PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "Police still strongly believe Manning was murdered at the Mongrel Mob pad, with numerous people involved. But despite having DNA samples from most known Christchurch Mob members, and associates of people of interest, none match the “Male B” profile. And police are reluctant to concede Fawcett has no knowledge of the crime, having sought to retry him, and opposing the charges against him being dismissed. But (defence lawyer) Christopher Stevenson has a swift response: “Well, where’s the evidence? There’s no evidence he’s anything but innocent.” He points out that one of the world’s leading experts in false confessions, Professor Richard Leo of San Francisco University, said the “threats and promises” in Fawcett’s interviews were, “without question, psychologically coercive”, and raised the risk he would falsely confess. Moreover, Fawcett’s inability to describe crucial pieces of evidence - such as Manning’s injuries; or that she was clothed when dumped; or that his claimed movements didn’t match cellphone data - pointed to him actually having no idea what happened, and his confession being false. To that end, Stevenson says they will be seeking a complete exoneration for Fawcett, and restoration of his mana, reputation and dignity. Crown claims there was other evidence implicating Fawcett, have been comprehensively debunked, Stevenson says. But, as happens all round the world, police and prosecutors simply wouldn’t abandon their theories. “DNA exonerations are filled with examples of these sorts of cases. When it becomes clear they’ve got the wrong person, they still strain and come up with new theories. “The cold, hard reality is that whoever raped and murdered Mellory Manning, unless they’ve passed away, is walking the streets in New Zealand somewhere.”
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GIST: "Thirteen years ago, Christchurch sex worker Mellory Manning was abducted, raped, killed and dumped in the Avon River. All within 16 minutes. Using remarkable forensic evidence, Mongrel Mob prospect Mauha Fawcett was convicted and jailed for her murder. But last year, the case against Fawcett collapsed, amid controversy about police tactics, and he walked free. Mike White investigates the extraordinary and terrible case of Mauha Fawcett, how he became New Zealand’s latest miscarriage of justice victim, and why Mellory Manning’s murder remains unsolved.
Christopher Stevenson wasn’t convinced.
The Wellington lawyer had been asked to help Mauha Fawcett, a Mongrel Mob prospect found guilty of murdering Christchurch prostitute Mellory Manning in 2008.
But Stevenson knew it was a huge and complex case, and wasn’t sure he had the time to do it justice.
“I ummed and ahhed for a while, but eventually agreed to at least meet Mauha.”
So, in October 2015, Stevenson and Christchurch barrister Kerry Cook went to Rimutaka Prison to see Fawcett.
Fawcett had been found guilty of murdering Manning the previous year, based on a confession he made during numerous intense police interviews, which also included ever-changing stories, demonstrably wrong claims, and flat-out denial of being involved.
“But you only needed to spend 15 or 30 seconds with Mauha,” says Stevenson, “and you knew that cognitively there’s something going on. It’s very clear.
“And I walked out of that first meeting and just knew we had to do something.”
On October 26, 2021, Stevenson walked out of the Christchurch High Court with Fawcett, whose murder conviction had finally been quashed and all charges against him dismissed.
In the six years between those two events, Stevenson, Cook and others had spent thousands of hours unpicking what had gone wrong with Fawcett’s conviction, and uncovering what is one of this country’s worst miscarriages of justice, according to Stevenson.
“It’s hard to imagine a criminal case, going more seriously off the rails.”
Just before 7am on Friday, December 19, 2008, a woman running along Dallington Tce, not far from Christchurch’s centre, noticed what she thought was someone’s legs in the Avon River.
She quickly signalled a passing kayaker, who realised it was a body and pulled it to the riverbank.
It was 27-year-old Ngatai Lynette Manning, better known as Mellory, whose slim and slashed body had been in the river for eight hours by then, clothed, and with her handbag still slung over her shoulder.
She had been beaten about the head and legs, raped, strangled, and stabbed numerous times, and was dead before being thrown in the river.
Police identified Manning from her fingerprints, and quickly learnt she was working as a prostitute in the city the night before.
Manning had left her home in Riccarton that evening wearing a pink skirt, blue-and-white polka dot bikini top, and a cardigan, and been dropped off at the corner of Manchester and Peterborough streets, about four blocks north of Cathedral Square, some time before 9.30pm.
