Murder of Teresa Cormack

Teresa Maida Cormack was a six-year-old girl from Napier, New Zealand. On the morning of Friday 19 June 1987, the day after her sixth birthday, she left home to walk her usual route to Richmond Primary School but never arrived. When she failed to return home that evening, her family reported her missing, and it emerged that she had not reached school at all.

An extensive search followed. On the morning of Saturday 27 June 1987, a woman walking her dog discovered Teresa's partially buried body at the base of a tree on Whirinaki Beach, north of Napier. A post-mortem examination determined that she had been sexually assaulted and killed. The crime had a lasting effect on the Napier community and on a country where children had commonly walked to school unaccompanied.

Investigators recovered biological evidence from the scene, including hair and semen. In 1987, however, forensic science in New Zealand could not yet link such material to an individual; the country's first DNA testing laboratory would not open until 1989. A local man, Jules Mikus, was identified early as a person of interest and provided blood and saliva samples, but an alibi placing him elsewhere was accepted at the time and the available techniques could not connect him to the crime. The case went cold.

The investigation was reopened later, and preserved samples were re-examined as genetic profiling advanced. Around 2001, scientists at Environmental Science and Research profiled the sealed semen sample. Police collected hundreds of blood samples for comparison, and testing continued into early 2002. On 22 February 2002 the analysis was complete: a single profile matched the crime-scene sample, and it belonged to Mikus. Mitochondrial DNA analysis of pubic hairs recovered from the scene provided further corroboration.

On 26 February 2002, fifteen years after Teresa's death, police charged Mikus with her murder. His trial was held in Wellington rather than Napier to reduce the risk of prejudice. He pleaded not guilty, but the jury found him guilty of kidnapping, rape, sexual assault, and murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder, with additional concurrent terms and a minimum non-parole period of ten years.

Mikus maintained his innocence and challenged the DNA evidence, including an unsuccessful bid for further testing in 2011. He remained in prison until his death in custody at Rimutaka Prison in December 2019, at the age of 62. The case became one of New Zealand's most significant examples of a long-unsolved crime resolved through advances in forensic DNA analysis, with preserved evidence and improved profiling techniques ultimately identifying the person responsible years after the investigation first stalled.