Media roasted over car-boot case

CANBERRA - The bizarre case of Maria Korp, the 50-year-old Melbourne woman found in the boot of her car, continued to take new twists even as her husband and his lover appeared on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to murder.

Joseph William Korp, 47, and Tania Lee-Anne Herman, 38, were remanded in custody yesterday by Magistrate Robert Tuppen amid claims the case had become a soap opera.

Reporters from Melbourne's Herald Sun were for a time banned from accessing information about the case, and Tuppen was infuriated by the refusal of the newspaper's editor to appear before him to explain the tabloid's coverage.

Korp's counsel, Peter Ward, described media coverage as a disgrace, and said the case was not a TV show but a tragedy involving real people who were innocent until proven otherwise.

Maria Korp yesterday remained in a medically-induced coma, four days after forensic detectives found her unconscious and severely dehydrated in the boot of the car they were examining.

The mother of two from Mickleham, in Melbourne's northwest, vanished on Wednesday last week, and was discovered in her red Mazda 626 which had been abandoned near the Shrine of Remembrance.

Joseph Korp made emotional appeals for help during his wife's disappearance, repeatedly expressed his love and denied any suggestion that he may have been involved.

But in the days after his wife's discovery it emerged that he had been having an affair with Herman, leading to Maria Korp's taking out a restraining order against him.

Maria Korp lifted the order shortly before she disappeared, and her husband claimed his affair with Herman had ended.

It also emerged that the Korps were members of an adult dating service, seeking sexual partnerships with other couples.

And the case was clouded further by the news that Herman's husband, a river boat captain, had drowned after falling from a paddle steamer into the Murray River this year.

Police have since determined that there were no links between Maria Korp's disappearance and the dating service, and that there were no suspicious circumstances in the death of Herman's husband.

Ward complained bitterly about the media's treatment of the investigation when Joseph Korp and Herman appeared in court after being charged on Wednesday night.

He was even more furious yesterday morning, when a potentially prejudicial interview with Herman's brother appeared in that day's Herald Sun, with another report of the charges against Korp.

No reports providing information not provided in court are allowed to be published after a suspect is charged with a crime.

"The newspaper and a section of the media is running this case like a soap opera," Ward said.

Tuppen was also angered, blocking access to details of the case to Herald Sun reporters for some time, and asking the editor, Peter Blunden, to appear to explain the coverage.

Blunden refused, but while describing the decision as "rudeness in the extreme", Tuppen said the refusal was not contempt.

A committal hearing will be held on May 12.