Memorial to Tanya Burr, killed 15 September 2002
Guilty Plea: 26 May 2003
The following news items are from the www.stuff.co.nz website, in order to 'quote' from an independent source. However, as the links will expire quickly, pasting them here is the only means to retain them.
John Michael Jaymain Wharekura, 17, has pleaded guilty to murdering the 21-year-old, his admission coming just moments before he was to stand trial in the High Court at Rotorua.
The unemployed teenager did not know his victim, and has not offered any explanation for his actions.
Miss Burr was killed almost instantly when the teenager knocked on her door on the night on September 15 last year, claiming to want a piece of paper and pen to leave a neighbouring relative a note.
He stabbed her 15 times in what police described as a "furious and brutal" attack.
Miss Burr's mother, Val Burr, said her daughter was pregnant when she was killed.
Wharekura told police he was visiting the block of flats in which Miss Burr lived to ask a relative if he could stay.
He was armed with a carving knife, which he had hidden up his sleeve.
He had earlier that day been told he could no longer stay in another flat, effectively making him homeless.
Miss Burr, a saleswoman and telephone surveyor, was home alone.
When Wharekura first knocked on her door and asked if she knew the people in the neighbouring flat, she told him she did not and he left.
When he returned 10 minutes later, she was annoyed.
After asking her for a pen and paper to leave a message for his relatives, Wharekura pulled out the knife and stabbed her 15 times in the back, chest and abdomen.
Following the attack, Wharekura searched Miss Burr's flat and stole a purse, cash, a carton of cigarettes and a camera. He washed the knife in the kitchen and left it in the sink.
Using her car keys, he drove her car to his girlfriend's house at Reporoa where he told her he had done something bad and "stabbed a chick". He told his girlfriend he thought he had killed the woman.
Before leaving his girlfriend's house, he swapped the clothes he was wearing and said he was going to Wellington to see a friend.
Publicity the next day about the murder prompted Wharekura's girlfriend and her family to contact police.
Police were already looking for Wharekura in Porirua when he approached a police car and asked the occupants if they were looking for him.
He told police he had no explanation as to why he murdered the stranger in an unprovoked attack.
Justice
Baragwanath remanded Wharekura in custody to reappear in the High Court for
sentencing on June 20.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/bayofplenty/0,2106,2504146a6014,00.html
Val Burr believes her daughter would be alive today if laws relating to young criminals were harsher.
"Maybe I've been hanging around courthouses too long but Rotorua needs to have a good look at itself. How can a city that has so many lovely people have an undercurrent that is so scary? Tanya met that undercurrent that night."
Miss Burr's best friend, Anita Bennett, said through tears yesterday that her life had been empty since the murder.
"I miss her so much. I wonder if my life will ever be the same again. I am so sick of crying."
Miss Burr's family and friends didn't miss any of Wharekura's eight Rotorua court appearances - despite having to drive from Palmerston North and Dannevirke.
They wanted him to know he had taken the life of a young woman who people loved and cared for, Mrs Burr said.
"We wanted to haunt the bastard.
"She meant nothing to him but we wanted him to know that Tanya was loved by us."
With only one more court appearance to come, Wharekura's sentencing on June 20, the Burrs and their friends are trying to get back to some kind of normality.
But it is the "why" that will always haunt them, Mrs Burr said.
She would have preferred a murder trial to go ahead because it might have given her some explanation why her daughter was singled out and murdered.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/bayofplenty/0,2106,2504118a6663,00.html
The long drives from Palmerston North and Dannevirke did not put off the team of supporters each time John Wharekura was to appear in court in Rotorua.
They wanted Wharekura to know he had taken the life of a young woman who people loved and cared for.
"We wanted to haunt the bastard," said Miss Burr's mother, Val Burr.
"She meant nothing to him but we wanted him to know that Tanya was loved by us."
Wharekura's Rotorua father and Whangarei mother attended the first couple of court hearings in Rotorua but had not been present since.
With only one more court appearance to come, Wharekura's sentencing in the High Court in Rotorua on June 20, the Burrs and their friends are trying to get back to some kind of normality.
But it is the "why" that will always haunt them.
Mr Wharekura pleaded guilty to murdering Miss Burr in her Rotorua flat on September 15 when he appeared in the High Court in Rotorua today.
His admission came moments before he was to stand trial. He has offered no explanation for murdering a woman he did not know and for no apparent reason.
Mrs Burr said they had known for about a week that Wharekura was likely to plead guilty to murder before the trial got under way.
Although it prevented family from the anguish of having to go through hearing the details of the murder in a trial, Mrs Burr said that in some ways she would have preferred the trial to take place.
She said he was always going to be guilty of murder, whether found guilty or pleading guilty. She said Wharekura had escaped "public humiliation" by not going through a trial.
"The family and victims still have to go through that."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/bayofplenty/0,2106,2504087a6663,00.html
Yesterday, they travelled to Rotorua to hear the expected guilty plea from John Michael Jermaine Wharekura, who stabbed Tanya dead in an opportunist and unprovoked attack last September.
Mrs Burr still doesn't know why he did it.
The trip north was the eighth Mrs Burr, 50, has made since the murder. She had been tipped off before the hearing by Victim Support that Wharekura would change his plea to guilty.
Mrs Burr is planning just one more trip to Rotorua.
"That's for the sentencing," Mrs Burr said.
She plans to speak at the sentencing, and says her 12-year-old son Kieran might speak, too. "He's thinking about it. Victim Support has mentioned it. It's a possibility."
Wharekura's trial for the murder of Tanya Burr, 21, was to have begun yesterday, but ended after 10 minutes with the guilty plea. Wharekura will be sentenced on June 20.
Miss Burr was stabbed to death in her Hilda Street flat in Rotorua last September 15. The two did not know each other.
According to police, Wharekura knocked on the door of Miss Burr's flat and asked if she knew the people in an adjoining flat. She replied that she did not and he left. He sat outside the block of flats for about 10 minutes before returning to ask for pen and paper to leave a message. He then stabbed Miss Burr in the back, chest and abdomen with a knife.
Wharekura had offered no explanation for the unprovoked attack.
Miss Burr lived in Palmerston North and Dannevirke all her life before moving to Rotorua 18 months ago.
At the court yesterday was her brother Kieran, her aunt Pam O'Grady, uncles Bruce and Russell Burr, cousins Raymond and Jamie Mills and her "second family", close friend Anita Bennett and her family from Dannevirke.
Mrs Burr was pleased the trial was over but still very angry.
"Tanya was totally not part of his life. He intruded on her life. I'm sickened that his aiders and abetters don't have any responsibility for why he ended up doing this.
"They can just walk away. That upsets me."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/eveningstandard/0,2106,2504229a6003,00.html
John Michael Jaymain Wharekura, aged 17, appearing in the Rotorua High Court, on 26 May 2003, during the appearance where he pleaded guilty to murdering Tanya. This photo is scanned from one appearing in the Rotorua Daily Post on 27 May 2003 - hence the fold in the middle.
