NED PARAHA is a man of few words and even fewer answers.
Eight years on from the 2014 failed murder attempt on Matthew Blomfield, there are still the same nagging gnawing questions – questions we suspect Ned Paraha probably only has the answers to. But the first problem is where do you find Ned Paraha?
We’ve looked extensively, but South Auckland ain’t small, especially when you’re on the hunt for someone who’s probably trying their best to keep off the radar.
A fortnight ago we approached Ned Paraha’s mother, Diana Marino, in the hope she might open some doors for us, but after an initial response to our email we didn’t hear back from her, and she then blocked our calls.
We just wanted to talk…
It’s become a familiar story over the years. We’ve never met Diane, but we assume she is good honest woman who’s making the best of life. We don’t know how familiar she is with this whole saga, or how it may have affected her personally, or even whether she’s spoken to her son about it, but we do know she is who has the power to unlock the right doors, and we do know she must be aware of something as it was Diane who Ned called from the Police station when he was giving his DNA sample.
For those falsely accused in the book Whale Oil of orchestrating the hit on Blomfield, the ongoing stalemate has been like a malignant cancer – “It eats away at you, We need the truth. We need to know who put Ned Paraha up to this so after all these years, and all this suspicion, we can finally let the world know it wasn’t us,” said one of those accused, Marc Spring. “I’ve had people like my ex father in law, Sir Ralph Norris, run this story all over town, without thinking about the consequences for his own grandkids, or the fact the story is a load of rubbish”
“If you are reading this, Diane , please help us close this wound forever. Neither of us wanted to be involved in this thing, but here we are”.
“Perhaps my search for answers will provide some for you also.”
“To date, Paraha has said very little about the attack – and that includes even at sentencing where he offered nothing up as mitigation to have his sentence reduced”.
In 2015 at Springs request, private investigator Peter Hikaka interviewed Paraha at Wiri Prison and this was all Paraha had to say: “The only thing I know about Blomfield is from the disclosure I got and from the internet stuff. Before this I didn’t know him from a bar of soap. I don’t really want to discuss this”, adding that he just wanted “to let matters lie and get on with his lag”
Paraha’s ‘lag’ is done now but Spring says his goes on.
“Ned or Diane could help with that. Help us get some closure on this thing. What a wonderful Christmas present that would be. We just need some goodwill”.
Spring says he will keep searching for the answer of who was behind the hit no matter how long it took, and is still aghast at how the Whale Oil book arrived at its conclusions when there is just no supporting evidence what so ever.
“New Zealand was too small a place to hide such a big secret, he said – and eventually the truth would come out.” “I believe the truth of this story is nothing to do with what’s in the book, it’s a whole other thing” Spring says.
