‘I could feel in my gut it was wrong’
A man tells police he saw Jane Furlong a day after her disappearance, being escorted through Port Waikato’s sand dunes by a group of men carrying a spade. On the anniversary of the unsolved murder, Kelly Dennett examines his story, and considers the falli
The scene made him so uncomfortable, he says, that he documented it. Surreptitiously turned the flash off on his black Olympus camera, told his wife to pose, and hit snap. Where that photo is now is anyone’s guess, but if it still exists – and captures what he believes he saw – it could hold the key to one of New Zealand’s most infamous cold cases.
Or, it could tell a story about how our own memories play tricks on us and deceive us. How they keep us up at night.
One afternoon in 1993, a man – who the Sunday Star-Times has chosen not to identify – took an impromptu drive to Port Waikato’s Sunset Beach, a remote and windswept coastline, about an hour’s drive south from Auckland; slightly longer if driving north from Hamilton.
The man, then 27, believes it was Thursday, May 27, based on his starting a new job around this period, and the patterns of his shift roster at the time. The night before, teenage sex worker Jane Furlong had disappeared from Auckland’s Karangahape Rd, although that was not yet public knowledge.
The man says on the rural road out to the beach he was followed closely by a group of men in a blue car. It appeared to be a rare lefthand-drive car, and he says he could see a young woman sitting amidst them. Closely behind that car was a white car containing two men. The man let them pass, but he saw them again as he and his wife arrived at the car park at Sunset Beach.
This is when instinct kicked in. Something was wrong, he says. He quietly eyed the group, believing the six men were aged about 23 to 33. They were wearing jeans and some had long jackets. They looked like they could be bouncers at a club, he thought. None of them looked happy. But it was the young woman’s demeanour that struck the man. She was petite, aged maybe 18 to 28, with auburn-like hair that looked curly, voluminous, or maybe just messy. She looked confused, perhaps hungover.
At one point he thought he caught a glimpse of her being pushed – or maybe she tripped – and as she tried to catch her balance she put her hands up to the chest of one of the men, who grabbed her by the forearms. The men were serious, unsmiling. The situation seemed tense. There was a short conversation between the woman and one man, but nothing the witness could hear.
‘‘I could feel in my gut it was wrong. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever seen a group of people to come to the beach and who seemed ... like they were so unhappy.’’
And so he quietly took that picture, thinking that maybe he would need it one day. He took another as the group walked off. He felt powerless to do anything else, and considered that maybe he was reading too much into it. As the woman wandered towards the sand dunes with the men he says he noticed one of them quietly slipping a spade he’d retrieved from the boot close to his body, almost under his jacket, like he didn’t want it to be seen.
‘‘I thought, oh that’s weird – but not that weird,’’ the man says. ‘‘People do take a spade to the beach from time to time, but usually they’re dressed like fishermen. Incongruous would be a good word for the situation.’’
The man and his wife spent a short time on the beach, leaving shortly afterward, he says, as he was late for work. He thinks it was about 1pm. The woman he’d seen hadn’t been assaulted, she hadn’t called for help. But something nagged, and he thinks it was that Saturday he called the Hamilton police station, explaining what he’d seen, explaining about the photographs.
The man says an officer told him Pukekohe police station looked after Port Waikato. The man says he called them too. Again he explained about the spade, about the photos. By this time he’d learned a young Auckland woman was missing.
As time went on, he assumed police had discounted his sighting. But, he continued to revisit it. He thinks he contacted police again, either in 1993 or 1994. By this time two photos had been developed, but the man doesn’t think he ever sat them side-by-side with a photo of Furlong. This was pre-internet, he explains.
Life went on. The man left Hamilton and lived overseas. He stored belongings with his parents, and separated from his wife. The disappearance of Furlong remained a mystery. Come 2003 the man says he was sorting through belongings when he came across the photos – and decided to take another shot. He says he described the photos to another police call-taker but again, never heard back.
By the time Furlong’s skeleton was found at the Port Waikato dunes, in 2012, the man was certain he’d seen Jane Furlong.
In 2021, seeing publicity about the Red Fox Tavern murder case, in which two men were convicted of the murder of a Maramarua publican more than 30 years after the victim was gunned down, the man was spurred on again.
‘‘I woke up one night, in the early hours of the morning, and was awake for a while – and had this clear recollection. I thought, they’re obviously still prepared to prosecute an old case.’’
He fruitlessly rang the police’s dedicated cold case number. It wasn’t until he contacted the StarTimes and was put in touch with detectives, that police enquiries began into whether the photographs still exist.
The man believes it’s highly likely they’re in his elderly father’s home and has had his brother searching. After some to-ing and fro-ing about whose responsibility it was to locate the photographs (police initially asked the man to supply them, the man believed the police should search), a box of his pictures were dropped at a South Island police station, then couriered to the investigation team. Police found no photos of interest, but other boxes are to be searched.
So is there something to the man’s story? Or, like so many other – ultimately false – leads in the years since Furlong’s disappearance, is he sending police on a wild goose chase?
