Memorial To Tanya Burr, 1981-2002

Court Dates - from the 'trial that wasn't'

This page was previously on the 'Notices' page, but is now consigned to history, but worth a glance for its quirkiness in 'how to run a trial'!

26 February 2003: Rotorua High Court - Brief call-over appeaarance following the completion of Psychological Report Mk I (requested at the last Youth Court appearance on 12 November 2002) that was not completed in time to the last appearance (which was also the first High Court appearance) on 18 December 2002. Because of this name suppression was continued. As the NZ courts etc. shut down for the summer break, this provided the accused with over two months more name suppression.

Name Suppression lifted 27 February 2003

30 April 2003: Rotorua High Court - Yet another brief call-over to present yet another Psych. Report. - However, that didn't happen - again - as whoever was employed to do it presumably had more important things to do and didn't finish it in time for the 30 April callover  - like last time (i.e. on 18 December)! You would think that reports required for murder trials would have some semblance of a priority, but evidently not. And so........

20 May 2003: Rotorua High Court  - (changed from 15 May, and then cancelled altogether) Yet another brief call-over to present yet another 'incomplete on the date required' Psych. Report. 

26 May 2003: Rotorua High Court - Was going to be the start of the trial for a case expected to take about five days. Previously it was set for 12 May (Tanya's 22nd birthday) and before that 16 May. However, it merely became the occasion of the delivery of a long-awaited guilty plea. And so therefore......

22 August 2003: Rotorua High Court - Formerly 20 June 2003, then 3 July 2003, and then postponed again (including for a time with no known date) to await the eventual decision of the Choy [2001 pizza murder] and Pigott [Waitara] Appeals - which took place in Wellington in mid-June. The sentencing then took place on this third date.

Sentencing!

Thus on 22 August 2003, John Wharekura (aged 17) was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum non-parole period of fourteen years. This was reduced from the standard seventeen years non-parole period in home invasion cases, as he had given the police a detailed account of what he had done - as soon as they finally caught him! He (much) later claimed remorse (according to his lawyer), but this evidently (again according to his lawyer) seemed perhaps a consequence of the reality of his own fate - rather than any concern about Tanya's. 

The only certain motive (there are others to consider) was that he wanted to steal Tanya's 1600cc 1993 Honda Integra car - and evidently killing her was the easiest way to achieve this. However, he also wanted to join the Mongrel Mob - and had expressed this wish as late as the previous day. Killing someone is said to be a way in, and who better than a defenceless and totally unsuspecting young woman at home watching TV with her cats - apparently! We also heard from various unconnected Rotorua sources that he had been talking about wanting to kill someone as a life experience well before he actually killed.

Wharekura believed that the car ran out of petrol about 90 minutes driving time out of Rotorua. This was mentioned a few times during sentencing. The police confirm that they put NO petrol in the car while they had it - and certainly it was not out of petrol when we received it back from them, albeit that it was rather low. 

The remaining 'available cause', then, is that this occasion is the first we can be aware of where the car's computer shut down the electrical charge to its fuel pump. This fault took months to gradually develop into a major pain in the neck, and even longer to finally be diagnosed and repaired. The car would refuse to restart immediately when shut off hot, thereby acting as if it had run out of petrol. Thus the car appears to have genuinely removed itself from the equation - leaving a vicious killer to find his own way to Wellington in the dead of night in a rural area, and without the prize he had just written off his own life, as well as Tanya's, over.

Roll on the first Parole Board hearing - in about September 2016.

The Burr Family will be certainly be there....

Unfortunately, the following people who in the course of Wharekura's existence did not do things that might/would/could have ensured that he did not find himself in this appalling position (let alone Tanya's situation!); or who provoked him the same day and then allowed him to wander off into the night by his own admission to them to steal someone's car with their own carving knife; or who knew within an hour or so what he had done to Tanya, but didn't feel sufficient concern or compassion for another human being to tell the authorities for about twenty hours (presumably when she was told that she was an accessory to a murder); or who was hiding from Tanya at the time of her death as a result of lack of a sense of personal responsibility to care for the property of others, will not receive the varying degrees of punishment that they so richly deserve:

Some Forget-me-Not flowers seemed an appropriate picture to end this page with