The murders of two women by strangers in separate cases rocked New Zealanders in the early 2000s. They happened in places where the women should have been safe – a school classroom and at home. Now the killers of Tokoroa teacher Lois Dear and young pregnant Rotorua woman Tania Burr want out of jail. Senior journalist Kelly Makiha talks to family members of Burr and Dear as parole hearing dates loom for Whetu Te Hiko and John Wharekura. 

For Coromandel truck driver Kevin McNeil, his message to the New Zealand Parole Board deciding the fate of his mother’s killer is simple. 

“I don’t want to see that prick out on the streets.” 

Lois Dear was murdered in her Tokoroa classroom in July 2006. 

Lois Dear was killed in her Strathmore School classroom by Whetu Te Hiko on July 16, 2006. It was a Sunday morning and she went in to prepare for her lessons that week. 

Te Hiko was walking past the school, still drunk from the night before. He saw Dear’s car pull up and tried to to steal it. 

Dear spotted him and threatened to call police. Te Hiko overpowered her in her classroom, punched and kicked her and eventually suffocated her on the floor with her sweatshirt. 

Whetu Te Hiko is eligible for parole in July. Photo / Alan Gibson 

It was revealed at Te Hiko’s sentencing that Dear, 66, was found with her trousers removed, underwear lowered down to one ankle and her top lifted. 

Her dumped car was found shortly after her death and police arrested Te Hiko, 23, after an eight-day manhunt. 

A large crowd of angry bystanders lined the street and yelled abuse as police walked Te Hiko – dressed in a boiler suit with a hood over his head – to his first appearance in the Tokoroa District Court. 

On July 11, Te Hiko becomes eligible for parole for the first time after being sentenced to life imprisonment for murder with a non-parole period of 18 years. 

Tanya Burr, 21, was in the early stages of pregnancy when she was stabbed to death in her Hilda St flat by John Wharekura. 

For Palmerston North woman Val Burr, 71, the parole hearing process is one she’s used to. She dreads each August as she once again faces begging a panel of people not to let her daughter’s killer out of jail. 

On September 15, 2002, 16-year-old John Wharekura knocked on the door of Tanya Burr’s Hilda St flat and asked her for a piece of paper and pen, supposedly to write a note for a friend in a neighbouring flat. 

When the 21-year-old turned, he went inside and stabbed her 15 times. At the time, he was one of New Zealand’s youngest killers and had an undiagnosed psychosis. 

John Wharekura was 16 when he killed Tanya Burr, making him one of New Zealand's youngest killers at the time. Photo / NZME 

He was freed in 2018 following his 14-year non-parole period but recalled the following year after problems with adhering to parole conditions and his mental health. He has since been convicted of assault offences in prison. 

In 2021, he was charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm relating to an assault on another prisoner. The Auckland District Court confirmed to the Rotorua Daily Post no conviction was entered because he had an insanity defence. 

The impact of Lois Dear’s murder 

McNeil said he would not attend the parole hearing because he did not want to lay eyes on Te Hiko or hear his arguments for wanting to be freed. Other family members would attend. 

In his view: “It’s not easy to take. He’s a mongrel.” 

McNeil said he believed Te Hiko “should be held inside longer”. 

He was not confident Te Hiko was a changed man or would have the right family support, especially knowing his brother and uncle were both also jailed for killing women. 

Kevin McNeil with a photo of his mother Lois Dear. Photo / NZME 

His sibling Hamuera Te Hiko was jailed for 14 years for killing his wife, Eliza, after he sexually violated, hit and bit her in Putaruru in 2000. Their uncle Jamie Te Hiko was sentenced to life for bashing his partner, Queenie Thompson, to death at their home in Ātiamuri in 2016. 

“There are a lot of people who shouldn’t be breathing the same air as us,” McNeil said. 

In the 18 months following his mother’s death, McNeil became an outspoken justice campaigner, meeting with politicians, including then-prime minister Sir John Key, and becoming linked with the Sensible Sentencing Trust. 

He said it eventually started to consume him and he had to let it go. 

Police escort Whetu Te Hiko from the police station to the Tokoroa District Court in front of an angry crowd of locals. Photo / John Cowpland  

Teacher’s memory lives on at school 

Strathmore School acknowledges the loss of Dear each year with two $2000 scholarships. 

They support former Strathmore students heading to university from Tokoroa High School and Forest View High School, and are presented by Strathmore representatives each year at the secondary school prizegivings. 

The scholarship fund was set up by Dear’s family and continued by the school’s board of trustees. As of this year, it is funded by the family of the late Murray Kendrick, Strathmore’s principal at the time of Dear’s murder. 

Current principal Jason Wright said he recalled hearing about Dear’s death on BBC News while living in Britain. 

“It was huge news at the time. You think of New Zealand being the great safe place but that one incident took away those feelings of safety.” 

The plaque at Strathmore School in Tokoroa in memory of slain teacher Lois Dear. 

He said Dear was an adored teacher and her presence remained with a memorial plaque that sat on a rock at the front of the school. 

“To let her name pass in history would not be the right thing to do. She was a teacher and she died in a school while performing her duty.” 

He paid respects to Kendrick for how he handled the tragedy. 

“As a principal, you deal with challenges all the time. But that would have been awful. It was hugely sad. One of our board members is one of [Dear’s] former students and when we heard the Kendrick family were funding the scholarship to continue she became visibly upset. 

“People feel it. They still feel it.” 

How a light switch could have cost Tanya Burr’s life 

Val Burr drummed into her daughter from a young age to always lock their family home’s ranchslider, even while inside. 

Burr said her daughter’s Rotorua flatmate told her a few days after her murder that Tanya kept up the same practice where they lived, and the flatmate used to have to knock on the bolted door to be let in at night. 

Burr said the exterior light above her daughter’s ranchslider was controlled by a switch on the opposite side of the room, which she believed was due to a change from the original plans for the flats. 

Police gather at the Hilda St flats in 2002 after Tanya Burr's murder. Photo / NZME 

Burr guesses her daughter would have expected her flatmate home early evening and would have opened the door without bothering to go across the room to turn the light on. 

“Unfortunately the interior lights reflect off glass doors in these circumstances and she’d not have been able to see who was outside until the door was open – by which time it was too late.” 

Tanya Burr's mother Val Burr (left) and Tanya Burr's friends Anita Bennett (middle) and Emma Jenkins in 2002. Photo / NZME 

Burr sourced information on the Hilda St flats from the Rotorua Lakes Council showing the two blocks of flats were built in 1973 and the vehicle access was originally between the two blocks, meaning the back door of her daughter’s flat was meant to be the main entrance. This, she assumed, was why the light switches were on the wrong side of what became the main door. 

She had hoped switch locations for outside lights could have become a safety recommendation for building standards in a coroner’s inquest but there was no inquest. She never pushed the issue at the time, something she said she now regretted. 

Burr said her daughter would have been 43 today and it made her sad realising her brother’s children never met her. 

Tanya Burr's Honda Integra car. Photo / NZME 

She still drove her daughter’s now 31-year-old red Honda Integra, the same car Wharekura stole after killing Tanya. It’s a car she’s clung to knowing how much her daughter loved it. 

She said the parole hearings were an “annual pain” but she would not risk her daughter’s killer getting out sooner. 

Kelly Makiha is a senior journalist who has reported for the Rotorua Daily Post for more than 25 years, covering mainly police, court, human interest and social issues.