JANUARY SPEAKER Lin Sinton

The speaker at the meeting 18 January 2024 was Lin Sinton, a recently joined member of Killarney Heights Probus, who in an earlier career was a Detective for over twenty years in the New Zealand Police. Lin spoke of a murderinvestigation involving the 1979 death of a service station attendant, Mr Rodney Tahu, who was shot at Turangi, a small town in the centre of the North Island of New Zealand.
The case became a type of “cold case” investigation because although the identity of the offender was known within hours of the crime, and the man made a full confession to his estranged wife, the subsequent prosecution finally floundered because the ballistics evidence was uncertain and a quirk in the law relating to the evidence of his estranged wife meant that his confession could not be used against him in Court.
The man was discharged by a Magistrate at a preliminary court hearing and went free. The dismissal of the case at that early stage did not prevent himbeing re-charged, without risk of double jeopardy, if later additional evidencecame to hand.
But it was not until over thirty years later, the law having changed to allow his confession to be produced in court, that the man then in his seventies wasre-arrested, tried before a Judge and Jury, convicted and sentenced to lifeimprisonment. He subsequently died in prison. The Police’s determination to pursue the matter meant that finally Mr Tahu’s family received some measure of closure, the public were reminded that a
murder case is never closed even after many years, and those who might have the inclination to commit murder might think twice as there is no statute of limitation on murder cases.
The members thanked Lin for his talk and Brian Skingsley for his assistance with the technical side of the presentation