Serial rapist Malcolm Rewa sentenced for 1988 rape of 16-year-old

Source: Radio New Zealand

Police are analysing rape complaints between 1985 to 1989 to see if they can identify any matches in the DNA databank following serial rapist Malcolm Rewa‘s latest conviction.

One of the country’s most high-profile police officers, Detective Inspector Scott Beard says the project may reveal more of Rewa’s offending.

A police report from 2006 estimated Rewa may have been involved in up to 26 other sexual attacks.

One of his victims, Rhonda McHardy, says the scale of the offending is “chilling”.

“He’s damaged so many lives, and not just the victims, but our families, the people around us.”

Rewa is serving a life sentence for murdering Susan Burdett in 1992. He is also serving preventive detention with a minimum non-parole period of 22 years, after being convicted of sexual attacks on 25 women.

On Friday, he was sentenced in the High Court at Auckland to 10 years’ jail after he pleaded guilty to raping a 16-year-old in Onehunga in June 1988.

Following the rape, police were called and completed a forensic medical examination and they found the suspect’s DNA.

At the time the woman did not know who had attacked her and there was no DNA databank available to compare samples with. That became available in 1996.

Then, last year, the complainant called the police 105 line and asked if her medical swabs still existed, and if they had been compared against the DNA databank.

Court documents said the woman “noted that the nature of the attack on her made her think that the person may well have offended against someone else”.

Police inquiries revealed the swabs did still exist. They were then run against the DNA databank, and it matched Rewa. When police asked Rewa about the incident he declined to comment.

Speaking with RNZ ahead of sentencing, Beard said at the time of the investigation in 1988 DNA testing was not an investigative tool for police.

Beard said a police project from more than a decade ago looked at investigations where there could be DNA relating to cases from 1990 onwards.

“As a result of this particular case, I have been working with PHF Science [the New Zealand Institute for Public Health and Forensic Science] looking at cases from 1985 – 1989 to see whether there may be opportunities to look at DNA testing.”

He described the project as a “work in progress” with the initial analysis focusing on cases in Auckland City.

Beard said police were unable to rule out that Rewa had committed further offending.

“There could well be other cases out there, other investigations where he is the offender,” Beard said.

“Maybe the ongoing work with PHF Science with the 1985-1989 files may see further offending discovered. We just don’t know.”

The report

A 2006 report by Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Henwood, released to RNZ, looked at the investigations into Rewa.

Henwood, who has since retired, oversaw the Criminal Profiling Unit.

In his report, Henwood refers to Rewa being arrested in 1996 after a violent assault on a 16-year-old girl.

Rewa spoke briefly to a police officer, saying he had been to doctors in Australia regarding a “sexual problem but he couldn’t get help”.

“He briefly spoke of his harsh upbringing. When asked about the offending he had earlier been questioned over he added that there were never any young girls involved.”

Rewa also spoke about his step parents being “harsh” on him and how he learned to stand up for himself.

“Spoke about respect for each other and said that once it was all over to come and see him on his own and he would tell him all about ‘why’. Like a book you have to wait until it is over to read the last chapter. If the Detective Inspector didn’t come he would take the ‘why’ to the grave.”

The report said while Rewa initially told the police officer he would tell “why” after it was all over, his final comment to the same officer was “that he would break his neck like a twig given the chance”.

“Rewa has not been approached since commencing his sentence at Paremoremo High secure, and unless something remarkable happens with regards to his outlook, it is not recommended anyone attempt to approach him.”

Henwood’s report mentions a rape from Rotorua in 1994 that he listed as a “positive Rewa case”.

He said the rape was linked to Rewa through several factors including that it had “strong behavioural uniformity”, that Rewa was booked into a motel a short distance away on the night of the offence as well as a “general but similar description to Rewa”.

Henwood said the evidence “easily reached the threshold required for court”.

“The team endeavoured to have the matter included in the indictment. Unfortunately the victim refused to attend Court or have any further dealings with the police and prosecution.”

Henwood then listed four “probable” Rewa crimes and five “possible” Rewa ones.

“It is unlikely that we will ever know the full extent of Rewa’s sexual crimes but it would be fair to assume that at least another 5-6 offences (20%) were never reported to Police and at least 5-10 were not identified or located by Police due to the geographic extent of his offending.

“We have no idea the extent of his sexual offending from the early 1980s up until the first identified crime… in 1987. If he is true to the national and international average he is unlikely to have stopped after his first rape, aged 22 years, in 1975. So we will never have that ‘final chapter’ he promised [the Detective Inspector] on arrest in 1996.”

‘He was nobody, he was everybody’

Speaking to RNZ, Henwood said he was not surprised when he heard about the 1988 offending. Henwood said the police filing system did not provide an easy access to locate historical rape.

“The system really relies on knowing the victim’s name and while there are other identifiable means they are not always reliable.”

