Karla Cardno: Emotions still raw
For some, it is still difficult to walk past the house where the teen was held and tortured. Tom Hunt and Tommy Livingston report.
Churton Crescent, Taita, could be suburbia, anywhere. Except for that house. ‘‘You just don’t walk past it,’’ a neighbour says.
The two-storey Lower Hutt home is where Paul Dally took 13-year-old Karla Cardno and put her through unimaginable hell in 1989 – 30 years ago.
Her naked and beaten body was found face down six weeks later, her hands tied behind her back in a shallow grave on an isolated beach at Pencarrow. There was evidence of sexual assault.
‘‘You know what happened there,’’ the neighbour says. ‘‘It is a bad, bad house.’’
Dally this month appeared before the Parole Board and his release was delayed by at least 18 months, although it was noted he had made ‘‘significant progress’’ while in prison.
Thirty years on from one of New Zealand’s cruellest murders, emotions run high in and around Churton Crescent. One man who knew Karla well won’t talk for this story. His voice breaks as the memories come back.
It is the nearness of it all that still stuns three decades later.
It is a bike ride of 579 metres from Karla’s former home to the Four Square shop she went to that night – May 26, 1989.
At the 257m-mark she rode past Dally’s home.
Tarunika Gandhi was behind the counter at Four Square Taita when Karla came in and bought a large bottle of Fanta and three Jelly-Tip icecreams.
‘‘I knew she was by herself on her bike,’’ Gandhi recalled last week.
Karla wanted The Evening Post but the newspaper had sold out. ‘‘I thought she might be going to buy the paper somewhere else.’’
It is at this point on the Friday night that details get vague.
Newspaper reports from the court case which followed show police talked to 16 witnesses from the night.
One described her running into Beany’s Takeaways – 190m further on from her home via an alleyway, or
230m via footpath. Others reported seeing her bike and abandoned purchases near her Churton Crescent home.
John McBean, then-owner of Beany’s Takeaways, was there that night and, while he recalls talk of Karla coming in, he never saw her himself.
‘‘Apparently she was in and out very quickly and she was scared,’’ McBean said at the time.
It was two days later, on the Sunday, when police came into his shop making inquiries. Then came the six weeks of wondering. ‘‘There was a lot of talk about what happened . . . for some time people were at a bit of a loss.’’
Media reports talked of Dally chasing her around the shops before she took off on her bike towards home.
A woman who lived next door to Dally reported hearing a female scream about 7.15pm near the house on the other side of Dally’s. ‘‘It was a short, loud and very strong scream,’’ she said. ‘‘It only lasted about one second.’’
Karla’s mother, Veronica Cardno, has kept quiet in the years since but, in 2001, she spoke to Stuff after friends urged her to tell her side of the story.
‘‘If she had kept riding she probably would have been all right . . . it was only a few doors up to his house when he took her,’’ she said at the time. ‘‘She screamed, he silenced her, which I think would have been a chop to her neck [he was a martial arts expert] and he dragged her off to the bushes.’’
Hindsight may give her a better idea of what happened but on May 26,
1989, Veronica was just a concerned mum out looking.
The first tangible evidence was finding Karla’s bike and the bottle of Fanta abandoned on the corner.
Normally Karla’s younger brother, George, would have gone with her to the shops but that night she went alone.
‘‘Unbelievable, isn’t it? Like, the police said to me I could have lost two kids because all it would mean was he smacked their heads together and it is all over. He is that kind of person – it would not have mattered to him.’’
Veronica’s then-partner, Mark Middleton, this month recalled how he immediately drove back from Whanganui. A search was organised.
‘‘By that stage we were pretty worried,’’ Middleton remembers.
He was sure Karla would not run away, which left only one, more sinister, option. Middleton and his father began knocking on doors along the street asking if they could come inside and look for Karla.
When they reached Dally’s home – where Karla was captive – the police told them to stop. Frustratingly, the duo were told what they were doing was not legal.
Hours later, about 3am, Middleton was still searching the streets when he saw Dally drive away from his house in the dead of night. ‘‘I think Karla would have been in the boot of that car,’’ Middleton says. ‘‘Crazy, eh.
‘‘We came so close. So close.’’ Veronica Cardno revisited Churton Crescent in 2001 and stood outside Dally’s old house.
