Crimes NZ

Teina Pora was wrongly imprisoned for 20 years for the rape and murder of Susan Burdett, brutally attacked in her Papatoetoe home in March 1992. Investigative journalist Eugene Bingham joins Jesse to us through the case.

On Monday 23 March, 1992, Susan Burdett was raped and beaten to death with a softball bat.

What followed would become one of this country's most prominent miscarriages of justice.

Teina Pora was convicted of Burdett's rape and murder in 1994, found guilty again at a retrial in 2000, but eventually the convictions were quashed by the Privy Council in 2004.

In 2020, prolific rapist Malcolm Rewa was found guilty of the crime.

Investigative Journalist Eugene Bingham spent four years investigating the case and describes how a man spent more than 20-years of his life in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Olivia Hope and Ben Smart disappeared in the Marlborough Sounds in the early hours of New Year's Day in 1998. Investigative journalist and author, Mike White, has covered this case through all its twists and turns over two decades.

Ben Smart and Olivia Hope were last seen about 4am on January 1 1998 when they were dropped off to a yacht by a water taxi.

Ben and Olivia were planning to sleep on the chartered yacht Tamarack but found all the berths were full.

Three other passengers were travelling on the water-taxi, one was a single man who offered the pair a place to sleep on his yacht.

Ben and Olivia head off with the man, to his yacht - this is the last time they are seen alive.

Five months later, on the 15th of June, 1998, Scott Watson was arrested and charged with their murder.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details