Murder of Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen

Swedish tourists Sven Urban Höglin, aged 23, and his fiancée Heidi Birgitta Paakkonen, aged 21, disappeared while tramping on the Coromandel Peninsula of New Zealand in 1989. Police, residents, and military personnel conducted the largest land-based search undertaken in New Zealand, attempting to find the couple. In December 1990, David Wayne Tamihere (born 1953) was convicted of murdering Höglin and Paakkonen, and sentenced to life imprisonment based largely on the testimony of three prison inmates.

Höglin's body was discovered in 1991, revealing evidence which contradicted the police case against Tamihere, who has always maintained his innocence and filed a series of unsuccessful appeals during the 1990s. Tamihere was released on parole in November 2010 after serving twenty years. In 2017, one of the former prisoners who had testified against Tamihere at his murder trial was found guilty of perjury.

In July 2024, the New Zealand Court of Appeal decided that the hearing of this false evidence did constitute a miscarriage of justice. However, the Court found that there was still enough evidence to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of Tamihere's guilt, meaning his conviction was upheld. Tamihere applied to the Supreme Court which, in December 2024, agreed to hear his appeal.