‘‘I ran up and down this street [while the search was on] and the bugger was watching me out that window,’’ she told The Sunday StarTimes.
She looked out that same window: ‘‘I stood up there and from there you could see the whole street. He could watch the kids playing . . . He knew where we were, we just did not know where he was.’’
Stuff this month visited that house, and walked up those same narrow steps, and turned right into the same pokey room, where lace curtains obscure that same view below.
The resident now in that Housing NZ home played with her young child inside and had Googled the horror that played out in the same room where nappies are now changed.
Locals’ knowledge of that house and its terrible history vary from the too-informed – ‘‘you know what happened there’’ – to the oblivious.
But in the days and weeks following Karla’s abduction it was just another two-storey house among many.
The days blurred into one long nightmare for Karla’s family. Search parties scoured every inch of the Hutt area. Helicopters hung in the sky. The nation’s eyes were trained on Taita.
The community rallied. People brought food to the family, local gangs brought groceries and mowed the lawns.
Spiritual mediums offered their advice. ‘‘It drove the police mad,’’ Veronica Cardno recalled. ‘‘Because they have to check out everything.’’
Middleton: ‘‘There was no trace. She just disappeared.
‘‘We tried with all our might. We tried until we fell down. We did not sleep.
‘‘We went day, after day, after day. ‘‘She died in a pretty horrific way. She must have been absolutely terrified.’’
Where was Karla?
Pheona Harris was a childhood friend of Karla’s. The pair went to Taita Central School then intermediate together. In the third form, Karla went to Hutt Valley High and Harris went to Taita College.
‘‘We just hung out on the street, playing ball,’’ she says.
Harris remembers coming home from school to the news Karla was missing.
For six weeks one question occupied New Zealanders’ minds: Where was Karla?
Harris remembers a policeimposed curfew after dark and officers asking if there were other teenagers on the street.
Then one day she came home to an almost-deserted street with police road blocks. That was the moment police had finally hit on the horrible truth: Dally had abducted and killed Karla and buried her in a shallow grave near Eastbourne.
Middleton: ‘‘It was a very strange morning. I suppose it was about 6am. I was in Oriental Parade and we got a call saying they had found her. That was a relief.’’
At Taita Mini Mart, Suresh Patel remembers getting the horrific news of the ‘‘nice, smiley girl’’ who was a regular in his store.
‘‘To hear she was killed and buried alive – it was quite shocking.’’
As was the news that the killer was Dally, another regular.
‘‘He was really quiet, and very polite with us . . . when we heard he killed her, we were really surprised.’’
Dally, a father of three, had been an early suspect in the case.
A man fitting his description was seen with Karla at the Taita shops that evening.
His distinctive vehicle was seen at Pencarrow. He worked at the Hutt Valley Drainage Board and had keys to the gates across the Pencarrow road. His stories and explanations did not add up.
But for six weeks he withstood persistent questioning from police.
It was July 8, 1989, that Dally finally gave in, under intense questioning from police, who appealed to his morality – by allowing Karla to be returned to her family.
He led police to the remote Pencarrow grave. The area had already been searched.
At a depositions hearing, Dally pleaded not guilty despite earlier telling police he was guilty.
Dally, who was in Porirua Hospital at the time, told Crown prosecutor Ken Stone he was depressed about his family (he had been through a recent break-up), the constant questioning from police, and the accusations he looked at girls sexually.
‘‘Didn’t you have something else on your mind? You knew where the body was?’’ Stone asked.
Dally: ‘‘Yes, I did.’’
Stone: ‘‘You put it there.’’ Dally: ‘‘Yes.’’
Stone: ‘‘That wasn’t troubling you at all?’’
Dally: ‘‘It may have done – I am not sure.’’
On July 8, 1989, Dally asked Detective Sergeant Mike Small what would happen to him.
‘‘I asked: Do you believe you killed Karla?’’ Small said.
‘‘He said: Yes, I don’t want to go to court. I just want to plead guilty. I just want to plead guilty and get it all over with.’’
It was March 1990, when Dally pleaded guilty at the High Court in Wellington.
A voice from the back of the court could have spoken for New Zealand.
‘‘Yes, you bastard.’’