Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Laura and I writer. I am here
Speaker 1: with an update on a case we shared with you
Speaker 1: back in Season one of False Confessions. It's the story
Speaker 1: of Tana Porra, which is perhaps the most famous wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction in New Zealand. Shortly after our episode aired, New
Speaker 1: Zealand officially opened the Criminal Cases Review Commission or CCRC
Speaker 1: to investigate other possible wrongful convictions. Like Conviction Integrity Units
Speaker 1: here in the US, the CCRC will reinvestigate cases and
Speaker 1: present its findings to the court, which will then weigh
Speaker 1: the evidence and grant relief if they see fit. Since
Speaker 1: the CCRC began operation in New Zealand in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the work of its investigators has led to one exoneration
Speaker 1: already and three more seem likely in the near future.
Speaker 1: This is a hugely positive step in New Zealand, where
Speaker 1: justice can move really slowly and exonerations like these have
Speaker 1: been exceedingly rare. But with the CEA CRC, true justice
Speaker 1: seems a lot closer at hand. Welcome to wrongful conviction,
Speaker 1: False Confessions. I'm Laura and I Writer.
Speaker 2: And I'm Steve Drissen.
Speaker 1: So far we've told you false confession stories that span
Speaker 1: the United States, from urban Chicago to rural Nebraska. Today,
Speaker 1: we'll take you across the globe to New Zealand with
Speaker 1: a story that still hits way too close to home.
Speaker 1: A sixteen year old boy who confessed to a rape
Speaker 1: and murder he didn't commit. His wrongful conviction allowed the
Speaker 1: real offender, a prolific serial rapist, to assault dozens of
Speaker 1: other women, while a teenager languished behind bars after making
Speaker 1: a murder. Came out season two, Steve and I have
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to travel around the globe talking to
Speaker 1: audiences about the problem of false confessions and the need
Speaker 1: for criminal justice reform. We've spoken everywhere from the United
Speaker 1: States to the United Kingdom, to Ireland to Australia. You
Speaker 1: remember this guy, Steve, who traveled around Australia with us.
Speaker 2: Oh God, this guy, this guy was beautiful.
Speaker 1: What was his name, Jimond?
Speaker 2: His name was Simon. Simon. Simon was like a roadie
Speaker 2: from the nineteen seventies, always wearing black T shirts and
Speaker 2: deep into the heavy metal scene.
Speaker 1: Somehow, poor Simon gets assigned to the lawyers who are
Speaker 1: traveling around talking about false confessions. One of my personal
Speaker 1: points of pride though, is that by the end of
Speaker 1: this trip around Australia, he seemed to like what we
Speaker 1: were trying to do, so we had a great time
Speaker 1: with him. But Simon kept asking us, as did everybody
Speaker 1: else we met around Australia. Have you heard about Tana Pora?
Speaker 1: Have you heard about New Zealand's Brendon Dassy? And that's
Speaker 1: exactly who Tana is.
Speaker 2: Police officers around the world are often trained in very
Speaker 2: similar ways about how to interrogate suspects, and so I
Speaker 2: expected and was beginning to discover false confessions in places
Speaker 2: like Japan and Korea and other Commonwealth countries like Australia
Speaker 2: and New Zealand and Canada.
Speaker 1: These are stories that hit home around the globe, whether
Speaker 1: it's for you know, social justice driven lawyers or heavy
Speaker 1: metal roadies. You know Tanapora, Brendan Dassy. We all know
Speaker 1: someone vulnerable like them, and we can all see the
Speaker 1: need to do justice in cases like these. Tanapora's story
Speaker 1: starts about eight thousand miles away from where Steve and
Speaker 1: I are sitting right now in the United States. It
Speaker 1: starts in South Auckland. That's an urban area on the
Speaker 1: southern edge of New Zealand's largest city, Auckland. It's home
Speaker 1: to a large minority population, including Maureed's, the indigenous Polynesian
Speaker 1: population of New Zealand. Parts of South Auckland can have
Speaker 1: no negative connotations. Too often it's associated with poverty and crime.
