Police pick up Rotorua murder suspect in Porirua




Tanya Burr
5.00pm

Detectives are questioning a man over the murder of Rotorua woman Tanya Burr.

A man seen hitch-hiking near where Miss Burr's car was found dumped in Turangi yesterday was picked up by police in Porirua this afternoon.

Detective Senior Sergeant Garth Bryan said the man was a suspect in the murder of 21-year-old Miss Burr at her Hilda St, Rotorua, apartment.

"He is currently speaking to detectives," he said.

Mr Bryan said the man, earlier described by police as a clean shaven Maori in his late teens or early 20s with dark shoulder-length hair, had been picked up in the Porirua area, north of Wellington.

Police said the man had been seen near Miss Burr's dumped 1993 Honda Integra in Turangi early yesterday and was believed to be hitch-hiking toward Wellington.

Mr Bryan said police had studied video footage from service stations between Rotorua and Wellington.

A "significant amount of information" had been passed to police by the public about people seen around where Miss Burr's car was left next to a Caltex service station on the northern side of Turangi on State Highway 1.

Miss Burr's body was found face-down on the lounge floor of her apartment about 8.10am yesterday by a flatmate who had returned from visiting a relative for the night.

A post-mortem on her body carried out today confirmed that Miss Burr suffered multiple stab wounds to the back, neck, chest and abdomen.

Her mother, Val Burr, helped unite the troubled Palmerston North suburb of Kelvin Grove following the Lundy double murders two years ago.

Mrs Burr, chairwoman of the Kelvin Grove Residents' Association, was today remembering her daughter, a former Whakarongo and Palmerston North Girls' High School pupil as "the ratty teenager that settled down".

She was making preparations to go to Rotorua to collect her daughter's body and finalise arrangements for a Palmerston North funeral.

Miss Burr had lived in Rotorua since March last year.

"Of all of the things you do with your kids, you just don't expect ... you just don't expect it to happen to you."

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A letter for Tanya


Last week we ran a story in Week in Review about the horrific murder of Tanya Burr. Over the weekend we recieved a letter from Tanyas mum, talking about the life that Tanya led and the teenager charged with her murder. We would like to share that letter with you...


Police arrested a 16 year old teenager from Rotorua yesterday, he was charged with the murder of 21 year old Tanya Burr. Miss Burr died of stab wounds to her back, neck, chest and abdomen, her car was found dumped near Turangi.

Hi, I was just doing a net search on the family that produced the monster of a kid who murdered my daughter Tanya at Rotorua two weeks ago tonight. Anyway, I got the urge to enter her name in a search engine too, and found your website. It is a strange sort of honour that Tanya would become so 'famous', but not in a nice way at all - given that she is famous only in death. She probably (almost certainly!) would be most embarrassed and horrified at the attention to her life.

Tanya arrived home with six or seven rolls of film from her overseas trip on Thursday 12 September, and I got these developed for her the next day as she had run out of money. Had I not done this, she would not have been able to show them to all those friends and relatives she crossed paths with over the next two days until she was killed. When the police went through the photo album (presumably as she lay dead in the next room), they noted the many photos of famous buildings and architectural details, that otherwise people might not have imagined would interest Tanya. As that is an area of interest to me, I was surprised too. She was doing a real estate sales training course, and perhaps that had helped inspire her.

I read the 'postcard' from a girl in Japan on your website. We, of course, read such things and think of the 'big OE' etc. and how it changes people's outlooks. It clearly did that for Tanya also, starting with a family trip to Norway for her uncle's wedding, and then on to a 16-day Contiki European Encounter trip around Europe by herself. She clearly had a fantastic time and couldn't get over having spent this time with a diverse range of people that included even "doctors and lawyers!" (her words) who were also making the trip. They will be stunned to hear what happened only about five days after they all parted company. I haven't been able to tell them yet as the police have their contact details from her scarcely unpacked luggage – as they automatically became potential suspects too.

I was quite worried that she was flying home direct from Heathrow to New Zealand on September 11th (via Asia to avoid the US at my insistence), and was so relieved that she made it safely. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the tragedy could instead occur at the hands of a stranger in her own lounge 23 hours after she got back to her flat, as - while rather jet-lagged - she watched TV with her two beloved cats - one of whom is showing clear signs of having witnessed the act.

Instead of all the great benefits of the learning Tanya did while overseas, we, her family and friends, now face the trauma of confronting this scumbag of a kid and his family who have been described to us as "the worst family in Rotorua."

Regards, Val Burr