Memorial to Tanya Burr, killed 15 September 2002

Back Home Safely: 13 September 2002

This photo shows the carshed my neighbour and I share. It shows my car about to head for the camera shop (after having already taken Kieran to school) and Tanya's car still tucked away in my neighbour's shed, where it had spent the preceding month. Although the photo shows the date stamp 12/9/2002, that was still to Northern Hemisphere time and in fact the photos were taken about 9:30 am on Friday 13 September.

Tanya also told me that she had fainted in Paris just before they returned to England. I assumed she had not been eating properly (my major concern always), but probably this was a side effect of her still-secret (tragically until the autopsy), late-first trimester pregnancy.

The film in Tanya's camera was just about finished when she got back to New Zealand. We agreed that I would finish the film off first thing on the Friday morning and then take it and her other used films in to be developed. I didn't want to wait ages to see what her trip had been like, and the surest way to deal with the problem was to pay for them to be developed myself. She commented that she liked the way my photos had turned out, compared to Auntie Pam's films, which had been done in bulk in Lower Hutt. So I was to take them to Bells in Palmerston North - a little photography shop that provided the original films and which was to develop a wide variety of very sad photos relating to Tanya over subsequent weeks.

So on Friday morning as Tanya slept, I roamed about snapping away at various cats and the cars - for want of much else to choose from. Had I not done this, the final trip film would doubtless have been lost as the killer stole the camera and then pawned it, although the police subsequently retrieved it.

When Tanya saw my efforts that afternoon, she moaned and (very typically) said I should have only taken cats! Instead I had taken cars as well as cats - and this was VERY NAUGHTY of me. So she decided the several photos with cats could go in her new album, while the car ones (except the one that also had Sophie the cat from next door in it) had to stay out of the album. They remained in the envelope with the negatives. I tried unsuccessfully to find them two days later when the police asked me for a photo of the car (which was long since found by then, strangely enough). Given the enormous distress of the occasion, I couldn't find the two photos on the spur of the moment and I think they later showed up in one of our film envelopes. Alternatively, they were with Tanya's other holiday negatives in her new mauve handbag that was found right beside Tanya's body. In that case they were the only photos of the car that were actually in the flat. 

Late on the afternoon of Friday, 13 September - after her films were developed and had been installed in the new photo album I bought her to complete the job, and after she had remarked that she thought I was trying to delay her departure another night (I was, because she was very tired) - she drove to her paternal auntie's home in Dannevirke. 

She had been delighted that her car had started instantly after a month in the shed. My neighbour also gave her his silver windscreen reflector from his recently sold car. She would have been delighted to have received this to add to all the bottles of car polish he had previously given her for the same reason. The reflector did not come back with the car. Presumably the killer would have had to remove it from the windscreen in order to drive the car. Presumably the police still have it.

Anyway, we said a happy, casual farewell that afternoon, as we'd arranged that I was to take up a computer for her in "two or three weeks". Furthermore, she planned to come back to my place soon for the armchair she couldn't fit in her tiny car (which converts to a little truck!) on this trip because of her suitcase. 

And so Tanya backed out of our driveway, waved a very cheery goodbye and disappeared from sight. It was all very 'normal' and 'no big deal'. No-one could have anticipated that her next brief visit would be five days later - in a coffin in the back of her auntie's 4WD and driven by her father, when they called in to collect a little mountain of flowers. Or that two days after that - a week after she waved that goodbye to the home she grew up in - she would pay one more little visit inside the house for one last little preening session, followed by a brief pause in a drive-by when en route to her final resting place, inside a hearse.

******

Below is the second of the car photos Tanya decided were not as worthy of having in her album as any old cat photo would have been. It shows the car still in my neighbour's shed, while Tanya slept off her trip on 13 September. 

Noteworthy about this photo is that it shows the very distinctive big patch of brown undercoat (not given full justice in this lightened view) on the back bumper. This would catch my eye the following day in Dannevirke and result in my having one last chance to see Tanya alive. It also helped the dumped car be found almost instantly (when the message seeking it came over the radio) by a Taupo policeman several hours after Tanya's body was found. The lettering on the right side of the boot lid was also temporarily 'distinctive', as the boot came from a fancier grade of bright red (to save painting it) Integra following Tanya's 2001 accident. This lettering has since been painted over.

 Too bad if it was that false claim which attracted the eye of a young guy perhaps with an overwhelming urge to drive a real live, bright red and apparently racy 'PlayStation' car - as he walked passed it in driveway outside the door of Tanya's flat!! (It is noteworthy that Tanya's entire knowledge of Honda Integras at the time she bought it, was derived from her PlayStation!)