Sam Hurley: Malcolm Rewa trial concludes with dramatic closing statements

"You can be sure he's guilty of murder." Those are the words of Crown prosecutor Gareth Kayes as he addresses the jury considering the third trial of Malcolm Rewa for the final time this morning. "The accused, Malcolm Rewa, entered Susan Burdett's home uninvited … he raped her, he murdered her," Kayes said to begin his address. During the past two weeks in the High Court at Auckland, all the evidence the Crown and defence could muster has been delivered. But it told two different stories about the killing of the 39-year-old accounts clerk in her Papatoetoe home in March 1992. "You can be sure he's guilty of murder for two main reasons," Kayes said of Rewa. "The first is that the attack on Susan Burdett had all the hallmarks of a typical Rewa sexual assault." Crown prosecutor Gareth Kayes. Photo / Michael Craig Rewa was convicted of Burdett's rape in 1998 - but two juries that year were unable to decide whether he was also responsible for her death. The 65-year-old serial rapist, who is serving a preventative detention sentence for raping several women in the 80s and 90s, had a "very distinctive way of sexually assaulting women", Kayes said. "Susan Burdett was attacked in that very same distinctive way." The second reason, Kayes explained, was Rewa's semen being found inside Burdett. "The accused claims that he was in a secret sexual relationship with Susan Burdett," he said. But it was not consensual sex in the living room of Rewa's house, just hours before Burdett was killed, Kayes suggested. "He has made up this whole story, he's trying to explain away a very difficult piece of evidence." Rewa's lawyer, Paul Chambers, has accused Burdett's son Dallas McKay of killing his mum for financial gain. An allegation both Kayes and McKay have categorised as a lie. "The Crown says that every aspect of the defence case is demonstrably false," Kayes said. Yesterday, Winsome Ansty told the court Burdett - her "best friend" - had asked her to keep a secret about a man she was seeing. "You might have thought that the description of the M?ori man, maybe that's got something to do with the accused?" Kayes told the jury today. But, Kayes said the mystery man was in fact another man Burdett had met while tenpin bowling - a competitive sport she loved. "There was some confusion among Susan Burdett's friends about a M?ori man from bowling," Kayes said. Ansty's evidence was "wholly unreliable", he said. "She has got the whole thing hopelessly garbled." Rewa, Kayes said, also displayed "inconsistencies" in his evidence from the third trial and the previous two in 1998. "He has tried to embellish lies he had already told in other trials," the prosecutor told the jury.Lies, Kayes alleged, which stretched from the type of vehicle Rewa had at the time to the thickness of the toilet paper at his home to help Rewa corroborate his evidence. When Rewa gave evidence earlier this week, the first time he has done so on camera, he detailed he claimed relationship with Burdett. The pair, he told the court, would have sex at the summit of M?ngere Mountain and watch the sunset. Rewa also claimed they would have sex in his big American truck. When talking of the night Burdett was killed, Rewa said they had split an ecstasy pill together before having sex on his couch. Rewa's 8-year-old and 5-year-old children where also allegedly in the house. "Do you really think Susan Burdett took half a pill of ecstasy after all the evidence you've heard?" Kayes asked the jury, while alluding to friends of Burdett's who have said she didn't have predilection for drugs or alcohol. "It's a fiction ... The accused's version just doesn't have the ring of truth around it." While it was an agreed fact Rewa had met Burdett at her workplace, Kayes asked: "Do you really think she was having a relationship with Malcolm Rewa? [The] sergeant at arms, or a high-ranking member of a bike club." Kayes alleges Rewa climbed through Burdett's window and surprised her as...