Murder of Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen

On 8 April 1989, backpacking tourists Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen of Storfors, Värmland County, Sweden, went into the bush near Thames, a town on the Coromandel Peninsula on New Zealand's North Island. The couple vanished and were reported missing in May. Their disappearance led to an intense investigation under the name Operation Stockholm and attracted substantial media interest. Police, local residents, search and rescue and military personnel carried out the largest land-based search undertaken in New Zealand, performing grid-searches centred on Crosbie's Clearing, 12 km from Thames.[1]

Three prison inmates testified against Tamihere at his 1990 trial. One of them, known as Secret Witness C, claimed that Tamihere confessed to him in prison that he had beaten Höglin over the head with a lump of wood and dumped the couple's bodies at sea. He also claimed Tamihere told him he gave Höglin's watch to his son.[19] This account was contradicted by evidence discovered along with Höglin's remains in October 1991.[19]

On 25 August 1995, five years after the trial, Witness C swore an affidavit retracting this statement, saying police had fed him the information and told him: “a sum of money up to $100,000 was available should I decide to give a statement helpful to the Police". The prisoner also claimed police indicated they would support his early release at his parole hearing if he did what they wanted.[20]

The existence of this affidavit only came to light a year later on 17 July 1996, when Witness C spoke to broadcaster Paul Holmes in a prison telephone interview. He publicly admitted to lying at Tamihere's trial and confirmed that the affidavit he had signed in 1995, stating that he had lied and given false evidence, was the truth. He told Holmes that his original testimony against Tamihere had been "playing on his mind" and "they definitely have an innocent man inside".[21] The publicity created immediate concerns about police conduct in the case, leading a Member of Parliament to request a ministerial inquiry. The Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) was also asked to investigate police handling of the case. The IPCA eventually concluded that the police had not been guilty of any wrongdoing,[20] and Minister of Justice Doug Graham rejected a call for further inquiry.

Witness C later tried to withdraw his affidavit and claimed that his original trial testimony was the correct version of events. He said he only signed the affidavit because he and his family were under threat of violent reprisal because of his reputation as a jailhouse "nark".[22] Twenty years later, long after Tamihere had been released on parole, jailhouse lawyer Arthur Taylor brought a private prosecution against Witness C for perjury. In August 2017, Witness C, who still had name suppression, was found guilty on eight charges of perjury. Taylor was represented in court by lawyer Murray Gibson, who said the verdict called into question everything about Mr. Tamihere's conviction.[23]

On 25 October 2017, Witness C was sentenced to eight years, seven months on each of the eight charges of perjury, the sentences to be served concurrently.[24]

On 26 April 2018, the identity of Witness C was revealed as Robert Conchie Harris. He had originally been convicted of the double murder of a couple in 1983.[25] Harris died on 17 September 2021 at Northland Region Corrections Facility.[26]

In November 2009, New Zealand journalist Pat Booth, formerly of the Auckland Star, alleged that the Crown prosecutor and the police inquiry head in the Tamihere case were both leading figures in the earlier prosecution of Arthur Allan Thomas, which had involved the planting of evidence, perjury, and withholding of information and evidence from the defence.[27]

In May 2017, Alan Ford, an experienced bushman, found a plastic bag containing three pairs of women's leggings in the rugged bush on the Whangamatā Peninsula about 15 km from where Höglin's remains had been found. Ford took the bag and clothing to Whangamatā police station. Two months later, a police constable emailed him saying that his senior officer had "no interest in the items" and that they wouldn't be testing them. The constable said Ford could pick up the items the next time he came to town. On 7 July, Ford went to the police station but was told the items had been destroyed on 9 June, a month before the constable had indicated by email that the items still existed.[28]

The TV3 show Inside New Zealand: What's Your Verdict? re-examined the case with a television jury in 2007.[10]

Filmmaker Bryan Bruce made a documentary Murder, They Said in 1996 examining the case,[29] and wrote the book Hard Cases, which puts forward the theory Tamihere did not act alone, on the basis that as there were no defensive cuts to the bones of his hands, Höglin may have been held from behind while being stabbed from the front.[30]

In 1999, Leanne Pooley made a television documentary Relative Guilt about the impact on Tamihere's extended family of his arrest, trial and conviction. The documentary won Best Documentary at the 2000 Qantas Media Awards.[31]

The case was covered in episode 209 of the true crime podcast Casefile.

• List of solved missing person cases
• Murder of Grace Millane