University of Waikato’s Professor Maryanne Garry says time is problematic for accurately recalling memories. Garry believes there should be a statute of limitations on prosecuting cold cases because fallible memory makes them unsafe. Studies show the further people get away from their initial recall, the less accurate they become in their retelling.
Theoretically, after the man witnessed this scene at Port Waikato 28 years ago, his brain turned the event into a highlights reel – some takes to reference for the future. When this happens, neurotransmitters start chatting and the cocktail of chemicals turn the memory of burly men and a petite woman into protein and codes. Then, probably after that Saturday call to the Hamilton police, the information moved to other parts of his brain to be stored.
This is how Garry generally explains the machinations of our mind after we’ve gone through something worth remembering. ‘‘This whole chemical yadda-yadda process is called consolidation. If it gets truncated, interrupted or otherwise screwed up, so is your memory.’’
Summoning a memory is akin to pulling a dusty object out of a cupboard, brushing it off – in the process disturbing it – and then trying to reuse it. In the process of returning it to its dark corner, it may have attracted more dust, dirty fingerprints, or be returned slightly broken or missing a part. The point is, it’s not as durable.
‘‘You can sweep up new information that you’ve thought about
‘‘I woke up one night, in the early hours of the morning, and was awake for a while – and had this clear recollection. I thought, they’re obviously still prepared to prosecute an old case.’’ 1993 eye-witness
or imagined or someone has said to you in the process – and so the punchline is, talking about a memory can hurt it,’’ Garry says.
‘‘We also know that talking about a memory makes it stronger – that’s the paradox.’’
But, she says, while memories infused with emotion can also feel more detailed or real, they’re not necessarily any more accurate.
The man’s Initially he thought the car carrying the men and the woman was a late model Ford Falcon, but after Googling American models he settled on the distinct 1991/1992 Chevrolet Caprice. He admits this came after reading the account of rock star Deane Sutherland, who believed he saw Furlong being driven away in a unique American-style vehicle on the night she disappeared. (Sutherland’s claims were never substantiated, and he’s since died.)
By last week, the man
recall has continued. remembered hearing what sounded like gunshots on the beach as he left. Why didn’t he do something? He believed it was too farfetched that the woman had been killed in broad daylight. Police have never revealed how Furlong died.
His emails contain increasingly detailed information: how high the tide was (high, but not full – about 20m from waterline to high tide mark); how far away the men stood from him (4-6 metres in the carpark); and who else was around (‘‘I recall one couple, coming from the beach, walked towards and passed the line of men... I recall the thought ‘they didn’t notice anything’... that moderated my concerns.’’)
He’s researched too – heavy rainfall events in Port Waikato, and how that might have hidden footprints or recent excavation.
Garry: ‘‘He sounds like someone who could be in my experiments – he has that baseline thing that’s (potentially) accurate, and he’s being a helpful citizen, doing research, picturing things... and they’re all plausible details. That’s fascinating.’’
Over a Zoom connection from California, renowned memory expert witness Professor Elizabeth Loftus – who gave evidence for Harvey Weinstein’s defence team – is sceptical. ‘‘I wouldn’t trust that,’’ she says of the man’s ongoing recall.
‘‘People, if they’re pressed for detail, they can sometimes come up with more, some of it might be something they hadn’t thought about the last time they told the story, but when you’re dealing with something more than a quarter century now, no, memory is not going to be getting better.
‘‘The opportunity in this kind of situation, with all the publicity... these provide opportunities for him to acquire details that can fill in the narrative. Maybe you’re just being impressed with his detail, his confidence, and it’s really hard to resist.’’
Furlong’s mother, Judith Furlong, says the man’s story is intriguing and believes it ‘‘very probably true’’.
The officer in charge of the case, Detective Inspector Paul Newman, wouldn’t discuss specifically how police had followed up on the information, but confirmed the man’s account was being assessed ‘‘to see if any further action is required’’.
It’s understood police have spoken to the man’s ex-wife, but that her recall was limited. The Star-Times was unable to reach her. The description of the distinct car ‘‘has not been corroborated’’, Newman said. Police had no record of the man coming forward previously but, ‘‘a photo, if it existed, would substantially advance the inquiry’’.
For this would-be witness, he hopes his story may prompt memories or information from others. Perhaps someone knows that distinctive vehicle. Perhaps someone else was on the beach that day. Or maybe, the woman will recognise herself in that scene and make contact. In the meantime, a photograph could solve both mysteries.
Wednesday will mark 28 years since Furlong was last seen alive.
If the photos were found, and they didn’t depict Jane Furlong? ‘‘I would be happy with that,’’ he says without hesitating, having just turned over the very same Olympus camera.
He’s kept it all these years, and he points out the flash button he pushed all those years ago. ‘‘(But) I’d basically ask, is there another girl buried out there?’’
‘‘The opportunity in this kind of situation, with all the publicity... these provide opportunities for him to acquire details that can fill in the narrative.’’ Professor Elizabeth Loftus