back
18 comments
If people read the title and thought she was convicted solely based on viewing a show about her own case: the suspect was also recorded giving what's essentially a confession to her husband, and advising an under-cover police officer to commit arson in the same way.
I must be missing something here; if I understand this right, the woman set her dad's house on fire in 2013, the police ignore her for 10 years, and then suddenly they decide to investigate her? Are New Zealand police that backed up that it takes a decade for them to complete an arson investigation?
Yeah, you've got the wrong end of the stick there.

They didn't spend 10 years sitting around waiting to complete an arson investigation. They completed an arson investigation and couldn't prove it was a deliberate fire.

As the murderer bragged to the undercover officer, her choice of arson method was rather clever as it was very hard to distinguish from an accidental fire - our fire brigades run periodic campaigns reminding men who live alone to not "drink and fry" because of accidental oil fires, that do occasionally kill older men who live alone.

So, yeah, you made an assumption that they spent 10 years doing nothing, when they most likely spent 10 years identifying the suspect, gathering enough evidence to convince a judge to give them a warrant for cellular phone tracking data, then a warrant for surveillance, then getting an undercover officer into position to gather more evidence, so that they had enough evidence to bring a prosecution with a reasonable chance of success.

That's the thing about murder in New Zealand, the CIB[0] aren't backed up in homicides, so they'll always come back to open cases. Very hard to get away with murder here for that reason.

For example... ...this man was found guilty 25 years [1] after the crime, other people involved are on trial now [2].

And in a grim footnote, the convicted murderer discussed in the article appears to have committed suicide the day after her conviction. [3]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Investigation_Branch

[1]: https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/119880348/jeremy-powell-a...

[2]: https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/301012985/detective-accus...

[3]: https://stuff.co.nz/national/crime/133338228/arson-killer-ly...

The police here in the UK routinely bug homes and cars. When I was a suspect I just assumed my house and car were riddled with listening & video devices. I never said anything I wouldn't want repayed in court. It worked fine.
Did you actually do what you were suspected of doing?

Edit: the reason I ask is not simple curiosity, but to clarify your remarks, specifically, "It worked fine," by which I assume you mean, you did not ultimately get convicted of the suspected crime. If you are an entirely innocent party, it would seem unlikely that something you could have said would incriminate yourself (plus you probably have some other exculpatory evidence). The only reason your silence in the car "worked fine" would be if you avoided making statements that would signal your guilt.

If you are an entirely innocent party, it would seem unlikely that something you could have said would incriminate yourself

This is, uh, naive.

You are correct, I wrote these words hastily. I can't change the post at this point but I entirely agree with you and recognize parts of my initial post are not accurate.
It's something lots of people think. "Hey, I'm innocent what's the harm in talking to the police?" and that can go badly wrong, an innocent response or poor phrasing of a reply or a manipulative question from a cop can look /really/ bad iin front of a jury. It's why every defence lawyer says don't talk to cops - period - not even to confirm you breath oxygen.
The plot behind My Cousin Vinny. Two people from out of town are arrested, one thinks they are being arrested because he unthinkingly pocketed a can of tuna or something when his hands were too full to carry it all to the register and owns up to "I did it!" before knowing what he is confessing to, the other in shock repeats "I killed the clerk?" instead of rebutting it, which is taken as a confession rather than a baffled and shocked query.
100% agreed, and this, obviously, can have very serious consequences, which is why it was important to me to correct my earlier error.
nice try UK police.

joking aside, it is weird to me that privacy of someone can be invaded to such a degree when you are presumed innocent. like, ok it leads to some arrests but how many thousands of attempts were about bugging innocent people's homes for nothing?

I think it's legit, or can be, guilty people often blab in the privacy of their home and car. If you're guilty you just have to be aware of the potential to be surveilled.
I did what I what accused of. It "worked fine" in that the surveillance didn't yield any actionable evidence for the police - I got convicted but surveillance didn't play a part in it.
Wow, thanks for your candor.
Nice try UK undercover cop.
What an effort from the police to catch her.

I get it murder is fucked but 22kh of recording and undercover?

I thought they would do that only to 'higher' people

There were 22,000 recordings according to the article, but we don't know how long the audio length was; it's possible that most of them were of silent, empty rooms and could be automatically filtered out.
1 person, 157 hours.

The rest is recordings and we have no idea how long they are. Probably a new one every time there is a pause. So maybe a month's worth.