Speaker 1: When our story starts in nineteen ninety two, South Auckland
Speaker 1: was home to a thirty nine year old woman named
Speaker 1: Susan Burdette. Susan lived alone in a tidy house on
Speaker 1: Paw Road. She worked days as an account's clerk at
Speaker 1: a chemical manufacturing company, and on the evening of March
Speaker 1: twenty third, nineteen ninety two, Susan leaves her weekly bowling
Speaker 1: league meet up and drives home under a night of
Speaker 1: beautiful stars. Susan's a hard worker, so when she doesn't
Speaker 1: show up at work the next few days, her colleagues
Speaker 1: get concerned. They call her friend Steve eventually to find
Speaker 1: out if he knows where she is. Steve gets worried
Speaker 1: and he ends up going over to Susan's house that Wednesday,
Speaker 1: March twenty fifth, at about twelve forty pm. He finds
Speaker 1: the front door unlocked, goes inside and is greeted with
Speaker 1: a horrible sight. Susan is lying horizontally on her waterbed
Speaker 1: and she's clearly dead. The upper half of her body
Speaker 1: is wrapped in a duvet and there's a wooden baseball
Speaker 1: bat lying on the bed next to her. Her legs
Speaker 1: are dangling off the side of the bed and they're crossed.
Speaker 1: Someone whoever did this had positioned her that way. The
Speaker 1: police arrived, they remove the duvet and they find that
Speaker 1: Susan had been beaten badly about the head, very likely
Speaker 1: with the baseball bat. She'd also been sexually assaulted, and
Speaker 1: there's plenty of DNA left behind seamen, as well as
Speaker 1: a bloody smudge mark on a light switch. Susan's hands
Speaker 1: were covered with defensive wounds, which indicates that she'd 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 Garry McLaughlin, and she tells them a story
Speaker 1: about her then sixteen year old nephew, a shaggy haired,
Speaker 1: baby faced mawory kid named Tana Pora.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about Tana for a bit. Tana had
Speaker 2: it rough growing up. His mother died when he was
Speaker 2: a young boy, and his father left shortly afterwards. He
Speaker 2: then got passed around from family member to family member
Speaker 2: and ultimately ended up in his aunt Terry's house.
Speaker 1: A few days after Susan Burdett's murder made headlines, Tana
Speaker 1: and some friends found a baseball bat in the local
Speaker 1: park and they were joking about it being the murder weapon.
Speaker 1: Back at Aunt Terry's house, Tana kept talking about the bat.
Speaker 1: Tana had a history of run ins with the law,
Speaker 1: nothing really serious, but enough for Terry to want him
Speaker 1: out of her house. She called the police over and over,
Speaker 1: insisting that Tana knew something about Susan Burdett's murder. But
Speaker 1: police quickly come to the conclusion that Tana and his
Speaker 1: buddies were just over excited teens who are talking shit.
Speaker 1: They interview Tana, they take his DNA, They even execute
Speaker 1: a search warrant, but Tana and his friends are ruled
Speaker 1: out conclusively as Susan Burdett's killers. The DNA doesn't match,
Speaker 1: the search warrant turns up nothing, and while tana does
Speaker 1: have a record, there is nothing in his background that
Speaker 1: would suggests this level of violence or depravity.
Speaker 2: Now, let's fast forward almost exactly twelve months to March eighteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three. We're almost a year out now from
Speaker 2: the discovery of Susan Burdett's body. In the course of
Speaker 2: police investigations. That's a lifetime and this is the only
Speaker 2: unsolved homicide from nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: Tana Pora is seventeen years old. Now he still has
Speaker 1: that babyface, but his police record has grown. During a
Speaker 1: routine interview with Tana about a car theft, police get
Speaker 1: an anonymous phone tip about Susan Burdett's murder. This caller
Speaker 1: links the murder to a local gang called the mongrel
Speaker 1: Agang 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.
Speaker 2: The police have Tana Pora in the interrogation room and
Speaker 2: he's telling multiple different stories. The stories don't make any sense.
Speaker 2: It's not an interrogation with banging of the table or
Speaker 2: raised voices or threats or even promises.
Speaker 3: To unite a comment that you're gonna tell us more?
Speaker 3: Is that correct? Okay?
Speaker 2: Well, tell us this is a seventeen year old kid
Speaker 2: who is highly suggestible and eager to please the authorities.
Speaker 2: They're applying him with cigarettes and fast food and drinks.
Speaker 3: You head spring raw bodog chips and drink. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: The detectives even mentioned twenty thousand dollars as a reward
Speaker 1: for information about Susan Burdette's rape and murder. Tana's story
Speaker 1: keeps evolving, and the camera keeps getting turned on and off.