She had one client shortly afterwards, and when she returned at 9.55pm, Manning told another prostitute to shift from her preferred working spot.
Manning then had a second client, and was back at her corner by 10.20pm, when she visited the nearby Salvation Army van for condoms, appearing in a good mood.
She was last seen by another prostitute around 10.35pm, but was gone 10 minutes later, when the prostitute returned.
At 10.41pm, Manning received a text from one of her earlier clients, saying he hoped to see her again. Manning replied to this at 10.43pm with a comment that didn’t suggest she was alarmed or in danger.
Cellphone data showed Manning was several blocks away from her corner when she sent this text, somewhere near the top of Victoria St and Bealey Ave. But when the client sent another text, 52 seconds later, Manning’s phone was out of service.
Her exact movements from this point aren’t certain.
All that’s known is that when Manning’s body was recovered from the river, the hands on her watch had stopped at 10.59pm.
What happened in those 16 minutes?
Where was Manning taken before she was attacked and killed, and dumped in the river, near where two people reported hearing a large splash around 11pm?
And why had she been targeted for such instant violence?
As police set up cordons and tracked down Manning’s connections, they began focusing on who else had been on Manchester St that night.
One person who’d been there was 21-year-old Mongrel Mob prospect Mauha Fawcett. Recently tattooed with the Mob’s insignia bulldog on his right cheek, but yet to receive his gang patch, Fawcett was also known as “Muck Dog”, “Mutt Dog” and “Little Mutt”.
One of his roles was to “look after” the sex workers in Christchurch’s red-light area along Manchester St. In return, prostitutes were expected to hand over a share of their earnings, about $20 for every client.
This was part of the Aotearoa Mongrel Mob chapter’s intensifying effort to take over the area and tax prostitutes, something Manning had supposedly resisted.
Manning had grown up tough, spent time in foster care, left school at 14, and began working as a prostitute the following year. She had regularly used hard drugs, and when she was 18 had been jailed for stabbing a shop assistant with a blood-filled syringe during a robbery.
But there were suggestions she had begun to clean up her life, despite being rocked by the death of her sister, Jasmine, in July 2008, while Jasmine was in witness protection.
By December 2008, Manning wasn’t using methamphetamine, had plans to study art, and was reportedly only returning to prostitution to make money to buy Christmas presents.
Mauha Fawcett also had a difficult upbringing, coming to the attention of authorities and police from an early age, using drugs as a child, and racking up dozens of convictions as he started life in the gang.
Ten days after Manning’s murder, Fawcett skipped town, leaving Christchurch in his red Toyota Corolla with a friend.
He only made it as far as Blenheim, where he crashed into a vineyard and abandoned the car.
Fawcett was already on the radar of police investigating Manning’s death, given he’d been on Manchester St that night. On December 27, police heard whispers he might have been involved in the murder, and the fact he’d left Christchurch raised eyebrows.
A warrant was also obtained for data from Fawcett’s cellphones.
Police eventually caught up with Fawcett in Nelson on 2 January 2009 where he was arrested for breaching bail.
On the way from his bail hearing to the police station to sign documents, Fawcett was intercepted by two detectives who’d flown up from Christchurch that morning to interview him about Manning’s murder. Over four hours, punctuated with a Big Mac, fries and cigarettes, Fawcett denied having anything to do with her death.
Meanwhile, back in Christchurch, police were focusing on other leads, including Manning’s partner who was a well-known criminal; a former partner who had been convicted of murder and rape; and another who had beaten Manning so badly she was hospitalised.
The key piece of evidence police had was a DNA profile from semen found on Manning’s body, left by a person they named “Male B”. But the sample didn’t match Fawcett, anyone on the National DNA Database of criminals, Manning’s clients, or other suspects.
The man in charge of Operation Dallington, Detective Inspector Greg Williams, initially believed Manning could have been killed by a client, given a UK study showing prostitutes were almost always murdered by clients.
However, the theory that the Mongrel Mob was involved with Manning’s death was always prominent.
The gang was known to have a pad in a warehouse surrounded by wasteland at 25 Galbraith Ave, about 3km from where Manning was last seen in Manchester St, and just a few hundred metres from where her body was found.
