Missing woman had been offered drug run

A New Zealand woman who disappeared from Sydney in 1980 was approached to do a drug run to Malaysia, an inquest has been told.

Marion Sandford wrote a letter to her brother Peter in January, 1980, saying she had gone to meet friends and would be back at the Cammeray home they shared within a week. She never came home. Warren Mills, who she dated from 1978, gave evidence at an inquest into her presumed death at Glebe Coroner’s Court on Tuesday.

Mr Mills said Ms Sandford was approached by their North Shore drug dealer David Pierce to do a drug run to Malaysia.

‘‘She was quite keen [to go],’’ Mr Mills said.

‘‘It was money and cheap drugs,’’ he said.

But Mr Mills said a drug run to Malaysia took two to three weeks and he didn’t believe Ms Sandford had ever got a passport.

Mr Mills said Ms Sandford’s addiction went from using heroin once a fortnight to four times a day towards the time she disappeared.

He said she became a prostitute and worked the streets of Kings Cross to support the pair’s $200 to $300 daily habit.

‘‘I used to just like hang around, stay in the car,’’ Mr Mills told the court.

‘‘And try and follow her when she got into a car.’’

The pair also rented a room at a motel known as Lodge 44 to bring customers to.

In one incident, Ms Sandford got into a car and two other men jumped in.

‘‘I followed them, I lost them at Waterloo and I rang the police,’’ Mr Mills said.

‘‘She had been been taken to a house and they had forced her to take some LSD and she had been assaulted, raped.’’

Mr Mills said she had tried to keep her drug habit and prostitution a secret from her family in New Zealand and her brother Peter in Sydney.

Ms Sandford’s four siblings, some over from New Zealand, were in court. Some wept silently.

The inquest before coroner Paul Macmahon continues.