My brother, the killer

Marie Jamieson

Anneke Bishop with her brother Joseph Reekers at Christmas 2006. Reekers was captured for the murder of Marie Jamieson, above, because of a blood sample provided by Bishop.

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ANNEKE BISHOP was driving near her home in New Lynn, West Auckland, in April 2002 when a chain of events began that would eventually allow police to solve the 2001 murder of Auckland hairdresser Marie Jamieson.

Bishop, now 57, noticed the car behind her was tailgating, with its headlights on full-beam. "I was freaking out, I get paranoid anyway," she said. She began driving erratically, going fast over speed bumps and driving on the wrong side of the road as she cut into her driveway.

The other driver called police, who arrived at Bishop's home, put her in handcuffs and took her to the Henderson police station. Bishop said she was held in a vice-like grip as she was thrown into the cells. A doctor came into her cell and asked if she would consent to giving a blood sample for the national DNA database. "I didn't hesitate, I thought, `I've got nothing to hide'."

Bishop later appeared in court charged with dangerous driving and was convicted and fined $600. She didn't tell her family of the incident and, although she was disgusted by how police treated her, thought little more of it.

Meanwhile, police were getting nowhere with their investigation into the murder of hairdresser Jamieson, 23, whose body had been found behind a factory in Ranui, West Auckland, in February 2001. She had been stabbed three times in the chest. The solitary clue was semen from an unknown male on her underwear, but checks against the DNA database, which today contains the genetic profiles of more than 90,000 people, had failed to find any suspects.

Around 2007, "familial" DNA testing became available in New Zealand. Environmental Science and Research (ESR) scientists were able to run crime scene samples through the national database to search for similar genetic traits which could reveal the relatives of an offender. But the powerful new technology could not be used by police at will.

Jill Vintiner, the ESR's forensic programmes manager, said because of the privacy and ethical issues involved, police first had to show they had exhausted all other lines of inquiry. "It's a technique we don't use routinely, it's only for serious cases," Vintiner said, adding that police had to go through an internal authorisation process, followed by a period of consultation with ESR.

In February 2008, police asked the ESR to do a familial search of the national database using DNA from the semen on Jamieson's underwear. Twelve days later, the ESR generated a ranked list of 49 people in the DNA database who could possibly be relatives. Top of the list was Anneke Bishop. The "likelihood ratio" of the semen coming from a sibling of Bishop was 1,760,250 – considered very high.

Police began delving into Bishop's background, and found that she had one full sibling, a younger brother, Joseph Martin Reekers, 52. She and her brother emigrated to New Zealand with their parents from Holland in 1961. Reekers was well known to police. He had a long history of criminal convictions, including rape and indecent assault, and thus became a suspect for the Jamieson murder. But police also investigated other male relatives of Bishop, including her son, whose DNA was not on the database. Bishop is upset that her son was dragged into it.

In April 2008, the final piece of the jigsaw fell into place when Reekers was caught stealing a salami from a supermarket in West Auckland. After he was convicted and discharged for theft, police gained an order compelling Reekers to provide a DNA sample, which matched the sample found with Jamieson. Reekers pleaded guilty to murder when he appeared in the high court last month and will be sentenced in April.

It was the first time familial DNA had been used to solve a murder in New Zealand, but Bishop did not know about her role in history until she visited Reekers while he was on remand in Mt Eden prison after his arrest in June 2008 for Jamieson's murder.

"He blamed me. He said it was my fault. He said, `why did you give your DNA?' He kept saying, `do you want to swap places?' I was sitting there shaking, having a panic attack. He's got this thing – he always blames other people."

Bishop said her brother was denying the murder at that point. "I said to him, `were you on drugs and you can't remember?' He didn't answer me – I knew then." She had spent the Christmas before his arrest with her brother, but at no point did he give any indication that he was harbouring a secret or under pressure. "I don't know how he lived with it, keeping it to himself."

She said her elderly mother was devastated and had a nervous breakdown. Bishop has also had a breakdown and is on medication. She is having flashbacks to the killing of her husband, Morton Bishop, at their home in One Tree Hill, Auckland, in 1973.

Court files show that Bishop was just 21 when she shot her husband, 19, in the head at point blank range with a .303 rifle as he lay in bed, their 18-month-old son in a cot nearby. She ran a defence of provocation, telling the jury at her Supreme Court trial that she saw her husband moving, noticed a knife, and feared she would be killed.

She told the Sunday Star-Times her husband had threatened to kill her and her son many times and subjected her to ongoing mental and physical abuse. "He said not to come to bed that night because I wouldn't wake up alive. It was going to be me or him."

Bishop was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter, and served less than three years in jail. "I learned a lot about myself inside. I came out a much stronger person."

Bishop has been tormenting herself that she is to blame for her brother's arrest and the devastation it has brought down on the family.

"I feel for the Jamieson family, they have been grieving for nine years. We are all victims – our grieving is just starting. I'm proud that my DNA got the killer, unfortunately it's my brother who's the one – that's the hard part to live with."

She said her role in her brother's arrest had been an horrific experience.

"It's like your past is haunting you again. I never seem to get away from it."

- © Fairfax NZ News