Tuhirangi-Thomas Tahiata’s appeal against toolbox double murder conviction dismissed

One of the men convicted over the infamous torture and double killings dubbed the “toolbox murders” has learnt his fate in the state’s highest court.

• Revealed: The never-before-seen photo

One of the men convicted over the infamous toolbox double murders will be forced to serve two life sentences after his appeal was dismissed by the state’s highest court.

The Court of Appeal found that despite an error occurring in Tuhirangi-Thomas Tahiata’s murder trial, it did not amount to a substantial miscarriage of justice that would warrant his conviction being overturned.

In 2020, Tahiata was found guilty by a jury of the horrific 2016 murders of Iuliana Triscaru and Cory Breton.

The bound and gagged bodies of Iuliana Triscaru and Cory Breton were found crammed inside a 2m toolbox.

The pair were lured to a Kingston unit where they were tortured, cut with knives, beaten, bound and placed inside a large metal toolbox that their killers then dumped in a creek, leaving the pair to drown.

The court heard his role in the murders included driving the victims to their death on the back of his ute and handing a co-accused a hammer to help smash holes in the side of the toolbox to make it sink faster.

Police retrieve a metal box from a dam near Scrubby Creek in Kingston, double murder Logan. Picture: Jono Searle.

Because he was found guilty of two murders, Tahiata will be required to serve at least 30 years in prison before he is eligible for parole.

Tahiata has appealed against his conviction, arguing inadmissable evidence of his off camera confession to police was placed before the jury.

Tuhirangi-Thomas Tahiata has had his appeal dismissed. Picture 9 News

He also argued the jury’s verdicts were unreasonable and could not be supported by the evidence in circumstances where the accounts provided by Tahiata to police substantially differed to the extent that a jury could not be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of the truth of any of those versions.

In a decision handed down on Friday morning, the Court of Appeal agreed that the trial judge wrongly ruled that evidence about an off-camera confession by Tahiata was admissible at trial.

However the court found that the error should not result in the conviction being set aside, finding Tahiata’s guilt had been proved to the criminal standard.

“I am satisfied that the evidence that was properly admissible at the trial established beyond reasonable doubt that the appellant was guilty of the two counts of murder,” the decision said,

“No substantial miscarriage of justice has actually occurred.”