Also, it was clear some of its members, including Fawcett, were on Manchester St that night, dealing with prostitutes.
One idea was that Manning had been beaten and murdered by Mob members for not paying her “tax”, or because she owed them a drug debt.
Intriguingly, numerous grass seeds, some up to 2cm long, had been found embedded in Manning’s cardigan, suggesting she was lying on her back when attacked.
And when police visited the Mob pad four days after Manning’s body was found, an officer took samples of two grasses with seeds that looked like the ones in Manning’s cardigan.
When the property was officially searched in February 2009, police concluded it seemed a likely spot for the attack on Manning to have occurred.
But Williams needed someone inside the gang to speak, someone who might have heard or seen what happened to Manning. And he figured a gang dogsbody like Fawcett might be able to help them.
So, as the investigation ticked over 100 days, Williams organised for Fawcett to be interviewed again – but this time by specialist interviewers.
Williams approached Detective Inspector Tom Fitzgerald of Christchurch for help. The pair had worked together on other investigations, including the murder of Ashburton teenager Kirsty Bentley.
Fitzgerald picked two detectives whose job was to visit Fawcett and get information about Manning’s murder.
On 31 March 2009, the officers, who have name suppression, arrived unannounced at Waikeria Prison, where Fawcett was being held on other charges, and asked for Fawcett to come and see them.
Secreted on one of them, was a covert listening device.
And caught on those recordings is evidence of what police were prepared to do to get Fawcett to talk.
For 15 minutes, Fawcett refused to come up from his cell to meet them, so the officers discussed how they could tell a prison guard to emphasise to Fawcett, “that it’s vitally important for this man’s own, his safety, his life. And I reckon we just f…..g lie…”
An officer then suggested they should tell Fawcett “there’s two or three people that f…..g, want to f…..g kill his ass,” in order to get Fawcett to divulge information.
One officer seemed frustrated by the delay in meeting Fawcett: “F…..g hell, they just used to drag these c...ts up screaming and fighting.”
When Fawcett finally arrived, he said he’d heard the detectives wanted to speak to him about his safety. The officers replied: “Yeah, sure brother, that’s why we’re here. We’ve f…..g haven’t just flown up from Christchurch just to chew the fat with you.”
Almost immediately, the officers told Fawcett he was “in a power of shit”, and there was “some serious heat coming your way”.
“That's why we're here to f.....g lay that on the table and tell you about that. We've got some big concerns for you...things aren’t looking f.....g too hot for you.”
After giving Fawcett chocolate and drinks they’d brought into the prison, the officers claimed the Mongrel Mob was blaming him for Manning’s murder.
“They think you know too much ... they’re pushing the shit one way ... it’s coming your way ... everyone’s pointing the finger your way ... you need some serious help.”
The detectives repeatedly warned Fawcett he was facing retribution from the Mob.
“We're not bullshitting you. We're serious here. And it's about your safety, your wellbeing ... You’ve had the bashes already, but we're not talking bashes here. You know what I'm saying...”
They mentioned Manning (“the girl in the drink”) and suggested to Fawcett, “Are you going to be the next one in the river?”
Fawcett replied that the detectives were “freaking” him out. “F..k, is it that bad, mate?”
The reality was, there was virtually nothing indicating the Mob were pinning Manning’s murder on Fawcett – just a solitary, unverified, secondhand comment mentioned in a police interview.
As well as misleading Fawcett over this, the two officers also exaggerated the threats he faced from the Mob, as they probed him for information about Manning’s murder.
Referring to the Mongrel Mob as “the big red machine”, the detectives told Fawcett the gang wasn’t going to go away, and he couldn’t keep running, but the officers could look after him.
“You don't want to be f.....g carrying around burdens brother, trust me. Get it off your chest. We'll f.....g work through it with you,” one detective told him.
But the officers stressed “for us to help you, you’ve got to f…..g help us”, and “it’s a two-way thing man”.
Despite having earlier discussed that they should “just f.....g lie” to get Fawcett to see them, once Fawcett was in the room with them, the officers told him: “We're here to help, mate. We're not here to f.....g lie.”
