecution of Tina Pura. We have to free in.
Speaker 1: But instead Tina is retried, and if you've listened to
Speaker 1: this podcast, you know what's coming. Prosecutors change their theory
Speaker 1: of the case and argue at Taina's second trial that
Speaker 1: he and Rewa raped and killed Susan Burdette together, even
Speaker 1: though Rewa had denied knowing Taina, even though Rewa always
Speaker 1: acted alone, and even though Rewa would never have wanted
Speaker 1: some teenager there to witness his sexual dysfunction. So now
Speaker 1: we have round two of a battle between confession evidence
Speaker 1: and DNA evidence, except this time we know whose DNA
Speaker 1: it is. It's the DNA of a serial rapist named
Speaker 1: Malcolm Rewa. Will Taina's confession bring him down or with
Speaker 1: the jury side with the science and recognized that Tina
Speaker 1: Pourra and Malcolm Rewa had never met. Sure enough, despite
Speaker 1: all hopes that the DNA evidence would be an enough
Speaker 1: to clear Tina, Tina was convicted a second time of
Speaker 1: raping and murdering Susan Burdette and sent back to his
Speaker 1: life sentence. Meanwhile, Malcolm Raa himself stood trial for three
Speaker 1: months on what amounted to forty five counts of rape
Speaker 1: involving twenty seven different women. His trial ended with convictions
Speaker 1: for sexually assaulting twenty five of them, including Susan Burdette.
Speaker 1: Just like Tina, he was shipped off to prison for decades. Now,
Speaker 1: this is justice for Rewa, but for Tina Porra it's
Speaker 1: anything but. And for years, Taina served as time with
Speaker 1: little hope of freedom, and things might have stayed bleak
Speaker 1: for him had it not been for a man named
Speaker 1: Tim McKinnell. Now, who is Tim McKinnel At the moment,
Speaker 1: I'm of self employed, private and vistigheta. But when I
Speaker 1: finished university I joined the police. As a twenty two
Speaker 1: year old, Tim McKinnell started out his career as a cop,
Speaker 1: A good cop, one of the best cap Tim had
Speaker 1: become a member of the South Auckland Police Force in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen nineties, eventually rising to junior detective by
Speaker 1: the year two thousand. That year, the force had been
Speaker 1: divided over the case of Taina Pora. A lot of
Speaker 1: chat went on and the police bar at the time,
Speaker 1: and there was a real disconnect between two different groups
Speaker 1: of people. People that thought China Porta was a guilty
Speaker 1: man and had been involved in the ripe and murder
Speaker 1: of Susan Badett, and there was another camp of experienced
Speaker 1: police officers who thought that he was an innocent man.
Speaker 1: In fact, Tim remembers seeing all manner of drunken arguments
Speaker 1: at police bars and he was struck by the passion
Speaker 1: of those who believed in Tina Pora. Tim never forgot
Speaker 1: those arguments or his own growing doubt about Tana's guilt,
Speaker 1: even after he eventually left the police force, and as
Speaker 1: many retired officers do, he became a private investigator. Now,
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, Tim attended a local conference on
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions and false confessions and that conference brought up
Speaker 1: those old lingering questions that Tim had about Tina's case.
Speaker 1: The last straw came when Tim was diagnosed in his
Speaker 1: thirties with a rare blood disorder. Not exactly a death sentence,
Speaker 1: but the kind of health scare that led him to
Speaker 1: reevaluate his priorities and seek out more meaningful work like
Speaker 1: freeing the innocent. Eventually, Tim decided to take the plunge.
Speaker 1: In two thousand nine, he visited Tina Pura, who was
Speaker 1: then thirty four years old in prison. Taina was no
Speaker 1: longer that teenage car thief Tim had read about. He
Speaker 1: was polite, well mannered, surprisingly gentle, even warm. Tim begins
Speaker 1: to feel an urge to help this guy. But there's
Speaker 1: the matter of Taina's confession. Tim starts by digging up
Speaker 1: videotapes of Taina's interrogation, and they're not easy to find.
