Cops remember ‘terrible day’
One photo stood out in the offices of the Napier CIB during the opening months, and then years, of the Teresa Cormack inquiry.
It was a cheerful little colour photo of the youngster smiling.
“I can see it now — it is not something you ever forget,” former detective Keith Price said as he pondered the passing of 30 years since the “terrible day” the 6-yearold vanished on her way to school.
“I worked on the case initially for a short time,” Price said.
Part of that work had been at the Whirinaki Beach scene where Teresa’s body was found. “It was cold and there was rain — pretty horrific.”
It all comes back every time he drives by the beach’s great bluff. “It was a tough one to work on.”
Like many other police on the case he had a youngster at home.
He would return home at the end of another day and cherish his 5-year-old boy’s company — and his mind would swing to what had happened to the little Teresa.
“We had the photo of her up on the wall at work and we would look at it all the time — that was the motivation to solve this.”
Keeping at it led to Price and his late colleague Brian Schaab heading for Stokes Valley in Wellington in 2002 to knock on the door of the man who would later be convicted of Teresa’s murder and jailed.
Detectives had “blooded” several thousand people in their search, and DNA upgrades had stepped in. “I very clearly remember the morning we got him — that was a very big moment for me, for everyone.”
He did not pass the news on to Teresa’s mum, Kelly. “Pretty sure Schaaby made that call.”
He had caught up with Kelly several times during the inquiry, and after the arrest, and paid tribute to her strength and stoicism through “a bloody horrible” time.
“It really affected some of us working on it — it’ll never go away.”
While he had worked on homicide cases before, in Wellington and in Napier, the loss of the little girl with that chirpy, smiling face hit hard.
“It was a real changer in this country — people looked at how they were getting their kids to school — everything changed from that day.”
Detective Sergeant Darryl Moore, still working in Hawke’s Bay, had been in the job for only a short time and was a uniformed constable. “I was on the search team. “Out there scouring the beaches and the bushes,” he said of the first week while Teresa was missing.
“I was just out of Police College and this was a tragedy I was just trying to get my head around.”
Fifteen years later that he was back on the case in the wake of profile updating and progress — progress which eventually led to the identification of Jules Mikus.
Moore said it was unsettling that more than a thousand people had come to police attention as being potential suspects in the case.
He recalled an earlier memory of when he was at the family home in Mt Pleasant near Christchurch and seeing lines of people in the valley walking along through farmland.
“I asked dad what they were doing.” His father told him a little girl nearby had been playing with her brother at their front gate. While the boy had gone inside for a short time the little girl had disappeared. “She had been abducted.” That scene returned to his mind later during the hunt for Teresa.
“It was a tough time and I still find it hard to think someone could do that — but as a police officer you have to move on.” But the memories stay.