David Lomas returns with a new series.

In a new investigative series, David Lomas sets out to solve a mystery that has captivated New Zealand for nearly 60 years. Kerry Harvey reports.

Truck driver Keith Mitchell was found as a baby in a phone box in Palmerston North. Now 57, Mitchell decided he wanted to know why and turned to veteran journalist David Lomas for help.

Nearly 60 years on – and with the help of DNA and a team of researchers – Lomas successfully finds Mitchell those answers and solves the mystery that made headlines around New Zealand nearly six decades ago.

“In my career in journalism, I’ve done a number of stories I’m quite proud of and this definitely sits way up there among them,” Lomas says.

“Not only we do we solve the mystery – and it’s pretty straightforward solving it in some ways – but we also get to explain why these people did what they did. That was the most amazing thing.”

That search is the focus of the first of a new 10-part series, David Lomas Investigates, which, at first look, is just as poignant – if not more so – than its predecessors Missing Pieces and Lost And Found. During the past 11 years, Lomas has helped reunite more than 200 people with missing family members and the new show still does that – but on a much bigger scale. “Basically we set out in this series to do a lot more complicated stories which have twists and turns in them,” he says, adding he was also looking for stories reflecting social attitudes during different periods in local, and even international, history. “They aren’t just a straight story of two people and it was hard getting enough stories which had the complexity that we needed to make it a fascinating journey,” he says. “These stories are, if anything, a massive journey for the viewer both emotionally and distance wise in many cases.” Take, for example, the episode focusing on Wanaka Para-Olympic skier Elitsa Hall

who, now pregnant with her first child, wants to track down her birth parents in Bulgaria in an effort to find out if the disabilities she was born with are connected to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. That search took Lomas to several parts of Europe.

Then there are the investigations that are hampered by people who want secrets to stay buried.

“Obviously we deal with people who have lied a lot,” Lomas says.

“There’s a whole episode about mothers who lie. It’s very difficult when you tell someone they could have met their father 20 years ago if the mother hadn’t lied.”

While Lomas fronts the show and does a lot of the research, he’s quick to point out that he gets a lot of help from people in New Zealand and internationally. The advent of DNA testing has also been a huge bonus.

“DNA does make things interesting but while DNA gives you an answer, an instant answer, most often it only gives a starting point and sometimes that starting point is very complicated – for instance the phone-box baby story,” he says.

“It took a lot of work to find out who to test. And then when you get the results from DNA, sometimes it’s quite a distant relative. In one case the link was great-grandparents and then you have to track forward and try to find out who the person is you are actually looking for.

“So, even though I get a lot of kudos for it, I use a lot of people around the world. The DNA expert, genealogy researchers overseas and, while in some places I do research on the ground, in a lot of places I hire or use local people to help me. You just need that. For instance, one story I go to Sierra Leone and there’s no way I can find my way on my own around Sierra Leone.”

Through it all, Lomas never loses sight of his main purpose.

“My ethos is that we care for people. They’re putting trust in us and we’ve got to respect them and look after them. We always go on a journey and we share that journey. It’s not me just doing a job,” he says.

“You sort of become friends with the people you are doing it with and you want to do things for them and so it’s very important that all of us who work on the programme have that same ethos. It’s not a job. We’re doing something that’s good and we’re trying to help people.”

“It’s very difficult when you tell someone they could have met their father 20 years ago if the mother hadn’t lied.”

– David Lomas