Speaker 1: They're on old VHS tapes in boxes and police departments,
Speaker 1: but he gets them and he sits down to watch them,
Speaker 1: and he is blown away by what he saw. When
Speaker 1: you examine what he was able to say on day one,
Speaker 1: in the first few interviews on tape, and you compare
Speaker 1: that to what he was able to say four days later,
Speaker 1: there are marked differences. There were some very particular things
Speaker 1: that happened in Susan's house that the offender would know,
Speaker 1: and it's clear from the interviews that Tina Porter had
Speaker 1: no idea about any of them. Despite four days worth
Speaker 1: of trying, Tina just was not able to tell a
Speaker 1: story that matched what actually happened. When police asked him
Speaker 1: to describe Susan Burdette, he says she was chubby, even
Speaker 1: though she was actually quite athletic. Tina is asked to
Speaker 1: draw a picture of how he left Susan's body. Remember,
Speaker 1: she'd been found horizontally with her legs dangling over the
Speaker 1: side of the bed, but he draws her lying vertically
Speaker 1: on the bed. When he was asked whether there was
Speaker 1: anything special about Susan's bed, Tina can't come up with
Speaker 1: the fact that it was a water bat, and so
Speaker 1: one of the questions that arises about that is how
Speaker 1: did he come to know things on day four that
Speaker 1: he didn't know on day one? The interrogator's take Tina
Speaker 1: on a field trip to Susan Bridette's street so that
Speaker 1: he can point out details of the crime to them
Speaker 1: in person, and they videot the whole thing. He started
Speaker 1: giving them directions that were taking them away from her house,
Speaker 1: so though helpfully tried to direct him back towards her house.
Speaker 1: It was pretty clear on tape that he still had
Speaker 1: no idea where he was going and I wasn't able
Speaker 1: to identify anything familiar. In the end, they took him
Speaker 1: to the outside of the house where Susan had been
Speaker 1: raped murdered and asked him if you recognized anything, and
Speaker 1: again he didn't, so the police officer and it's really chilling,
Speaker 1: really chilling to watch it. He said, Look, it's clear
Speaker 1: you don't recognize what it is you're looking for, So
Speaker 1: do you think it would help if I showed you house?
Speaker 1: And that's an extraordinary thing for a police officer to do.
Speaker 1: For Tim, that's it. This was a false confession. He
Speaker 1: was motivated, fired up, and he would not rest until
Speaker 1: Taina Poorra was cleared. But he needs to present more
Speaker 1: evidence to the lawyers and other people he wants to
Speaker 1: get involved in this case. So Taina's case isn't one
Speaker 1: that was only scarred by false confession. There were the
Speaker 1: other issues that we're beginning to arise with the involvement
Speaker 1: of Taina's family. Tina's cousin became a key witness for
Speaker 1: the prosecution against Taina. She claimed that she had seen
Speaker 1: Taina with Raiwa on multiple occasions, including once to tain
Speaker 1: his girlfriend's home. But Tim was able to discredit Martha's testimony.
Speaker 1: There was evidence of paid witnesses, including his cousin and
Speaker 1: his auntie. Those family members gave evidence against him, and
Speaker 1: we know that at least one of them was paid
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars for her trouble. Tim tracks down Fiona,
Speaker 1: Tina's girlfriend, and Fiona says that she has no idea
Speaker 1: who Malcolm Rawall was and that he was never in
Speaker 1: her home. From his time on the police force, Tim
Speaker 1: was well acquainted with the various gangs operating around South Auckland,
Speaker 1: so for him, one piece of the prosecution's argument was
Speaker 1: clearly ridiculous. Malcolm was a senior member of the Highway
Speaker 1: sixty one motorcycle Club, mortal enemies of the Mungrel Mob,
Speaker 1: and certain a porter somebody who was supposedly involved with
Speaker 1: the Mungrel Mob going to Susan Burdett's house late one
Speaker 1: night with a senior member of the Highway sixty ones
Speaker 1: to commit a brutal rape and murder. Anybody that knows
Speaker 1: anything about gang culture in New Zealand will tell you
Speaker 1: that that's just nonsense. Tim doesn't stop there. He also
Speaker 1: starts assembling an all star team of experts, starting with
Speaker 1: an Icelandic professor and former detective himself, Gisley good Johnson,
Speaker 1: who was a professor by that time in London. Now,
Speaker 1: Gisley essentially created the field of false confession science. He's
Speaker 1: the father of everything we're talking about during this podcast.
