After 11 years, and three High Court murder trials, Black Power member Hendrix John Kahia has been found not guilty of Wiremu Birch’s murder in a dark Taupō street.

The jury deliberating Kahia’s fate, in the High Court at Hamilton, took around three hours to return with their verdict, to the relief and tears of Kahia who clutched his head in his hands as he realised he was now a free man.

After the verdict, Justice Timothy Brewer told Kahia he was now “free to go” and he walked out of the dock wiping away tears. Soon after he performed a powerful haka in the court’s foyer for his counsel Elizabeth Hall and Rob Stevens, who were also emotional.

He then gave them both big hugs but outside, court security staff were on high alert as disgruntled members of Birch’s family could be heard yelling “you’re a murderer” from the supermarket carpark across the road, leading to tense scenes.

Kahia then emerged and embraced relieved whānau before making his way home.

The 41-year-old had already been at the centre of two murder trials; in 2014 and 2019. His latest was the second retrial.

‘Who killed Wiremu Birch?’

The jury had to decipher who the person was seen lunging towards Birch three times in the dark and stabbing him during a street fight in the early hours of October 11, 2013.

While the Crown alleged Kahia was the killer, the defence said Kahia was innocent, and instead claimed the person responsible was Kansas Tareha, who told the court last week, “I’m a gangster. I can get any woman I want”.

The jury heard from 40 witnesses, but a key witness was Birch’s girlfriend, Waimarama Nicoll, who the defence claimed was coerced into changing her story 12 months later by Tareha over an alleged assault by him on her at the scene.

The day before his death, 19-year-old Birch had been drinking throughout the day and into the evening with Nicoll, whānau and associates and went on to become “very drunk”.

He got into two fights; one with his brother, Thomas, and another with the defendant’s brother, Raymond “Porky” Kahia.

He was also seen stumbling, slurring his words, and yelling Mongrel Mob gang slogans.

It was after the first fight and when Birch and Nicoll turned up on Hinekura St at the house of her cousin, who was also president of the Mongrel Mob at the time, that trouble started.

Birch wondered over to the back property of a neighbour to urinate. The occupants were Black Power and claimed Birch was peering in through a toilet window.

Shortly after a fight began between Birch and Porky Kahia on Hinemoa St.

It was eventually broken up and agreed that it would get sorted out the next morning, however, it left women at Hinemoa St unnerved, so the Kahia brothers, Tareha, and a fourth man, Lee Tawaka, went for a drive to check who was around.

The group then came across Birch and Nicoll on Hinekura St, pulled over, and Porky Kahia began fighting with Birch.

He was then stabbed by somebody three times and died at the scene.

‘The onus is on the crown’

Summing up the case yesterday, Justice Timothy Brewer said as the defendant alleges Tareha was the killer, the onus was on the Crown to prove that he wasn’t the killer.

If the Crown persuaded the jury that Tareha wasn’t the stabber, they then had to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Hendrix Kahia was the one with the knife.

In his closing, Crown prosecutor Chris Macklin had told the jury there were four people in the car and they knew Porky Kahia wasn’t the killer, and neither was Tawaka.

He said Nicoll initially blamed Tareha as he was the only one that she really knew.

Her partner and father of their baby was lying wounded on the road, she and Tareha had words, and he yelled a Black Power slogan as he drove off.

She initially told the first officer to the scene that all four men stabbed Birch and then said Tareha’s name so many times the officer thought that was Birch’s name.

Macklin said within a short time she didn’t repeat the allegation, and didn’t mention Tareha in an interview filmed with police at the station a couple of hours later.

“So Mr Macklin says how could anything have possibly changed within that short period such that Waimarama Nicoll is shielding the killer of her partner and father of her child.

“Mr Macklin says that does not make sense ... [but] you do have the evidence of Mr Tareha which has been consistent that he is not the stabber.”

However, Hall submitted that there was evidence that pointed to Tareha, and in particular, she referred not only to what Waimarama Nicoll said but to the evidence that Tareha was a “wannabe gangster, that he had the 7 and 9 tattooed on his leg and he shouted the gang slogan as they left”.

There was also evidence that Tareha was the one in the car that said, “I poked him”, and Tawaka told him to “shut up”.

Tareha also had time to influence Nicoll when she was texting, abusing, and blaming him for stabbing Birch.

“So he knew that he was going to be blamed as the killer and so there was the opportunity to influence,” the judge said.

Nicoll couldn’t be trusted as she and Tareha had a relationship “such that they were colluding and contacting each other in breach of their requirement that they not do so”.

The judge continued summing up the defence case saying they never revealed they were having a casual sexual affair, and Tareha wanted immunity to give evidence against Kahia.

Nicoll also went to police in October 2014 and changed her statement to say that Tareha didn’t assault her after she approached him at his car at the stabbing scene.

“Ms Hall says if that sort of collusion or deceit is not enough for you, look at the text messages.

“By the time police came to see Mr Tareha he knew he was in deep trouble and being accused of this killing had to find a way out of it, and it was not just to deny but to actively blame someone else, the patched Black Power member Mr Kahia.”

There was also the testimony of the sole defence witness who said Tareha had told him that he had stabbed someone in Taupō and driven the car for it.

“Ms Hall says that can only relate to the stabbing of Mr Birch.”