KEY POINTS:
Buried beneath a gravestone surrounded by dolls and toy cars lies a single white coffin not much bigger than a suitcase. There are no signs the grave has been visited in months - no fresh flowers, no new mementoes.
Nearly two years after their deaths, the gravestone of Chris and Cru Kahui still doesn't acknowledge their presence, the spot where they are buried carrying only the name of their maternal great-grandmother.
The neglect the Kahui twins suffered during the few short months they were alive seems to have followed them in death.
There is one change at the cemetery where they lie - a few graves up is the body of 3-year-old Dylan Hohepa Tonga Rimoni, another South Auckland toddler whose death has now become the subject of a homicide inquiry.
But after all the inquiries into the infamous Kahui case, no murderer or murderers have been found.
If it were not for their death certificates, it would be as if the twins had never existed. After Chris Kahui's acquittal on Thursday, family spokesman Tom Ngapera - the father of Kahui's current girlfriend, Marcia - said it was not a time to celebrate and that "the blood of two babies still cries from the grave for justice".
But it seems that no one will ever pay for their deaths. The police case is now officially closed leaving one big unanswered question - who got away with murder?
The twins were just 3 months old when they were admitted to Auckland's Starship hospital with severe head injuries in 2006.
They died 14 hours apart from injuries the Crown claimed were caused by Kahui, now 23, a "stressed-out" father who "snapped" on the night on June 12, 2006.
The Crown maintained that Kahui was the only one who had the opportunity to inflict the injuries, but despite the testimony of the 65 prosecution witnesses, the jury of seven men and five women were unanimous in their view that he was not the killer.
A year ago the Herald on Sunday ran into Kahui at McDonald's in downtown Auckland and spoke to him about the case - and the pressure of being New Zealand's most reviled accused killer.
He again maintained his innocence and said he welcomed the chance to clear his name. He was sick of all the finger-pointing, sick of the sideways glances.
So if Kahui didn't murder his twins, who did? Kahui refused to answer that question.
However, throughout the trial, his lawyer Lorraine Smith maintained the frequently absent bed-hopping mother of the children, Macsyna King, was the person responsible.
During the six week trial, she meticulously unravelled the circumstantial Crown case, labelling the 20-week inquiry led by Detective Senior Sergeant John Tims "a disaster".
Many in legal circles considered Smith an unusual appointment as defence counsel, one lawyer unkindly suggesting the police handpicked her to defend the prime suspect. She herself told the Herald on Sunday shortly before Kahui was declared not guilty that: "He could have had a QC. But he trusted us."
Terrier-like in cross-examination of Crown witnesses, particularly in accusing King of killing the twins, Smith showed a combative streak that belied her image as a kindly grandmother.
Two crucial pieces of evidence that poked holes in the police case were not revealed to the Crown until shortly before the trial - a supposed confession from King to an ex-lover and cellphone data that conflicted with the statements of King and her sister Emily about their movements on the night the twins were injured.
Police waited six months to alert Crown and defence counsel about a brief of evidence from King's ex-boyfriend Eru Tuari, in which Tuari told police that King tearfully told him: "Chris didn't do it, I did it", before punching the wall.
But police never re-interviewed King over the allegation and failed to disclose the evidence to the Crown or defence until just six weeks before the trial bega, an omission the Crown was understood to be furious about.
Detective Sergeant Chris Barry said police "became aware" Tuari had relevant information and met him. As a result of that meeting, police wanted to re-interview King. But a spate of homicides in South Auckland meant police resources were so stretched over the next eight months that the interview never happened.
Detectives also never re-interviewed King over the cellphone data that suggested a return trip from Avondale to Mangere, which in court she said never happened.
Lawyers who spoke to the Herald on Sunday said the police could not charge King with the crime unless new evidence was unearthed. "The public are furious over this one. The police have shot themselves in the foot with this one," one defence lawyer said on the condition of anonymity.