Speaker 3: You said you were going to tell us everything.
Speaker 1: First, Tana tells the police that he drove two other
Speaker 1: men to Susan's house and waited outside while they went
Speaker 1: into attacker.
Speaker 3: Are you telling us about a person called dog raping
Speaker 3: this woman? Did you hear any more or see any more?
Speaker 3: It's outside in the caravan.
Speaker 1: Eventually he changes that story.
Speaker 3: I thought what you've said so fair that you've climbed
Speaker 3: it in the bedroom window and you've gone through to
Speaker 3: open the door up for the other two.
Speaker 1: All right, now he's climbing in through one of Susan
Speaker 1: Burdette's windows and letting the other two in through the
Speaker 1: front door.
Speaker 3: And you were inlier. You could see quite clearly what
Speaker 3: was happening, Is that right? Okay?
Speaker 2: I was just watching and you.
Speaker 3: Were just watching.
Speaker 1: And in the end, after four days, Tana confesses to
Speaker 1: being in the room, to actually holding Susan down while
Speaker 1: his two associates raped her.
Speaker 3: And you were in the room some of this time
Speaker 3: while this was happening. Is that right? You are holding
Speaker 3: Susan dan?
Speaker 2: And that last story, the one that ultimately seals Tana's fate.
Speaker 2: It comes after a break in the tea room, where
Speaker 2: of course, the cameras are turned off at.
Speaker 1: The suggestion of the police. Tana identifies this too supposed
Speaker 1: accomplices as senior members of the Mongrel Mob, that local gang.
Speaker 1: The police bring in those two individuals that Tana had named,
Speaker 1: but their DNA doesn't match the DNA found on Susan's body.
Speaker 1: They're cleared and they're released. Things don't go as smoothly
Speaker 1: for Tana. He's arrested based on his confession. He's charged
Speaker 1: with Susan Burdett's rape and murder, and fourteen long months later,
Speaker 1: prosecutors try Tana Porra for participating in the murder of
Speaker 1: Susan Burdett along with two unknown accomplices.
Speaker 2: And let's stop right here for a minute. This is
Speaker 2: round one of the battle of these two titans of evidence,
Speaker 2: confessions versus DNA. DNA seemed to clear Tanapora of any
Speaker 2: role in this crime, but it's the confessions that ultimately
Speaker 2: lead to his conviction.
Speaker 1: On June sixteenth, nineteen ninety four, a jury took less
Speaker 1: than ninety minutes to convictaan Apora of rape and murder.
Speaker 1: He received a life sentence and was shipped off to prison.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the New Zealand Police are beginning
Speaker 1: a focused investigation into six rapes that had occurred between
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight and nineteen ninety two in the Auckland area,
Speaker 1: including Susan Burdette's rape. Now, these attacks were all similar
Speaker 1: enough that some police officers began to worry that they
Speaker 1: had a serial rapist on their hands. All of them
Speaker 1: involved a lone wolf attacker who broke into women's homes,
Speaker 1: wrapped their heads in blankets or duveys and repositioned them
Speaker 1: so that they lay sideways across the edge of the
Speaker 1: bed during the attack. And by April nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: a few years after Tana's conviction, the investigation into these
Speaker 1: rapes linked them all, including Susan Burdett's attack, to the
Speaker 1: DNA of the same person, a man named Malcolm Raywa.
Speaker 2: Now, who is Malcolm Rewa? First of all, he's twenty
Speaker 2: years older than Tana Porra. And while I usually try
Speaker 2: to avoid characterizing my fellow humans like this, Raywa is
Speaker 2: a monster. He's a terrifying figure, a prolific serial rapist.
Speaker 1: He's the kind of predator that women worry about. He's
Speaker 1: the worst nightmare.
Speaker 2: Raywak committed his first rape in the nineteen seventies. His
Speaker 2: wife was in labor giving birth to their child at
Speaker 2: the time, so Raywa took the oppertains unity to sexually
Speaker 2: assault a nurse in a hospital bed.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable four and a.
Speaker 2: Half years in prison he spent for that awful crime.
Speaker 1: So Raywah gets out of prison and apparently rapes again
Speaker 1: from then on. Over the dozens of rapes that he
Speaker 1: went on to commit, Raywa started developing a pattern an
Speaker 1: m O. He'd carefully select his victims, who tended to
Speaker 1: be single women, professionals who were home alone. He'd stake
Speaker 1: out their homes in advance and plan his attacks meticulously,
Speaker 1: and then always the same thing, a surprise attack after
Speaker 1: the woman had fallen asleep, a physical attack first to
Speaker 1: subdue her, then the blanket or duvet around her head,
Speaker 1: and a rape at the side of the bed.
