Stepfather slams Cardno killer's parole bids

A 1990 picture of Paul Dally. Photo / File

The stepfather of a Lower Hutt schoolgirl who was tortured and murdered has slammed the Parole Board for making her killer eligible for parole year after year.

Paul Joseph Dally, 52, who has spent almost 24 years in jail for the 1989 murder of 13-year-old Karla Cardno, was denied parole yesterday but is eligible for another hearing in a year's time.

But Cardno's stepfather, Mark Middleton, said the killer's yearly parole hearings were a "farce" and Dally should never be released.

"All of the hundreds of thousands of decent Kiwi people out there ... I haven't come across anybody who wants [Dally] in their neighbourhood. The man's too dangerous," Middleton told Radio Live.

Middleton said he refused to participate in the parole board hearings.

"I'm not going to be involved with a process that damages people.

"Because of what they did the last time ... Put him in our bloody neighbourhood when he should have been in jail."

Dally was sentenced to life in prison in 1990 after snatching 13-year-old Karla from her bike as she rode home from the local shops, dragged her to his house and repeatedly raped and tortured her for 22 hours.

He later put her naked, bound and gagged in the boot of his car and buried her alive in a shallow grave at Pencarrow Head.

Middleton was convicted in 1999 for threatening to kill Dally if he was freed from prison.

- nzherald.co.nz