Family of missing Aussie sends DNA samples to police

GEORGE TOWN: Family members of Annapuranee Jenkins, who went missing in Penang three years ago, have sent their DNA samples to police after some of the Aussie woman’s personal belongings and skeletal remains were found here earlier this year.

Her son Steven confirmed that the DNA sampling was done in Australia and the results would be transferred to investigators in Penang.

Among the items found were a handbag, Australian coins, a Penang hotel key card, toiletry, a rosary and an inhaler, all believed to belong to Annapuranee.

Steven believed the items, which have now been surrendered to police, belonged to his mother.

The items, together with what the police have now confirmed to be human skeletal remains, were found by a landscape contractor in April.

The man surrendered it to his supervisor at a construction site, some 900m from the location she was last seen at the Seri Ramakrisha Orphanage in Scotland Road here.

The contractor also notified the Jenkins’ family about his discovery.

The area was within a thick jungle beneath the Penang Hill Range.

Steven, who has submitted a request to visit Penang in spite of the Covid-19 pandemic, said he was bogged down by the long process of approval by the immigration authorities.

But the family is in the limelight again after three years of painstaking search including engagements with the Malaysian and Australian media.

In one of the most mysterious missing person’s cases in recent memory, Annapuranee was visiting Penang with her husband Frank Jenkins, a retiree from the Royal Australian Air Force, in 2017, when she vanished into thin air.