Speaker 2: And raa would hide in their homes. He would wait
Speaker 2: for them to get into bed and begin to fall asleep,
Speaker 2: and then he would attack.
Speaker 1: Raywa apparently suffered from a rectile dysfunction, which is why
Speaker 1: he positioned his victims in a way that allowed him
Speaker 1: to maintain sexual coind during his attacks. That's also why
Speaker 1: he acted alone. He didn't exactly want an audience. Ray
Speaker 1: was arrested on May thirteenth, nineteen ninety six. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty dramatic sting operation. Actually, the police had been planning
Speaker 1: this for quite some time. When he tries to run,
Speaker 1: police dogs wrestle this guy to the ground. Now, the
Speaker 1: police remember that Tanapora had already confessed to one of
Speaker 1: the rapes, to which Reywa is tied by DNA, so
Speaker 1: they immediately ask him if he knows Tana Pora. Reywa
Speaker 1: is crystal clear never met him. Based on the arrest
Speaker 1: of Malcolm Rawa, the Court of Appeals throws out Tana's
Speaker 1: conviction in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: Nine, never met him. Now, at this point in time,
Speaker 2: where you have a prolific serial rapist operating in the
Speaker 2: same neighborhood as the Burdette murder and his DNA is
Speaker 2: at the crime scene and he's telling you I don't
Speaker 2: know Tanapura, most prosecutors and police officers would throw their
Speaker 2: hands up and say we can't go forward with a
Speaker 2: reprosecution of Tana Pora. We have to free him.
Speaker 1: But instead Tana 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 Tana's second trial that
Speaker 1: he and Rewa raped and killed Susan Burdett together, even
Speaker 1: though Rewa had denied knowing Tana, 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.
Speaker 2: So now we have round two of a battle between
Speaker 2: confession evidence and DNA evidence, except this time we know
Speaker 2: whose DNA it is. It's the DNA of a serial
Speaker 2: rapist named Malcolm Rewa. Will Tana's confession bring him down?
Speaker 2: Or will the jury side with the science and recognize
Speaker 2: that Tanapora and Malcolm had never met.
Speaker 1: Sure Enough, despite all hopes that the DNA evidence would
Speaker 1: be enough to clear Tana, Tana was convicted a second
Speaker 1: time of raping and murdering Susan Burdette and sent back
Speaker 1: to his life sentence. Meanwhile, Malcolm Raywa himself stood trial
Speaker 1: for three months in nineteen ninety eight on what amounted
Speaker 1: to forty five counts of rape, involving twenty seven different women.
Speaker 1: His trial ended with convictions for sexually assaulting twenty five
Speaker 1: of them, including Susan Burdett. Just like Tana, he was
Speaker 1: shipped off to prison for decades. Now, this is justice
Speaker 1: for Rewa, but for Tana Porra it's anything but. And
Speaker 1: for years Tana served as time with little hope of freedom,
Speaker 1: and things might have stayed bleak for him had it
Speaker 1: not been for a man named Tim mckinnal.
Speaker 2: Now, who is Tim.
Speaker 4: Mckinnall At the moment, Tom is self employed, private and vistagata.
Speaker 4: But when I finished university. I joined the police as
Speaker 4: a twenty two year old.
Speaker 2: Tim McKinnell started out his career as a cup, a
Speaker 2: good cup, one of the best cups. Tim had become
Speaker 2: a member of the South Auckland Police Force in the
Speaker 2: late nineteen nineties, eventually rising to junior detective by the
Speaker 2: year two thousand. That year, the force had been divided
Speaker 2: over the case of Tanapura.
Speaker 4: A lot of chat went on in the police bar
Speaker 4: at the time, and there was a real disconnect between
Speaker 4: two different groups of people. People that thought Tana Porter
Speaker 4: was a guilty man and had been involved in the
Speaker 4: rape and murder of Susan Bidett, and there was another
Speaker 4: camp of experienced police officers who thought that he was
Speaker 4: an innocent man.
Speaker 2: In fact, Tim remembers seeing all manner of drunken arguments
Speaker 2: at police bars and he was struck by the passion
Speaker 2: of those who believed in Tana Pura.
