At least one parent of the Kahui twins looks set to face fresh charges over their deaths.
Legal sources told Firstline that enough new evidence has emerged at the inquest to show that either one or both parents “failed to provide the necessaries of life”.
The decision is based on delays in getting the twins to hospital after they were injured, as well as their dehydrated state.
The offence carries a maximum prison term of seven years.
The inquest continues this morning and 3news.co.nz reporter Dan Satherley will be providing live updates
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12:48pm
Eru Tuari has completed giving evidence at the inquest into the death of the Kahui twins today.
Assistant coroner Chris Morris says written submissions from legal counsel need to be submitted by the end of July.
Submissions in response will need to be submitted within 21 days of the end of July.
With that, this part of the inquest is concluded.
Coroner Garry Evans thanked counsel for the assistance he has received.
12:32pm
Eru Tuari has admitted he isn’t sure what exactly Macsyna King told him the night she allegedly confessed.
When asked if he was certain of her exact words – in the trial, said to be “Chris didn’t do it, I did it” – he thought long and hard, and didn’t respond.
When asked if when he was certain of her words when he gave evidence at the trial in 2008, Tuari was silent for a lengthy period of time. The question was repeated and rephrased, and after about two minutes he said, “Sort of. Not really.”
Before that, Tuari told the inquest after discovering who Ms King was, he spoke to friends and family about their relationship.
Despite this, after she allegedly told him “I did it”, he admits he didn’t mention the conversation to anyone he knew, despite the interest in their relationship.
He broke up with her about a week later, getting his friend to send her a text message ending the relationship.
It wasn’t until later in the year, when in prison, Tuari mentioned the conversation to anyone. He admitted to the inquest today he was a bit vague on her exact words.
12:12pm
Police lawyer Simon Mount has accused Tuari of stealing the phone used in the recording made in January 2007, and says there was no recording made of any confession.
“It was not a magic phone, was it?” Mr Mount asked Tuari, who agreed it was not. Mr Mount says the phone could not record video after the lid was closed, as proved in the trial. The alleged confession wasn’t made until 10 minutes into the three-hour conversation.
But Tuari disputed Mr Mount’s accusation he was lying about making a recording.
“I know it did, I heard it,” said Tuari, insisting the recording existed.
Mr Mount said the phone was examined by the Crown and lawyers for both sides, and no one found a recording of Ms King.
Tuari accepted there was no recording of her when it was examined, saying “maybe” the woman he gave the phone to after the recording was allegedly made had deleted it.
“In the trial when I got the phone, there was heaps different with it,” replied Tuari.
Tuari says despite the alleged confession, she never explicitly said she had killed the twins.
Mr Mount: “Macsyna never told you she killed the twins, right?”
Tuari: “No.”
11:33am - Eru Tuari says he was told Macsyna King was “in the bedroom, sulking” when he arrived at the house where she was staying in January 2007.
He decided to go and take a “cheeky” photo of her, because, “The way he said it was like a joke.”
But Tuari says he didn’t take a photo – he opened up his cellphone and began recording video.
When asked why, Tuari told the inquest, “I do silly things like that.”
Simon Mount, police lawyer, asked Tuari if he then closed the cellphone.
“I think so,” responded Tuari. When Mr Mount told him that’s what he told the High Court during the trial of Chris Kahui, he again responded, “I think so.”
Mr Mount referred to notes from the trial, reminding Tuari that’s what he had told the court and police previously.
Tuari told Mr Mount he’s “not very careful” with the truth in general, but would stick to the same story he used in the trial “for today”.
The three-hour conversation he had with Ms King that day was when she allegedly told him she was the one who killed baby Chris and Cru, not their father.
Only 31 seconds of the conversation were recorded on the cellphone, according to Tuari, which included the alleged confession.
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11:16am - Tuari has reiterated his claim at least part of the conversation he had with Macsyna King – where she allegedly confessed – was recorded.
He says he has no idea who killed the twins, but got in touch with police just because he thought it was of interest to police, and he has gained nothing by doing so.
Chris Kahui’s lawyer Ms Wilkinson-Smith put it to Tuari that if he put his own interests first, he wouldn’t have told police what he had heard. Tuari agreed.
He says he’s spent most of his life in jail, and he “felt sorry” for Mr Kahui.
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11:07am - “The thing that caught my mind was when she said, ‘I did it,’” Tuari has told inquest.
“Chris didn’t do it, I did,” is what Macsyna King, the twins’ mother, allegedly told him. He asked, “Did what?” She allegedly told him, “Ah, f**k it,” and didn’t elaborate further.
Tuari confirms he was in a relationship with Ms King at the time she allegedly made the confession, in January 2007.
She was staying at her sister’s place in Papkura. Tuari says when he arrived, she was “crying”, and was “all over the place”. She had not been talking about the twins however.
He says he did not know she was the dead twins’ mother when they started seeing each other, in late 2006. He isn’t sure how long they had been in a relationship before he found out who she was.
After seeing Chris Kahui had been arrested and charged with the twins’ murder, he contacted police to tell them what Ms King had told them.
“It wasn’t right,” he told the court today. He says he had never met Mr Kahui at the time, and doesn’t think he’d met any other member of the family at that time.
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10:58am - Coroner Garry Evans has decided the witness giving evidence at the inquest into the death of the Kahui twins can be named.
He is Eru Tuari, a former boyfriend of the twins’ mother Macsyna King.
In 2008, Tuari told the court Ms King was the one who killed the twins.
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He said Ms King told him, "Chris didn't do it, I did it.”
His image has been suppressed.