Police investigating the seven-year-old murder of Marie Jamieson made their breakthrough after the man accused of her rape and murder gave a DNA sample after he was convicted of a minor shoplifting charge.
The 51-year-old beneficiary was arrested in Kaitaia in the Far North on Thursday and remanded in custody on rape and murder charges when he appeared in Kaitaia District Court yesterday.
He appeared briefly in court yesterday listed as a transient of no fixed abode, The New Zealand Herald reported today.
No plea was sought, and no application for name secrecy was made.
But police agreed to name suppression until he appears in Waitakere District Court on Wednesday.
The man was convicted of theft -- shoplifting to a value less than $500 -- and then discharged in the Waitakere District Court in April.
The conviction would have allowed police to issue a compulsion order to take a DNA sample.
Under the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act, police can issue an order following conviction for offences such as theft, rape and arson.
If a sample is not given by the day specified on the order, police can apply for a warrant to arrest, then detain for up to 24 hours, and eventually are allowed to use reasonable force.
It is understood the man complied with the order this month.
It has always been thought that two offenders may have been involved and further arrests haven't been ruled out.
The man did not feature in the initial inquiry in 2001 but was charged after police took a fresh look earlier this year at the 2001 murder of Ms Jamieson, 23, a hairdresser with a drug and alcohol problem.
Her naked and decomposing body was found behind a factory in Ranui, west Auckland, on February 19, nine days after she was last seen on security footage from a service station in Auckland.
Police believe she could have been alive or her body could have been carried around in a car or hidden for three days before she was dumped at the factory.
Some clothes were found near her body and two DNA was found, although police always refused to say if the samples were on her body or her clothes.
One of the semen samples was identified as from her boyfriend and he was eliminated as a murder suspect.
The other had never been identified and the officer in charge of the hunt for the killer at the time, Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Franklin said if they could identify the sample they would know her killer.
Several weeks after Ms Jamieson's body was found the unidentified semen sample was the only solid clue police had.