And despite appearing to refer to Fawcett as “the c..t” when talking among themselves, to his face, the detectives told him: “It's about you,” and assured Fawcett his wellbeing was their paramount concern.
The interview ended with the repeated warning from the officers to Fawcett not to tell anyone about their conversation.
“Once you leave here, tell no c..t about us ... Don’t tell your mum, don’t tell your lawyer, don’t tell your missus, don’t tell...any c..t.”
The two officers were back to see Fawcett three months later.
They repeatedly told Fawcett not to panic if he’d done anything wrong, they could work through it, and told him , “We’re your f…..g lifeline.”
They also suggested they could offer him a new life, and even have the tattoo removed from his face, “but there’s a lot of hoops to go through.”
Mention was made of the possibility of a reward for helping them, “more folding than you would have ever seen in your life.”
Fawcett began to say he knew about Manning’s murder, that he saw her picked up, and that he helped wipe down the car she was taken in.
At the end of this interview, the officers repeated: “Don’t tell your f…..g lawyer everything about this, either.”
The following day, when the detectives spoke with Fawcett again, he changed some aspects of his story.
A month later, on July 28, 2009, the officers paid their fourth visit to Fawcett, and this time mentioned their “big boss, Tom” (DI Tom Fitzgerald) being part of helping “look after your bacon”.
They told him “big boss” was “one of the fold”, part of their “team”, and promised Fawcett that “he buys big cans of Coke...he buys two-litre bottles.”
Despite lengthy questioning, Fawcett continued to deny involvement in Manning’s murder, other than wiping down a car.
After repeating, yet again, that he mustn't talk to his lawyers about their discussions, because the lawyers might be representing other Mongrel Mob members, the detectives noted the possibility of immunity for Fawcett, and stressed they would try to look after him.
“We’ll ride the road with you, brother.”
Three days later, Greg Williams received the kind of information investigators dream of.
On June 30, he had sent seeds recovered from Manning’s clothes to Dallas
Mildenhall, one of the world’s leading palynologists, or pollen scientists.
Staring down a microscope in his Lower Hutt office, Mildenhall discovered some of the pollen from the ripgut brome grass on Manning’s cardigan had a mutant second pore, an extremely rare occurrence.
Williams asked Mildenhall to urgently test grass samples taken from the Mongrel Mob pad in Galbraith Ave.
On 31 July 2009, Mildenhall found identical mutant pores on the gang pad grass, almost certainly confirming the wasteland by the warehouse was where Manning had been attacked.
Williams quickly moved to reinterview Fawcett, this time using DI Tom Fitzgerald, who he regarded as one of the country’s best interviewers.
Fitzgerald, who is now a Detective Superintendent and director of the police Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB), had been involved in numerous high profile investigations, including the disappearance of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope, and arrested Scott Watson for their murder.
On August 10, after reading Fawcett his rights, Fitzgerald said he wanted to speak with Fawcett about Manning’s murder, because he believed Fawcett knew what happened to her.
Fawcett then began a lengthy account of what occurred the night Manning was killed.
His story changed and evolved over several versions, but crucially, at one point, Fawcett said he had been given a pole and told to hit Manning.
“I just hit the body. I just shut my eyes and hit her.”
He suggested he had been told to be part of the attack, in order to win his gang patch.
Officers cajoled and censured Fawcett in an effort to extract more information from him, continually calling him “mate”, as well as “good boy”, “bright boy”, and “silly boy”.
Fawcett’s story constantly changed, with different people killing Manning, different weapons being used, different rapists, and his own role diminishing.
After naming two different Mob members as being the killer, he then claimed a sex worker stabbed Manning.
He nominated two people who raped her, but both had been ruled out because their DNA didn’t match that found in the semen sample, and one of them was actually in prison at the time.
He claimed he spoke with one prostitute that night, who turned out to have been in Hamilton at the time.
He struggled to describe Manning’s injuries, and said she was stripped naked before being raped, though she was found with most of her clothing still on.
Events he recalled, and places he claims he went during that evening, didn’t correlate with cellphone data and were simply impossible.
He claimed Manning was attacked and raped inside the gang pad - but this didn’t match with grass seeds being embedded in her clothing, or the scratches on her back.
