Kahu kidnapper trapped by phone calls to friends

By STAFF REPORTERS and NZPA

Baby Kahu Durie's kidnapper was caught because he made calls from a pay phone to friends, it was confirmed last night.

Telecom said all calls from its 5400 payphones could be traced because they sent unique signals.

The company said it had been able to trace the calls made by Terence Traynor from a public phonebox in Te Awamutu.

Traynor made a call to the adoptive parents of Kahu Durie, lawyer Donna Hall and High Court judge Eddie Durie, then made two calls to friends.

Police were able to trace the calls and begin inquiries into Traynor's identity. Spokesman Andrew Bristol said that, although Traynor used a phonecard to make the calls, he was not traced through the chip in the card but through other calls made from the phone itself.

Mr Bristol said the chips in phonecards could not be used for tracing purposes unless the cards were marked in some way.

"We do this sort of work all the time for police and other agencies. We have the ability to look back at the records and see where and when calls have been made and in this particular instance that's what we did," he said.

Telecom could also trace mobile calls, as was done in the case of convicted double murderer Mark Lundy, and calls from landlines.

Police have refused to say how they found Traynor, 54, who pleaded guilty on Friday to five charges relating to the meticulously planned kidnapping of Kahu in Lower Hutt.

Traynor has been remanded in custody for sentencing on May 24.

He has an extensive police history, including several firearms-related crimes.

Television reports say his record includes a conviction for armed robbery in Australia in 1987.

Police who visited the Taumarunui house in which Traynor held 8-month-old Kahu for nine days said it could have been a set from the movie Silence of the Lambs.

They said Traynor began planning a kidnap in 1998, when he stole a registration plate from a car parked in Freemans Bay in Auckland.

Last year, he selected Donna Hall as his victim after she appeared in the Sunday Star-Times' list of rich and powerful New Zealanders, but later changed his focus to Kahu.

On Friday Ms Hall told the Herald it was time for the family to put the kidnapping behind them and at the weekend the extended family spent time together in Rotorua.

They attended church and the marae at Rotorua's Whakarewarewa Thermal Village with whanau of Kahu's birth parents.

She was adopted after Donna Hall lost a child four years ago during pregnancy.

An onlooker, who did not want to be named, said: "They looked happy and quite relaxed.

"There were a lot of people - whanau, I suppose - and they all looked like they were celebrating the baby's return in their own way."

Full coverage: Baby Kahu kidnapping