He said Rewa had never admitted any offending to police.

“He has pleaded guilty to crimes where he has no possible way of defending such as the DNA linked crimes at his trial in 1998 and this most recent complaint to surface.

“We were aware of a number of complaints that we strongly suspected Rewa to be the offender for but had insufficient evidence to take to trial back then. They were mentioned in the report I submitted prior to retiring from the Profiling unit in 2006-7. This report was to leave a clear trail of those complaints should Rewa ever decide to clean up his past although this was always an unlikely outcome, but we live in hope. Also there are likely to be others that were never reported at all to the Police.”

Asked how concerning it was that he had estimated Rewa may be responsible for up to 26 more attacks, Henwood responded with a comment from one of Rewa’s victims who waited “many years” for him to be identified as her attacker.

“It is a statement that struck me with it’s simplicity yet its succinctness of describing what it is like to be raped by a stranger who is not identified – ‘He was nobody, he was everybody’. This is what they carry over the decades not knowing whether the man they pass on the street might have been the ‘one’.

“So how concerning is it? Well to every victim we have failed it is a massive concern and knowing this it is the very reason the Police will continue to make every effort to locate historical files of Complainants and attempt with modern forensic techniques to identify the offender, Rewa or anyone else.”

He urged any victims whose attacker had not been identified to apporach the police with their name and year of the attack.

“That could be all that is needed to locate their file. The latest case is an example of how successful this can be.”

In his book Unmasking Monsters, Henwood described Rewa as a “menacing, confrontational, challenging, uncompromising and dangerous sociopath”.

He was also an “intelligent, confident and knowing man. A sad and very bad man but certainly not a mad one”.

‘He’s damaged so many lives’

One of Rewa’s victims, Rhonda McHardy, was raped by him in March 1992, two weeks before Burdett was murdered.

In February 2024 she published a book Power and Grace about what happened and the impact it had on her.

She told RNZ that when the DNA test was linked to Rewa last year the victim got in touch with her after reading her book.

“She wanted to connect with me, and so we got on a call and we chatted about, you know, everything that she’d been through, the similarities in our cases, and we’ve actually caught up a couple of times since then as well.”

McHardy said that after she was attacked she had about four women who she knew call her and tell her about things they had gone through.

“It was so incredibly comforting, because very few people really understand what you’re going through, and to have somebody that you can connect to, who you know understands better than anybody else – it’s not just comforting, but it’s really powerful.

“You can talk about things in a way that you can’t talk to other people. And also there’s a comfort level in being able to talk to someone who’s been through it, because I can listen to anything anyone says about rape and that subject, whereas a lot of people who haven’t gone through it aren’t actually very comfortable talking about the subject.”

McHardy said Rewa was “very narcissitic”. She believes he will never tell police the full story of his offending.

She called for anyone who believed they may be a victim of Rewa’s to speak to police.

McHardy said she knew within 60 seconds of her attack that the man responsible was a “serial offender”.

“I knew he’d done it before. You just have an instinct about these things by the way someone operates.”

It was four years after she was raped that Rewa was caught.

“Initially, in the first few months, I was so upset about the fact that I couldn’t do anything to really help the police catch him because I didn’t have an identity. I couldn’t ID him. Didn’t have a visual. He was nameless, faceless, and I knew the only way that he would ever get caught or convicted for what he did to me, was if they caught him and there was a DNA match.

“But I was always concerned about how many victims there would be after me.”

She recalls police calling her in 1996 and telling her how many other victims there were

“It really was quite chilling to find out just how many women there were… now, obviously, if there were theoretically another 20 plus victims, you know, that would probably make him arguably the worst serial sex offender that we know of… he’s damaged so many lives, and not just the victims, but our families, the people around us.”

‘There’s no emotion’

Beard was notified of the latest case regarding Rewa once the DNA hit was confirmed.

“Ultimately with Rewa’s background it didn’t surprise me. There is no doubt it is a great result for the victim, as she can now have closure as to who committed this horrendous crime against her.”

He says there are many unanswered questions as to what led Rewa to commit such horrific attacks.

“I’m not a psychologist but people will say… to do that and have no feeling and to do that to all these people. What’s gone on in his world that he ends up like that?

“That’s what fascinates me, what has actually happened for him to be like that. There’s no emotion… he just keeps going on and on.”

Beard spoke of the satisfaction for police being able to hold Rewa to account for a crime from 1988.

“To be able to give that victim an answer, from a police perspective, is very satisfying. It’s not going to turn the clock back, but it does give her that satisfaction of knowing that what she’s done has helped to solve this case, and now we know who it is.

Beard asked for anyone who believed they were assaulted by Rewa to come forward.

“First of all, make sure you’ve got the support around you, whether it’s family, friends, counsellors … and then when you are ready and able come see the police, just like the other this case has done, contact the police, and then let’s go from there.”

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Sexual Violence

Family Violence

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand