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The detective who arrested Chris Kahui for his sons' murders has admitted police were too busy with a wave of violent crime to re-interview the twins' mother about a development in the homicide inquiry.
Detective Sergeant Chris Barry told Kahui's High Court murder trial yesterday police spoke to a man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, in August last year.
Kahui denies murdering Cru and Chris Kahui in June 2006 and has been on trial for the past four weeks.
Mr Barry said police "became aware" the man could have information relevant to the case and met him. As a result of that meeting Mr Barry said police investigating the twins' murders wanted to re-interview the babies' mother Macsyna King.
At the start of the trial Kahui's lawyer, Lorraine Smith, told the court the man would say that Ms King confessed to killing the babies.
But police resources were so stretched that the interview never took place over the following eight months until the trial began.
"What I did want to do was try and conclude the investigations around what [the witness] had told police and I felt it was important that in respect of what he told us that we needed to re-interview Macsyna King," he said.
"We wanted to re-interview Ms King but were under significant pressure at work supervising a squad of eight detectives."
That team was dealing with a number of sex offences in Counties Manukau and then became swamped by a series of murders. "I was called out on the weekends on three occasions to deal with homicides," he said.
Police didn't get to interview her, and Mr Barry said he was conscious the man's statement needed to be disclosed to Kahui's defence team and Crown prosecutors.
It was eventually disclosed just six weeks before the trial began.
Crown prosecutor Richard Marchant put it to him that the timing was far from ideal.
"In an ideal world I would have liked to have provided it earlier than that ... unfortunately that's not the reality of the situation."
Kahui's defence lawyers are expected to open their case today.