He told Fitzgerald where weapons used in the attack were hidden - in a toolbox under dog kennels in Burwood - but when police searched the property, including digging up some areas, there was nothing. It was clearly completely wrong.
His conversations were often punctuated by long pauses, hesitations, and a failure to answer questions.
This caused Fitzgerald to get frustrated, telling Fawcett in one interview: “You’re not making a lot of sense at the moment, okay? ... I can tell you’re holding back, okay? And I know you’re not telling the truth, when it’s hurting, so just look at me and tell me the truth, okay? Let’s go.”
But Fawcett was obviously struggling, and at one point told Fitzgerald, “My head just goes zzzzzzzz ... like a boiling kettle.”
When Fitzgerald asked Fawcett why he kept changing his story, Fawcett replied: “I thought it would lead away, Tom. You know, I thought yous would a just went, looked at it, and made it all up Tom, and thought, nah … it didn’t happen, and just left me alone. But yous still coming back.”
At one point, Fawcett said he was “sorta just stunned”, adding, “Oh, I’m stuck, aye, Tom.”
Fitzgerald’s frustration with Fawcett’s reluctance or inability to respond was evident when, during one interview, Fawcett complained how hot it is.
“That’s why we need to get this sorted and move on and have a sleep,” snapped Fitzgerald. “I’m tired, you’re tired. This could have taken 10 minutes.”
In another interview, after Fawcett again changed his story and swore he didn't see what happened to Manning, Fitzgerald exploded: “Don’t lie to me and say you don’t know … don’t insult me.”
Fitzgerald carried on, “I know when you are telling the truth, and you know I know when you are telling the truth - I can see it in your face, I can see it in your eyes.”
At the end of one two-and-a-quarter-hour session, where Fawcett introduced yet more versions of events and characters who were involved, an exasperated Fitzgerald remarked, “So, what have we established today?”
“Nothing really, eh,” replied Fawcett.
In total, Fawcett was interviewed for 30 hours, during 11 sessions, over more than three years.
And ultimately - and repeatedly throughout those interviews - Fawcett stressed he played no part in the murder, and insisted he didn’t know who killed Manning.
This didn’t stop police charging him with Manning’s murder in March 2012, on the basis of the short-lived apparent confession he made in his first interview with Tom Fitzgerald on August 10, 2009, when he claimed he hit Manning with a pole, and helped dispose of her body.
After falling out with and sacking his lawyer, Craig Ruane, Fawcett represented himself at his trial in 2014, though the Court appointed Ruane to help him.
In his defence, Fawcett, by now 26, said police had forced him into making a confession, and denied he was guilty.
“I’m here charged for murder for what I’ve said [to the police]. I’ve made these false confessions, which was due to pressure put on by the police. I’m very shocked to be standing here today.”
He argued police had coached him into making his admissions, and dangled inducements such as financial rewards and removing the Mob tattoo from his face.
Police kept re-interviewing him to get “more glue to make it stick”, Fawcett said.
“I was never at the gang pad. I didn't take part in this. It's just all a made-up theory,”
Fawcett didn’t give evidence or call any witnesses, but in his closing address, told the jury he’d stupidly implicated himself in the crime.
“I lied. People lie for many things ... but I did not take part in this lady’s death.”
The jury took six hours to say they didn’t believe him, and two months later, in May 2014, Fawcett was sentenced to at least 20 years in prison.
Prosecutor Phil Shamy scathingly told the judge, “There is little Mr Fawcett has done to endear himself to this court.”
Judge David Gendall said the attack on Manning was characterised by brutality, depravity and callousness. “You have shown no remorse at all, Mr Fawcett.”
Mauha Fawcett, said nothing.
But many things remained murky, many questions were left unanswered.
Why would Manning, who hadn’t been working on the streets much of late, have been summarily murdered for refusing to pay a Mongrel Mob tax which would have amounted to about $40 that night? Moreover, her partner and minder told police there weren’t problems with the Mob about refusing their tax.
Talk of a drug debt wasn’t supported by Manning’s autopsy, which confirmed she hadn’t been using methamphetamine.
Among all the rambling, contradictory, and patently ridiculous and wrong claims Fawcett made in his numerous interviews, how could police single out and rely on the few incriminating statements Fawcett made during one interview, to charge and convict him?
Virtually nothing he said could be independently corroborated, as shown by the fact police never charged anyone Fawcett suggested was also involved in the crime.
In a case with precious little other evidence implicating Fawcett - no eyewitnesses to the crime; no forensics; and a jailhouse snitch with two convictions for perverting the course of justice, who seemed motivated by the $50,000 reward for information - Christopher Stevenson saw something else.
During that first meeting with Fawcett in Rimutaka Prison, Stevenson became certain Fawcett needed to be psychologically assessed, and in 2016 asked neuropsychologist Valerie McGinn to interview him.
Her conclusions were shocking.
To her mind, it was incontrovertible Fawcett was suffering from Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).
It is caused by mothers drinking during pregnancy, and their child being exposed to alcohol before they are born. Those with FASD suffer lifelong disabilities affecting their brain and body.
McGinn’s diagnosis of Fawcett, which was later accepted by two other experts, was that Fawcett was brain-damaged.
Her testing showed Fawcett suffered significant memory impairment, and when he couldn’t remember, he was prone to making up something.
“Statements made by Mr Fawcett that are not supported by objective corroborating evidence are at high risk of being erroneous, notwithstanding any apparent belief of Mr Fawcett that they are correct.”
McGinn said Fawcett’s FASD meant he was “more susceptible or likely to falsely confess to a crime, to making or agreeing to a false incriminating statement, or making an admission or confession in response to police questioning”.
Describing Fawcett as a “disabled young man”, she said his condition meant he would “fall for every ploy utilised by the police as they interviewed him over prolonged periods on multiple occasions”.
McGinn was involved with assessing Teina Pora, wrongfully convicted of raping and murdering Susan Burdett in 1992. Pora spent 22 years in prison, after falsely confessing to the crimes.
It was only after he was found to have FASD that Pora’s convictions were quashed.
McGinn found Fawcett was more highly suggestible, and confabulated more markedly than Pora.
Presented with Fawcett’s FASD diagnosis, in 2017 the Court of Appeal quashed his conviction for murdering Manning, and ordered a retrial.
While the Crown accepted Fawcett’s disability, it continued to argue his evidence was reliable enough to be heard by another jury.
But in September 2021, High Court judge Rachel Dunningham ruled the evidence gained by police in their interviews with him, including his supposed confessions, was unreliable and inadmissible.
She described Fawcett giving “a bewildering variety of accounts of his movements that evening”, and, in a superlative moment of judicial understatement, noted, “Mr Fawcett is clearly not a reliable historian.”
Dunningham blamed this on his FASD, and pointed out there was no independent, verifiable evidence of Fawcett’s direct participation in the attack on Manning.
“I am simply not satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that Mr Fawcett’s account of his involvement in the murder is reliable.”
Accepting it had virtually no other evidence against Fawcett, the Crown folded its hand.
On September 28, 2021, after spending nearly 10 years in prison or on restrictive bail for a crime he is adamant he didn’t commit, Fawcett walked out of jail.
In many ways, it seems the investigation into one of Christchurch’s most high-profile murders is little further ahead than it was 13 years ago.
Police still strongly believe Manning was murdered at the Mongrel Mob pad, with numerous people involved. But despite having DNA samples from most known Christchurch Mob members, and associates of people of interest, none match the “Male B” profile.
And police are reluctant to concede Fawcett has no knowledge of the crime, having sought to retry him, and opposing the charges against him being dismissed.
But Christopher Stevenson has a swift response: “Well, where’s the evidence? There’s no evidence he’s anything but innocent.”
He points out that one of the world’s leading experts in false confessions, Professor Richard Leo of San Francisco University, said the “threats and promises” in Fawcett’s interviews were, “without question, psychologically coercive”, and raised the risk he would falsely confess.
Moreover, Fawcett’s inability to describe crucial pieces of evidence - such as Manning’s injuries; or that she was clothed when dumped; or that his claimed movements didn’t match cellphone data - pointed to him actually having no idea what happened, and his confession being false.
To that end, Stevenson says they will be seeking a complete exoneration for Fawcett, and restoration of his mana, reputation and dignity.
Crown claims there was other evidence implicating Fawcett, have been comprehensively debunked, Stevenson says.
But, as happens all round the world, police and prosecutors simply wouldn’t abandon their theories.
“DNA exonerations are filled with examples of these sorts of cases. When it becomes clear they’ve got the wrong person, they still strain and come up with new theories.
“The cold, hard reality is that whoever raped and murdered Mellory Manning, unless they’ve passed away, is walking the streets in New Zealand somewhere.”
David Dougherty, Teina Pora - now add Mauha Fawcett to the list of Māori men who’ve been wrongfully convicted and robbed of years of their life in jail, Stevenson says.
He says Fawcett’s case is one of the worst miscarriages of justice he’s seen in New Zealand, “and like all of them, for anyone close to them, it’s absolutely heartbreaking to see this happen. The last decade of Mauha’s life has been devastated by this.”
As well as officers lying to him, and misleading him during interviews, Stevenson says police failed to disclose crucial evidence that would have helped Fawcett, including police notebooks and vital communication with forensic experts. This was only discovered later, when Stevenson was preparing Fawcett’s appeal.
“Police were blinded by the glittering prize of solving this homicide, and were emboldened to think they could do anything, and use whatever tactics they needed, to have Mauha Fawcett say what they thought he knew. But they were wrong.
“They lied to get information from him - they thought the ends justified the means. Where’s the accountability?”
Justice Dunningham considered the police interviews, while “persistent and even somewhat aggressive in the later interviews” (after those carried out by the two officers with name suppression), were not oppressive.
And she ruled that despite the two unnamed detectives discussing lying to get Fawcett to meet them, this didn’t meet the legal definition of “oppressive conduct”, because eventually Fawcett agreed to see them, “and they did not follow through by lying to him to achieve this.”
However, she accepted the officers exaggerated the risk Fawcett was at from the Mob, and misrepresented that the gang was blaming him for the murder.
One of the officers involved, has categorically denied he lied to Fawcett about his life being in danger, stating the threats to him from the Mob were real.
And Greg Williams, now the head of the National Organised Crime Group, has claimed he knew virtually nothing of what the officers were saying in their interviews, and only received brief reports afterwards.
However, in the middle of one five-hour interview, one of the officers phoned Williams for advice, and it appears the investigation team provided the two interviewing detectives with information prior to their visits to Fawcett.
Police have refused to answer virtually every question Stuff has asked about Fawcett’s case.
These included questions about officers planning to lie, exaggerating and misrepresenting information, and insisting Fawcett must not talk with a lawyer, as well as whether police still had confidence in the officers involved, and whether police were reviewing the investigation that led to Fawcett’s wrongful conviction.
In a brief written statement, Police Assistant Commissioner Lauano Sue Schwalger pointed out Justice Dunningham ruled police interviews with Fawcett were not oppressive, and Fawcett’s FASD diagnosis was considered important in his statements being deemed unreliable and inadmissible.
“The existence of FADS (sic) was not known to police at the time of interviews nor considered by the court in 2013.”
Indeed, a social worker assessment of Fawcett done at Rotorua Police Station in 2002, specifically noted he showed signs of FASD.
Throughout the Manning murder investigation, police and witnesses pointed to Fawcett’s intellectual slowness and difficulty understanding things.
Yet, during 30 hours of interviews, police never sought to examine Fawcett’s mental and intellectual state, says Stevenson.
“I don’t accept that the tactics used by the police in this case are legitimate in a country that respects the rights of individuals. And the FASD just amplified the unfairness. The methods utilised in this case contributed significantly to this miscarriage.
“The police are trying to detect and prosecute crime in New Zealand, which is a legitimate aim. But not at the expense of everything.”
Cook says he was dumbstruck when he heard the recordings of the detectives discussing lying, and repeatedly telling Fawcett not to mention their conversations to his lawyer.
“I just had never heard that said before by a police officer in New Zealand.
“They isolated Mauha, someone with a neurodisability, and they told him not to have a lawyer. Having a lawyer is a deep-grained constitutional right – it can’t be taken away because of police pressure, or tactics or strategy.”
He still believes Fawcett probably had a minor role in his sister’s murder, yet he has sympathy for Fawcett, his upbringing, his mental issues, and how he ended up in a gang.
“I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit lately, and if I’m really honest, I sort of feel there was probably an injustice with him being imprisoned and almost being the sole – not the scapegoat – but he took the brunt.
“As a society, we have almost a mob mentality where we just want to crucify one person. And the police, as well as Fawcett, knew he was the least involved of the group of people that murdered her.
“I remember reading stories about his upbringing and felt for him, a little bit. And I think that’s just me being the human and a little bit older now, and probably my perception on life is quite different to how it was when I was 25, 26 years old.”
Thirteen years on, Rob Manning says the whole process has been tough for his family, but he doesn’t want to see Fawcett back in jail. Rather, he wants the real killers caught.
Only then would his family understand just why Mellory Manning was so instantly and violently murdered.
“She was a human being, and she didn’t deserve to have her life ended in that brutal way.”
Christopher Stevenson warns Fawcett’s story isn’t unique. In two other cases - the investigations into the murders of Brett Hall, and Lois Tolley - “confessions” have also been found to be improperly obtained by police, and been excluded by the courts.
And Stevenson says the parallels between Fawcett’s case and Teina Pora’s wrongful conviction are astonishing: two vulnerable men “making up fairytales”, and confessing to crimes they weren’t involved in.
“But this is worse than Pora in terms of the questioning, as far as I can see. Far, far worse.
“We now know these baseline facts: We know police lied to Mauha; we know they threatened him; we know they denied him a lawyer; we know they grilled him for 30 hours over three years; and we know they failed to disclose key evidence consistent with innocence, and the jury at his trial was misled on key facts.
“It’s never acceptable to put the fear of god into somebody who is alone in jail, and then tell them, ‘Don’t tell any c..t, don’t speak to a lawyer.’ It’s precisely in those circumstances when a citizen is against the power of the state, that they need the protection of a lawyer.”
“You have a young Māori man with connections to the underworld who suffers from FASD, and he’s spending hours and hours in what can only be described as psychologically difficult police interviews.”
Fawcett’s constantly changing story and demonstrably false claims should have given police and the Crown pause for thought about how Fawcett was being treated, McKinnel says.
“There’s little doubt there were multiple red flags.”
McKinnel says it’s completely unacceptable for police officers to lie, or contemplate lying during interviews, “and telling a psychologically vulnerable young Māori male not to speak to a lawyer, whatever your intent, is a deeply troubling feature of any case.”
As with Pora’s case, some people find it impossible to believe anyone would confess to a crime they didn’t commit, particularly murder.
But more than a quarter of convictions where a person has eventually been exonerated by DNA in America, have involved false confessions.
The main causes are lengthy interviews, manipulative or coercive interview techniques, and suspects’ vulnerabilities.
Stevenson says the troubling and tragic case of Mauha Fawcett has all of these.
Police have always claimed they have acted to protect Fawcett from danger, and were honest in their attempts to help him.
And their determined efforts to keep evidence of their initial prison interviews with Fawcett hidden from the public, is publicly predicated on caring about Fawcett’s wellbeing.
Fawcett, unsurprisingly, has completely different views, believing police showed scant care for his wellbeing in the last decade, as they sought to convict him and keep him in jail.
In this respect, it’s worth remembering who eventually paid for Mauha Fawcett to have the Mongrel Mob tattoo erased from his face, as police officers had proffered all those years before: It was Stevenson, who knew Fawcett desperately wanted to distance himself from the gang, but didn’t have the money to remove the bulldog insignia the Mob had inked on him while a 20-year-old in prison.
When finally dismissing the charges against Fawcett on October 26, 2021, Justice Dunningham ended by acknowledging Fawcett’s case had been a difficult matter to deal with.
“I know there’s a lot at stake on both sides. So I hope that Mr Fawcett’s life can take a new turn now, and I wish him all the best.”
As the lawyers packed up their files, reporters filed their stories, and court staff filed out, Fawcett, now 34, picked up the blue monogrammed bag containing Stevenson’s courtroom robes.
And then he exited alongside the lawyer who’d stuck with him for six years, and walked out to the new life the judge hoped he would find."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/128590879/the-tragic-and-terrible-case-of-mauha-fawcetts-wrongful-conviction
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
