Wife defends ailing killer as ‘beautiful person’
Helen Reihana says weekly hospital visits the only thing keeping her husband alive
Awoman who says she is the wife of double murderer Jason Reihana has spoken out in his defence after he was treated for a debilitating illness in Waikato Hospital.
Helen Reihana, who contacted the Herald yesterday in response to complaints from another hospital patient, said the convicted killer was “the most beautiful person you would ever come across”.
She also denied claims that Reihana had had a “million-dollar” bone marrow transplant, saying he had attended weekly hospital appointments and clocked up more than 400 blood transfusions during his time in prison.
“Only God can judge him. He’s human like everybody else.”
Reihana was jailed for at least 21 years — one of the country’s longest minimum-term life sentences — for killing Teresa Gunn and her partner Andrew Grabner in a frenzied knife attack in her Tauranga home in 2005.
It emerged this week he had had treatment in the hospital recently, staying in a ward with other patients.
“He gets blood transfusions because he hasn’t had a million-dollar transplant,” Helen Reihana said.
“You might as well just call him dead man walking.”
Although Reihana tried to maintain as normal a life as possible behind bars, helping out in the kitchen and completing courses, he got tired quickly due to the myelofibrosis leukaemia he was diagnosed with not long after being jailed.
She said it wasn’t Reihana’s choice which room he was put in when receiving care.
“He’s never unattended.”
She believed Reihana should have had a transplant 10 years ago. “What a sad country we live in because certain people receive better treatment than others. We are all citizens of New Zealand and the human race and Jason doesn’t choose where he goes.”
When asked about the fact Reihana had killed two people, she replied it was “irrelevant”.
“We weren’t there that night. Only he knows the truth and God.”
“He is just the most beautiful person you would ever come across, a very sensitive soul.
“He has a big heart and he is awesome with his children.”
Reihana said she got calls from her husband two to three times a day but could only visit him weekly.
She said he had been sicker than usual since Christmas and hoped the releasing of fraudster Vicki Letele on compassionate grounds from prison last year would open the door to the release of other sick prisoners.
Meanwhile, the father of one of Reihana’s two victims is stunned at an allegation the double-murderer was left unattended at least three times while in hospital.
“I wasn’t happy about it,” Gunn’s father, David Gunn, told the Bay of Plenty Times. “But that’s the justice system for you. It seems prisoners take priority over others having to wait a huge amount of time for hospital treatment.”