Speaker 1: And after Tim sends him tain his interrogation videos, Gisley
Speaker 1: agrees to write a report deconstructing Taina's statements and deeming
Speaker 1: them unreliable. Next, Tim enlist the help of respected local
Speaker 1: New Zealand journalist named Phil Taylor. Phil had questioned the
Speaker 1: stage case against Tana for years and is happy to help,
Speaker 1: and Phil delivers. In two thousand and twelve, as the
Speaker 1: case for Taina's innocence is building, Phil releases a bombshell
Speaker 1: article titled Innocent Man in Jail for twenty Years and
Speaker 1: in it, Choke Henwood, the detective who had developed the
Speaker 1: original criminal profile of Malcolm Reywa, says the cops got
Speaker 1: it horribly wrong in Susan Burdette's case. Taina had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with this. Now this is a huge deal
Speaker 1: because Choke Henwood is the most famous criminal profiler in
Speaker 1: New Zealand, a bit like John Douglas of the mind
Speaker 1: Hunter fame. For somebody like Choke Hinwood come out and
Speaker 1: express a family health conviction that Tina Porto was innocent
Speaker 1: was hugely important in terms of public perception and momentum
Speaker 1: for our appeal work on Tina's case. And in the
Speaker 1: middle of this, there's this remarkable moment when Susan Burdette's
Speaker 1: brother Jim comes forward and says, I too believe that
Speaker 1: Tina Porra is innocent, and he actually meets with Tina Porra.
Speaker 1: It's this incredible moment of reconciliation and grace. Momentum is
Speaker 1: building across the board, but there's still one more piece.
Speaker 1: Can Temp provide a better understanding, a better explanation of
Speaker 1: why Tina confessed to a crime he didn't commit. We
Speaker 1: a documentary maker called Michael Bennett making a documentary about
Speaker 1: Tina's case. Perhaps the most significant development in twenty years
Speaker 1: occurred because the person that had been watching it was
Speaker 1: a woman called doctor Valerie McGinn. Dr McGinn provides Tim
Speaker 1: with the answer he needs. She writes a report saying
Speaker 1: your clients. Mr Tina Porra sounds very similar to many
Speaker 1: people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. She even attaches a
Speaker 1: journal article that details how individuals with f A s
Speaker 1: D are at an increased risk of getting arrested. And
Speaker 1: more importantly, people that have it can be impulsive, the suggestible,
Speaker 1: that eager to please figures of authority. So when you
Speaker 1: look at those types of behaviors and then you consider
Speaker 1: the position Tainer was in when he was in the
Speaker 1: police station in it almost makes it inevitable that he
Speaker 1: was going to confess to something. Dr McGinn confirms categorically
Speaker 1: the Tina suffers from an f A s D disorder.
Speaker 1: He was uniquely susceptible to falsely confessing in the interrogation room.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really bothered me about Tana's
Speaker 1: cases we could never understand why he did what he did,
Speaker 1: The things he said, and the people he implicated, just
Speaker 1: none of it made sense to us, and we couldn't
Speaker 1: explain that to the courts. And so once we got
Speaker 1: this diagnosis of fetowell whole spectrum disorder, it all became clear.
