OCTOBER 13 2018 LISTENER 25
ADRIENNE MARTYNthe convictions. Following his release, he
returned to Napier where, he says, the har-
assment continued, and he and his family
became pariahs in the district, turned away
from jobs and talked about in the street.
In 2000, Montaperto says he was jailed for
18 months on dangerous driving and other
charges after running a couple of police cars
off the road in Huntly. “I’d said to the cops,
next time you haul me up, I’m going to run
you off the road. They didn’t listen to me,
they were harassing me, so I did ... I’d done
something worth going to jail for.”
In 2001, he complained to police about
his treatment during the Flaxmere and Cor-
mack inquiries. The then Police Conduct
Authority, although upholding some aspects
of the complaints, found overall they did
not constitute misconduct or neglect of
duty. It said the police were entitled to
treat Montaperto as a suspect and there was
no evidence to support the serious allega-
tions that he had been “fitted up” for the
Flaxmere offences or unfairly targeted in the
Cormack case.
The authority said it was inevitable that
provincial reporters, through their contacts
in the community and the police, would
discover the focus of police inquiries and
it wasn’t possible to tell what officers had
actually told reporters. “The investigator
was unable to establish that the police had
engineered what had occurred.” The author-
ity said the media coverage “bordered on
what was unacceptable” but declined to take
contempt proceedings.
The Ministry of Justice report preparedfor Andrew Little places little weight on
the other grounds for Montaperto’s appeal,
including the importance of alibi evidence
not introduced at trial, among which was
that of his cousin, who said Montaperto
was with him during the period in which
the Flaxmere children were abducted. That
day was Montaperto’s birthday, and he
and family members said he had been at a
garage sale for much of the day before get-
ting pizzas with his cousin. The ministry’s
report said it had serious doubts about the
credibility of the cousin’s affidavit, which
raised more doubts than it resolved.
But Mansfield says the evidence against
his client was “never that strong in my
view” and his alibi appeared credible. “I
do believe the damage was done when
the jury was told that information [about
Cormack].” He said the alibi evidence
was not fully investigated or called at the
trial. The ministry’s report said Fairbrother
decided not to call the witnesses because he
thought he had raised sufficient doubt about
the reliability of the prosecution evidence
through cross-examination, and a misstep
with a defence witness could have under-
mined that. He thought the witnesses were
“unsophisticated and vulnerable to spirited
cross-examination”.INCONVENIENT ALIBI
Fairbrother told the Listener he was “100%
sure” Montaperto was innocent of the
Flaxmere charges. “He is one of the few
people that I really believe that about who
has been convicted – probably the only
person.”
He told the ministry investigators that
Montaperto had agreed with the tactical
decision not to call the alibi evidence, a
view Montaperto disputes. Fairbrother said
the alibi was an “amalgam” of evidence,
with not one witness able to account for
the whole timespan.The ministry’s report said: “One feature of
the potential testimony was that it had the
unintended effect of Mr Montaperto being
away from his Napier home and in his car
at around the relevant period of the alleged
offending.”
Mansfield says he’s never met anyone
who’s completed a sentence who’s been so
determined to clear his name. He believes
Montaperto. “He could just complete the
sentence and get on with life ... he doesn’t
need to be as consumed with it as he is.”
Mansfield doesn’t know when the Court
of Appeal will consider the case, but says
Montaperto’s experience proves once again
the need for an independent Criminal Cases
Review Commission. Little introduced a bill
to Parliament last month to establish the
commission. “We’re such a small country
and I think we get too insular. If you’re part
of the system, you’re also part of protecting
the system because you want to believe that
it’s working; you don’t like to think it’s not.”
Montaperto has long believed he was
framed for the Flaxmere charges – allega-
tions the police have vehemently denied.
After publicity about Montaperto’s planned
appeal in 2008, Schaab told the media that
there was no benefit for police in framing
Montaperto for a crime he didn’t commit.
“It doesn’t make sense. We wouldn’t have
achieved anything in doing that,” he said.
But Montaperto says the police actions
“need to be looked at”.
“You have good police and bad police.
I’m not saying all the police are bad. They
had a job to do but they had no right to do
what they did to me back in the day. They
are answerable for the wrong they’ve done,
apart from the good work they do ... I’m not
out to hang them, or execute them publicly
for what they’ve done. I didn’t warrant what
they did to me. I was their scapegoat.”
The long fight to clear his name has left
him feeling abandoned, with no one listen-
ing to him, he says. “If someone is injured,
you can hear them if they’re 30m away or
300 yards away, but we’re talking about 30
years here.”
Success at the Court of Appeal would
change his life, Montaperto says. “You don’t
have to look behind you, do you? You have
to live a life of Rambo when you have some-
thing like that on you; you have to be on
the lookout. You can’t drop your guard. It’s
quite a load having something like that on
your shoulders. It’s haunted me.”
Ask what a win would mean for him, and
he replies with just one word: “Peace.” lMontaperto’s former lawyer Russell Fairbrother.
“I’d said to the cops,
‘Next time you haul me
up, I’m going to run you
off the road.’ They were
harrassing me, so I did.”