Speaker 1: Tim never forgot those arguments or his own growing doubt
Speaker 1: about Tana's guilt, even after he eventually left the police force,
Speaker 1: and as many retired officers do, he became a private investigator.
Speaker 1: Now in two thousand and seven, Tim attended a local
Speaker 1: conference on wrongful convictions and false confessions, and that conference
Speaker 1: brought up those old, lingering questions that Tim had about
Speaker 1: Tana's case. The last straw came when Tim was diagnosed
Speaker 1: in his thirties with a rare blood disorder, not exactly
Speaker 1: a death sentence, but the kind of health scare that
Speaker 1: led him to reevaluate his priorities and seek out more
Speaker 1: meaningful work like freeing the innocent. Eventually, Tim decided to
Speaker 1: take the plunge. In two thousand and nine, he visited
Speaker 1: Tana Pora, who was then thirty four years old in prison.
Speaker 1: Tana was no longer that teenage car thief Tim had
Speaker 1: read about. He was polite, well mannered, surprisingly gentle, even warm.
Speaker 1: Tim begins to feel an urge to help this guy.
Speaker 2: But there's the matter of Tana's confession. Tim starts by
Speaker 2: digging up videotapes of Tina's interrogation, and they're not easy
Speaker 2: to find. They're on old VHS tapes in boxes in
Speaker 2: police departments. But he gets them and he sits down
Speaker 2: to watch them, and he is blown away by what
Speaker 2: he saw.
Speaker 4: When you examine what he was able to say on
Speaker 4: day one. In the first few interviews on tape, and
Speaker 4: you compare that to what he was able to say
Speaker 4: four days later, there are marked differences. There were some
Speaker 4: very particular things that happened in Susan's house that the
Speaker 4: offender would know, and it's clear from the interviews that
Speaker 4: Tana Porter had no idea about any of them.
Speaker 1: Despite four days worth of trying, Tina just was not
Speaker 1: able to tell a story that matched what actually happened.
Speaker 1: When police asked him to describe Susan Burdette, he says
Speaker 1: she was chubby, even though she was actually quite athletic.
Speaker 1: Tina is asked to draw a picture of how he
Speaker 1: left Susan's body. Remember she'd been found horizontally with her
Speaker 1: legs dangling over the side of the bed, but he
Speaker 1: draws her lying vertically on the bad.
Speaker 4: When he was.
Speaker 1: Asked whether there was anything special about Susan's bad, Tina
Speaker 1: can't come up with the fact that it was.
Speaker 4: A water bad, and so one of the questions that
Speaker 4: arises about that is how did he come to know
Speaker 4: things on day four that he didn't know on day one.
Speaker 1: The interrogators take Tina on a field trip to Susan
Speaker 1: Burdett's street so that he can point out details of
Speaker 1: the crime to them in person, and they videotaped the
Speaker 1: whole thing.
Speaker 4: He started giving them directions that were taking them away
Speaker 4: from her house, so though helpfully tried to direct him
Speaker 4: back towards her house, it was pretty clear on tape
Speaker 4: that he still had no idea where he was going
Speaker 4: and wasn't able to identify anything familiar. In the end,
Speaker 4: they took him to the outside of the house where
Speaker 4: Susan had been raped murdered and asked him if he
Speaker 4: recognized anything, and again he didn't, so the police officer
Speaker 4: and it's really chilling, really chilling to watch it. He said, Look,
Speaker 4: it's clear you don't recognize what it is you're looking for.
Speaker 4: So do you think it would help if I showed
Speaker 4: you house? And that's an extraordinary thing for a police
Speaker 4: officer to do.
Speaker 2: For Tim, that's it. This was a false confession. He
Speaker 2: was motivated, fired up, and he would not rest until
Speaker 2: Tina Poora was cleared. But he needs to present more
Speaker 2: evidence to the lawyers and other people he wants to
Speaker 2: get involved in this case.
Speaker 4: So Tana's case isn't one that was only scarred by
Speaker 4: false confession. There were the other issues that were beginning
Speaker 4: to arise with the involvement of Tana's family.
Speaker 2: Tina's cousin became a key witness for the prosecution against Tina.
Speaker 2: She claimed that she had seen Tina with Rewa on
Speaker 2: multiple occasions, including once at Tina's girlfriend's home.