Speaker 1: It was the final piece of the puzzle and we
Speaker 1: finally understood what it was we were dealing with, and
Speaker 1: that does it. All the pieces are assembled for Tim
Speaker 1: and his team to appeal Tana's conviction and they bring
Speaker 1: the case in November to the Privy Council in London,
Speaker 1: the final Court of Appeal where Commonwealth countries like New
Speaker 1: Zealand can bring cases like Tina's. It's the court of
Speaker 1: last resort and it's staffed with senior judges, some of
Speaker 1: the best and brightest minds in the entire Commonwealth. Now
Speaker 1: this is Tina's last shot, and his lawyers put his
Speaker 1: essay s D Disorder at the front of their case,
Speaker 1: arguing the judges in and two thousand trials weren't aware
Speaker 1: of his disability and if they had been, they would
Speaker 1: have ruled differently. There was a big group of people
Speaker 1: that gathered at Michael Bennett, the documentary maker's house, waiting
Speaker 1: for that decision to be announced, and it was an
Speaker 1: extraordinary moment. We only got to tell Tana about an
Speaker 1: hour before the whole world found out that he had
Speaker 1: his conviction quashed and he was no longer a rapist
Speaker 1: and murderer. That was incredibly emotional for him. On March three,
Speaker 1: in the case of Porra versus the Queen. The Council
Speaker 1: of rules that Tina's confessions must be thrown out, and
Speaker 1: they quashed his conviction for the rape and murder of
Speaker 1: Susan Burdette. Two weeks later, the Crown prosecutors dropped their
Speaker 1: case and declined to retry Tina, and after more than
Speaker 1: twenty years, Tina Poorra was officially exonerated. You know, what
Speaker 1: his first concern was for was for the police officers
Speaker 1: that had interviewed him. He didn't want their reputations to
Speaker 1: be tarnished because of what had happened. One of his
Speaker 1: first thoughts was for other people, and that was that
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. In so many of these wrongful conviction cases,
Speaker 1: you see people go through so much pain, and they
Speaker 1: have every right to be bitter, resentful, angry, all of
Speaker 1: those things, but so often you see them express, at
Speaker 1: least publicly, these incredible acts of grace. It's almost as
Speaker 1: though they've lived through so much pain they don't want
Speaker 1: to cause anymore. In Tina received a sum of money
Speaker 1: to compensate him for the time he had spent in
Speaker 1: prison for a crime he did not commit. He also
Speaker 1: received an apology from the new Zealand government. Taana grew
Speaker 1: up in prison. He was there for twenty two years
Speaker 1: and he struggles every day. We keep in contact, but
Speaker 1: life isn't great for him. The money makes some things easier,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't repair the psychological damage. It doesn't bring
Speaker 1: the years back, and it doesn't like his life easy now.
Speaker 1: Is incredibly difficult to watch him struggle through life after
Speaker 1: everything he's been through. Tina, we salute your sheer endurance.
Speaker 1: You will to keep on fighting and surviving and living
Speaker 1: through this ordeal from the other side of the planets.
Speaker 1: Know that we won't forget your name or what you've
Speaker 1: been through, and all of us together, we're fighting to
Speaker 1: make sure it doesn't happen again. And that's the story
Speaker 1: of Tana Pora. Next week's episode takes us to El Paso, Texas,
Speaker 1: where a total stranger became invested in the case of
Speaker 1: Daniel Viegas and turned out to be his savior until then.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production
Speaker 1: of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
Speaker 1: Number One. Special thanks to our executive producer Jayson Flam
Speaker 1: and the team at Signal Company Number One. Executive producer,
Speaker 1: Kevin Wardace Senior Producer and Pope, and additional production and
Speaker 1: editing by Connor Hall. Our music was composed by j Ralph.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura
Speaker 1: ni Rider and you can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: s driven. For more information on the show, visit Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction podcast dot com and be sure to follow the
Speaker 1: show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction