OCTOBER 13 2018 LISTENER 23
in the dock.” The story said he expected
enhanced DNA tests would directly link
him to the crime. “It has been so frustrating
because all along we have had an offender
but not a result – yet.”POLICE QUESTIONING
Montaperto says he had no
knowledge of the alleged
Flaxmere abduction and inde-
cent assault in June 1986, until
one year later, when he and
his then partner, Linda, were
questioned at the Napier police
station about his whereabouts in
relation to the Cormack murder.
“They showed my girlfriend a
shock photo ... someone cov-
ered in blood ... more or less
saying this is the handiwork of
your boyfriend.”Why was Montaperto in the
frame for the Cormack investi-
gators? He had accrued about 20
convictions and was, as is often
said in these sorts of cases, no
angel. A search warrant for his
house and vehicle said he was
“known to police for commit-
ting offences of an indecent nature with
young girls”. He says although he had con-
victions for indecent exposure, they did not
involve children and he put the incidents
down to youthful skylarking and to being
“an exhibitionist”. His lawyer at the time,
Russell Fairbrother, backed him, telling the
Listener that Montaperto had no history of
child-sex offending.
Montaperto did, however, live about
300m from Cormack’s home and on the
route she took to school. A 1963 Holden
Premier, similar to a car he drove, was identi-
fied as the vehicle involved in the Flaxmere
kidnapping. Although Montaperto was a
possible suspect because of his car, police
noted he didn’t have tattoos, as reported by
witnesses, and neither could those witnesses
identify him from photographs.2002, and jailed for life the same year.
Advances in DNA testing technology had
linked him with a genetic profile developed
from semen and hairs found on Cormack’s
body. Police revealed in August 2001 that
the profile exonerated Montap-
erto. But Montaperto says that,
in some ways, he’s been pun-
ished even more than Mikus.
“He had two or three weeks of
publicity; I had 14 years of it. He
never got the hounding.”
Police said nearly 1000 men
were nominated as possible
suspects during their inquiry,
and about 20 weren’t able to
be cleared until the profile was
developed in 2001. Although
his name was not widely known
to the public – outside Hawke’s
Bay, at least – most journalists at
the time knew police believed
Montaperto was their man but
didn’t have the evidence to
prove it.
In 1988, when Montapertowas in custody awaiting trial on
the kidnapping charges, police
told the Hawke’s Bay Herald-
Tribune that “a suspect in the
eight-month hunt for the killer
of ... Teresa Cormack is already
behind bars”, and said they
hoped an arrest for the murder
was “just around the corner”.
Montaperto’s identity wasso well known locally that, in
1993, he was severely beaten
with a spade and a car jack by
a Napier man, who told him it
was punishment for “Teresa Cormack and
Kirsa Jensen”. (Jensen disappeared in 1983
when riding her horse. Neither her killer nor
her body has been found.) Montaperto had
his hands and legs bound and mouth taped
during the sustained attack, which left him
hospitalised with brain damage, a fractured
skull, broken nose, cheek and jawbones and
a broken leg.
About the same time, a senior detective
on the case told a women’s magazine that
a “39-year-old man who is well known in
the Hawke’s Bay district” was about to be
arrested and charged with the Cormack
murder. “It’s common knowledge around
town who the killer is, and recently he was
badly assaulted,” the detective said. “I’ve
spoken to him several times about the case
and we are almost close enough to put him
After the Cormack murder, police revived
their interest in the unsolved Flaxmere case.
Montaperto says police asked him to go to
Fairbrother’s office on December 29, 1987,
to give DNA samples, but he refused. He
says he didn’t trust what police would do
with them. In the meantime, the Flaxmere
witnesses were re-interviewed and Monta-
perto was arrested on the morning of New
Year’s Eve.
“The whole police force came to my
house that morning. Turned the house
upside down,” he says. “They handcuffed
me and said you’re under arrest for kidnap-
ping. I thought they were arresting me for
the kidnap of Teresa Cormack.”
He says when he arrived at the Napier
police station, the head of the Cormack
inquiry, Detective Sergeant Brian Schaab
told him, “Plead guilty to killing Teresa
Cormack and we’ll drop the [Flaxmere]
charges.” DNA samples were then taken.
Montaperto spent 10 months in solitary
confinement before his trial, a period he
describes as “torture”.
“What kept me going was that one day
the truth would be known that I wasn’t
the offender. I felt good in myself because
I knew I wasn’t guilty of that [Cormack] or
the kidnapping.”
It wasn’t his first experience of prison – he
says he’d been in jail before for car conver-
sion. While he was on remand at Manawatu
Prison, he says Schaab, who died last year,
arrived with another detective and told him
his DNA had been positively matched with
samples from Cormack’s body. “They said
after they had their tea, they were taking me
back to the police station and would charge
me with the murder.”
Montaperto says he was so incensed that,
on the way to the bathroom, he picked up
a gas cylinder that welders had left in a
corridor, and threatened to ignite it with a
disposable lighter when he returned to the
room. “I thought, ‘I’m going to go down for
this.’ I had to make a stand. I threatened to
blow them up.” He acknowledged he would
have possibly killed himself as well, “but I
was willing to go to that extent”. A passing
warden wrested the cylinder from him and
he says he wasn’t charged over the incident.DISTRICT PARIAHS
After he was jailed on the Flaxmere charges,
Montaperto says some inmates stuck by
him. “They knew I was innocent. They
said, ‘That’s not your cup of tea, Monty.’”
In 1989, he was refused leave to appeal“You have to live
a life of Rambo
when you have
something like
that on you; you
have to be on
the lookout.”
From top: Monta-
perto’s lawyer
Ron Mansield;
independent lawyer
Steve Bonnar; Justice
Ministry adviser
Rodney Hansen;
Justice Minister
Andrew Little.