Speaker 1: Tim was able to discredit Martha's testimony.
Speaker 4: There was evidence of paid witnesses, including his cousin and
Speaker 4: his auntie. Those family members gave evidence against him, and
Speaker 4: we know that at least one of them was paid
Speaker 4: five thousand dollars for her trouble.
Speaker 1: Tim tracks down Fiona, Tina's girlfriend, and Fiona says that
Speaker 1: she has no idea who Malcolm Rawell was and that
Speaker 1: he was never in her home. From his time on
Speaker 1: the police force, Tim was well acquainted with the various
Speaker 1: gangs operating around South Auckland, so for him, one piece
Speaker 1: of the prosecution's argument was clearly ridiculous.
Speaker 4: Malcolm Rawa was a senior member of the Highway sixty
Speaker 4: one motorcycle Club, Mortal Enemies of the Mongrel Mob and
Speaker 4: Sotana Porter as somebody who was supposedly involved with the
Speaker 4: Mungrel Mob. Going to Susan Burdette's house late one night
Speaker 4: with a senior member of the Highway sixty one's to
Speaker 4: commit a brutal rape and murder. Anybody that knows anything
Speaker 4: about gang culture in New Zealand will tell you that
Speaker 4: that's just nonsense.
Speaker 1: Tim doesn't stop there. He also starts assembling an all
Speaker 1: star team of experts, starting with an Icelandic professor and
Speaker 1: former detective himself, Geisley good Johnson, who was a professor
Speaker 1: by that time in London. Now. Geasley essentially created the
Speaker 1: field of false confession science. He's the father of everything
Speaker 1: we're talking about during this podcast, and after Tim sends
Speaker 1: him Tanea's interrogation videos, Geezley agrees to write a report
Speaker 1: deconstructing Tana's statements and deeming them unreliable.
Speaker 2: Next, Tim enlists the help of respected local New Zealand
Speaker 2: journalist named Phil Taylor. Phil had questioned the States case
Speaker 2: against Tana for years and is happy to help, and
Speaker 2: Phil delivers. In twenty twelve, as the case for Tana's
Speaker 2: innocence is building, Phil releases a bombshell article titled Innocent
Speaker 2: Man in Jail for twenty Years, and in it Chuck Henwood,
Speaker 2: the detective who had developed the original criminal profile of
Speaker 2: Malcolm Rewa says the cops got it horribly wrong in
Speaker 2: Susan Burdett's case. Tana had nothing to do with this.
Speaker 2: Now this is a huge deal because Chuck Henwood is
Speaker 2: the most famous criminal profiler in New Zealand, a bit
Speaker 2: like John Douglas of the mind Hunter fame.
Speaker 4: For somebody like Chuck Henwood come out and express a
Speaker 4: firmly hell conviction that Tana Porter was innocent was hugely
Speaker 4: important in terms of public perception and momentum for our
Speaker 4: appeal work on Tana's case.
Speaker 2: And in the middle of this, there's this remarkable moment
Speaker 2: when Susan Burdett's brother Jim comes forward and says, I
Speaker 2: too believe that Tana Pora is innocent, and he actually
Speaker 2: meets with Tana Pora. It's this incredible moment of reconciliation
Speaker 2: and grace.
Speaker 1: Momentum is building a across the board, but there's still
Speaker 1: one more piece. Can Tim provide a better understanding, a
Speaker 1: better explanation of why Tana confessed to a crime he
Speaker 1: didn't commit.
Speaker 4: We had a documentary maker called Michael Bennett making a
Speaker 4: documentary about Tana's case. Perhaps the most significant development in
Speaker 4: twenty years occurred because the person that had been watching
Speaker 4: it was a woman called doctor Valerie McGinn.
Speaker 1: Doctor McGinn provides Tim with the answer he needs. She
Speaker 1: writes report, saying, your clients, mister Tana Pora sounds very
Speaker 1: similar to many people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. She
Speaker 1: even attaches a journal article that details how individuals with
Speaker 1: FASD are at an increased risk of getting arrested. And
Speaker 1: more importantly, people.
Speaker 4: That have it can be impulsive, they suggestible, they eager
Speaker 4: to please figures of authority. And so when you look
Speaker 4: at those types of behaviors and then you consider the
Speaker 4: position Taner was in when he was in the police
Speaker 4: station in nineteen ninety three, it almost makes it inevitable
Speaker 4: that he was going to confess to something.