Smith submitted to the jury that, as the "95 per cent" caregiver, King must have noticed the older injuries the twins had sustained in the six weeks they had been home, including broken ribs and bruising on the brain. She claimed that King returned to 22 Courtenay Crescent shortly before baby Cru turned purple and needed CPR - an allegation King denied, saying, "I have never, ever harmed my sons. That's absolute bullshit."
King said she fed, bathed and changed the twins on Monday June 12 - the day Auckland was hit by a large powercut - then went to her sister's house before visiting friends in West Auckland and returning that night to Papakura.
But Smith claimed King was dropped in Mangere just after 7pm by her sister Emily King, pointing to phone call records that show Emily King in Papakura at 6.58pm, in Avondale on her way to a friend's house 40 minutes later then at 7.54pm back in Mangere, before heading back to West Auckland.
"You returned home and you lost it," Smith claimed in court. "What happened to make Emily suddenly go back? I put it to you that you did something terrible to the twins."
UNDER CROSS-EXAMINATION, Stuart King - who was the only person at 22 Courtenay Crescent while Chris and Mona Kahui went to the hospital - said his sister could have returned on the Monday night. Smith made more of the cellphone records in her closing address to the jury.
When questioned by police about the cellphone records in March 2007 showing she was in Mangere, Emily King gave no explanation. The police took it no further.
"It beggars belief the police thought nothing of it," Smith said in court.
In cross-examination, Macsyna King said she was with her sister the whole evening on the Monday night, drinking and singing at her friend Ginta Gaile's house in West Auckland. She angrily denied there was ever a return trip to Mangere.
Yet when Emily King took the stand just a few weeks later, she said there was a return trip to Papakura because Pou Hepi wanted his 4x4 truck back, and she drove on the Southwestern Motorway past Mangere instead of taking the Southern Motorway.
In her closing address, Lorraine Smith pointed out that until the trial Emily King had not explained that to police. Officers then recreated the trip with Emily in a car during the trial.
Pou Hepi, the man making the calls to Emily King, was summonsed to give evidence in the High Court but never appeared.
He went into hiding and a warrant was issued for his arrest - he told Emily King to tell the police to "get f****d" - so when he was found, the defence declined to call him because of his aggressive attitude.
"The defence says there is something very wrong about this. The defence says Emily King and Macsyna lied," Smith said in court.
"Did it not occur to the police that Emily would have loyalties to her sister?"
A third mistake police made, Smith said in court, was ignoring the historical injuries of the twins of which there "was not one shred of evidence" to suggest they were inflicted by Kahui. The older injuries, inflicted two to four weeks before the babies died, included broken ribs and bruising on the brain - almost identical injuries to those which killed the twins.
"Those babies, sadly, were not the victims of a one-off event in which someone snapped," said Smith.
But no one else will be charged for their murders. Police are adamant they arrested the right person and say they will not be charging anyone else, including the babies' mother.
Macsyna King, you could argue, is hardly mother-of-the-year material.
She has convictions for theft and burglary, has served time in Arohata Prison - and has four other children to three different fathers. During the trial she also admitted to smoking P.
Shane Wenzel is one of the few people who knows King well.
King spent 15 months with the self-styled "life coach" before the twins were born and is still in regular contact with her.
Wenzel is adamant she did not murder Chris and Cru. "I asked her straight out if she did it and she told me no."
King had had a difficult childhood and carried with her a lot of sadness, Wenzel said. Her goal now was to regain custody of her other children, a son 13, and daughters aged 11 and 8, who live in Hawke's Bay. She has not had contact with them for five years.
Chris and Cru's older brother Shayne, now 3, was the result of an unplanned pregnancy with the teenage Kahui.
When the investigation into the twins' injuries began, Shayne, then a toddler, was dirty and malnourished. He and a baby cousin Cyene were taken by CYF. Shayne lives with relatives of Kahui in Gisborne. Sources say it is unlikely that either Shane or Cyene will be returned to the families.
Wenzel said King's goal was to move on with her life. "I don't believe she murdered those twins. The challenge now is for her to turn her life around. I think she can do it."
