No parole for Rewa, board says

AUCKLAND: Parole has been declined for serial rapist Malcolm Rewa, at his first hearing before the New Zealand Parole Board.

Rewa is serving 22 years in prison for the rapes of Susan Burdett and 24 other women.

Parole board chairman Justice Warwick Gendall has directed that the written decision from the May 15 hearing will not be publicly released.

Rewa’s next hearing has been set for April 2020, in line with the statutory cycle.

The board will not be making any further comment.

Burdett was raped and bludgeoned to death in her Papatoetoe home in 1992.

During the homicide investigation swabs were taken from her body, but for years the DNA taken did not match any existing record on the police databank.

In 1996 the DNA was found to match Rewa’s and he was arrested and charged with Burdett’s rape and murder on May 13 that year.

He was also charged with sexual and violent offences against several other women.

Rewa also recently failed in a bid to stop a third trial over the murder of Burdett.

This month, Chief High Court Judge Justice Geoffrey Venning declined an application to the court for a judicial review of the Attorneygeneral’s decision to lift a stay on proceedings.

Last November, Deputy Solicitorgeneral Brendan Horsley, on behalf of the Attorneygeneral, reversed the 1998 stay on the Burdett murder case, which appeared to clear the way for the third trial of Rewa.

The stay was lifted after the Privy Council exonerated Teina Pora for the crime of which he was twice wrongfully convicted and for which he spent 22 years in prison. Pora has since received an apology from the Government and $3.5 million in compensation.

Rewa first stood trial on all the rape charges and for Burdett’s murder from March to May in 1998. He was convicted of the sexual assaults but the jury failed to reach a verdict on the charges of rape and murder for Burdett.

A second trial was held in December 1998 on the Burdett charges alone and the jury convicted Rewa of rape but failed to reach a verdict on the murder charge.

A stay had never before been lifted in New Zealand.

Rewa’s third trial for Burdett’s murder is set to be heard in the High Court at Auckland next February. — NZME