KEY POINTS:
A man who for years was the prime suspect in the Teresa Cormack murder case is seeking an official pardon after claims he was "fitted up" on kidnap charges after refusing to co-operate with police investigating the high-profile murder.
Auckland lawyer Ron Mansfield will this week file papers in the Court of Appeal on behalf of Wayne Montaperto in a bid to quash a 1988 conviction for the kidnap of four children in Hastings in 1986.
Montaperto - who was sentenced to three years' imprisonment on the charges - has always maintained he was "fitted up" by police because he refused to co-operate with officers investigating the 1987 murder of Cormack.
Police yesterday rejected those claims, saying there would have been no benefit to the team investigating the Cormack murder in locking up Montaperto for kidnap.
During the early stages of the inquiry Montaperto - who had at least 20 criminal convictions at the time Cormack was murdered - was publicly identified by police as a chief suspect.
This was after claims Montaperto had been seen with a small girl in his car on the morning that Cormack disappeared.
Police asked for a DNA sample from Montaperto but he refused and claims officers retaliated by pinning kidnapping charges on him.
In 2002 police finally got their man after advances in DNA technology linked a blood sample from Jules Mikus with a semen sample found in Cormack's underwear.
But for Montaperto those years of being under the police spotlight would have near-fatal consequences.
In 1993 he suffered brain damage after being beaten with an iron bar by a man seeking retribution over Cormack's death.
Mansfield's petition is based on evidence that was not presented at Montaperto's original trial in 1988 or the subsequent case made to the Court of Appeal.
Montaperto claims that on the day the four children at the centre of the kidnapping case were abducted he was in Napier, not Hastings, and says he has documentation from the sale of a vehicle to prove this.
His previous defence counsel Russell Fairbrother, who is now a Labour list MP, was aware of Montaperto's alibi, but chose not to raise it at the original trial.
Yesterday he refused to say that was a "wrong decision" but conceded it was "sad" and "regrettable".
"We were lined up to call it. The witness was available, but you make these decisions, you make a judgment call. I thought the case could be run without calling [alibi] evidence."
Fairbrother said the early stages of the 1988 trial had gone well for Montaperto, but things changed once the judge was made aware by the prosecution that Montaperto was a suspect in the Cormack case.
From there the whole attitude of the court changed, Fairbrother said.
"I know what went on. I know how he (Montaperto) was dealt with. I know how I was dealt with by police," he said.
Brian Schaab - who for a time headed the Cormack police inquiry - said he believed there was no substance to the claims.
There would have been no benefit to police in framing Montaperto for a crime he didn't commit, Schaab said.
"It doesn't make sense. We wouldn't have achieved anything in doing that," he said.
But Mansfield told the Herald on Sunday it was quite clear Montaperto "was in the gun" because police believed that he was the killer of Teresa Cormack.
"The way this has affected his life is tragic, nothing less," Mansfield said.
"All he is interested in now is clearing his name for his benefit and the benefit of his family."
Montaperto said the kidnapping case had been based on "a pack of lies" which had "destroyed" his life.
"The police fitted me up because I wouldn't co-operate over Teresa Cormack. They know it and I know it," he said.