Speaker 1: Doctor mcginnon confirms categorically that Tena suffers from an FASD disorder,
Speaker 1: he was uniquely susceptible to falsely confessing in the interrogation room.
Speaker 4: One of the things that really bothered me about Tana's
Speaker 4: case is we could never understand why he did what
Speaker 4: he did, the things he said, and the people he implicated.
Speaker 4: It just none of it made sense to us, and
Speaker 4: we couldn't explain that to the courts, and so once
Speaker 4: we got this diagnosis of feder Welck whole spectrum disorder,
Speaker 4: it all became clear. It was the final piece of
Speaker 4: the puzzle and we finally understood what it was we
Speaker 4: were dealing with.
Speaker 1: And that does it. All the pieces are assembled for
Speaker 1: Tim and his team to appeal Tena's conviction and they
Speaker 1: bring the case in November of twenty fourteen to the
Speaker 1: Privy Council in London, the final Court of Appeal where
Speaker 1: Commonwealth countries like New Zealand can bring cases like Tena's.
Speaker 2: It's the court of last resort and it's staffed with
Speaker 2: senior judge some of the best and brightest minds in
Speaker 2: the entire Commonwealth.
Speaker 1: Now this is Tana's last shot, and his lawyers put
Speaker 1: his FASD disorder at the front of their case, arguing
Speaker 1: that judges in the nineteen ninety four and two thousand
Speaker 1: trials weren't aware of his disability and if they had been,
Speaker 1: they would have ruled differently.
Speaker 4: There was a big group of people that gathered at
Speaker 4: Michael Bennett, the documentary maker's house, waiting for that decision
Speaker 4: to be announced, and it was an extraordinary moment. We
Speaker 4: only got to tell Taneer about an hour before the
Speaker 4: whole world found out that he had his conviction quashed
Speaker 4: and he was no longer a rapist and murderer. It
Speaker 4: was incredibly emotional for him.
Speaker 1: On March third, twenty fifteen, in the case of poorra
Speaker 1: Versus the Queen, the Council of rules that Tina's confessions
Speaker 1: must be thrown out, and they quashed his conviction for
Speaker 1: the rape and murder of Susan Burdett. Two weeks later,
Speaker 1: the Crown prosecutors dropped their case and declined to reap Tina,
Speaker 1: and after more than twenty years, tana Pora was officially exonerated.
Speaker 4: You know what his first concern was for was for
Speaker 4: the police officers that had interviewed him. He didn't want
Speaker 4: their reputations to be tarnished because of what had happened.
Speaker 4: One of his first thoughts was for other people, and
Speaker 4: that was that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: In so many of these wrongful conviction cases, you see
Speaker 1: people go through so much pain, and they have every
Speaker 1: right to be bitter, resentful, angry, all of those things,
Speaker 1: but so often you see them express, at least publicly,
Speaker 1: these incredible acts of grace. It's almost as though they've
Speaker 1: lived through so much pain they don't want to cause anymore.
Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, Tana received a sum of money to
Speaker 2: compensate him for the time he had spent in prison
Speaker 2: for a crime he did not commit. He also received
Speaker 2: an apology from the New Zealand government.
Speaker 4: Tana grew up in prison. He was there for twenty
Speaker 4: two years and he struggles every day. We keep in contact,
Speaker 4: but life isn't great for him. The money makes some
Speaker 4: things easier, but it doesn't repair the psychological damage. It
Speaker 4: doesn't bring the years back, and it doesn't make his
Speaker 4: life easy now. It is incredibly difficult to watch him
Speaker 4: struggle through life after everything he's been through.
Speaker 1: Tana, we salute your sheer endurance, your will to keep
Speaker 1: on fighting and surviving and living through this ordeal from
Speaker 1: the other side of the planet. Know that we won't
Speaker 1: forget your name or what you've been through, and all
Speaker 1: of us together, we're fighting to make sure it doesn't
Speaker 1: happen again. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is the production of
Speaker 1: Lava for Good podcasts in association with Signal Company Number
Speaker 1: one Special thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm and
Speaker 1: the team at Signal Company Number one executive producer Kevin
Speaker 1: warda Senior producer and Pope, and additional production and editing
Speaker 1: by Connor Hall. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura
Speaker 1: Nyrider and you.
Speaker 2: Can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow the show on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on
Speaker 1: Twitter at wrong Conviction