Beach remains could be of sex worker, 17

‘‘They’re the only two that I can think of that would match the age of how long the person has been in the sand and also the age of the supposed person themselves.’’

A skeleton found at Port Waikato could be that of a teenager who went missing from Auckland almost two decades ago, a missing persons expert claims.

Jayne Furlong was 17 and working as a prostitute when she disappeared from Karangahape Rd in 1993. Her body has never been found and police suspect she was murdered.

The remains were discovered just over a week ago in a sand hill at Sunset Beach and are believed to be that of a woman aged 15 to 25 years old who died more than 10 years ago.

Police have whittled down a list of 100 missing persons fitting the particulars to around 30, and Ms Furlong is one of them.

Scott Bainbridge, the author of true crime books Without Trace and Still Missing, has told police he believes the skeleton is that of Ms Furlong. He said the only other missing person case the details matched was that of Joanne Chatfield who was last seen walking up Princes St following a function at Auckland University in 1988.

‘‘They’re the only two that I can think of that would match the age of how long the person has been in the sand and also the age of the supposed person themselves,’’ Mr Bainbridge said.

‘‘I’d say that Jayne Furlong is the one who would likely have travelled further out of Auckland.’’

At the time of Ms Furlong’s disappearance, Port Waikato was a haven for outcasts and drug users and Mr Bainbridge believes Ms Furlong may have been taken there on the promise of money and drugs.

Ms Furlong, who was a mother, was known to regularly hitch-hike and take drugs.

At the time of her disappearance Ms Furlong was due to testify as a witness for the prosecution in two separate cases – one involved gang members accused of a bashing, the other a businessman charged with brutal sex attacks on sex workers.

She was preparing for her court appearance with police the day before she died.

On the TV show Sensing Murder, retired investigator Dayle Candy said there were two possible scenarios for her murder – that she had been picked up and abducted from the street by a client or was ‘‘uplifted and murdered by an associate in her lifestyle’’.

Police launched a major operation but because they never found a body or a crime scene her disappearance was never solved.

Detective Inspector Mark Gutry, who is heading the skeleton investigation, confirmed Ms Furlong was on their list.

Police were confident they would identify the skeleton but did not want to get family hopes up unnecessarily, Mr Gutry said.

Mr Bainbridge said another case that came to mind was a woman known only as Gypsy who was thought to have been murdered and buried in the Mer- cer area. Two Hamilton men had bragged about picking up a hitchhiker and raping and killing her at the time, but the supposed victim was never identified and no body was found.

The men were never charged. Mr Bainbridge’s initial thought was the skeleton was that of Cynthia Grierson-jackson who came to New Zealand in the 1950s. Her husband was a top-dressing pilot who suffered head injuries after crashing his helicopter in Port Waikato. After Ms GriersonJackson disappeared, police went to the couple’s Grafton apartment and found her husband had taken home-made chemicals and castrated himself before bleeding to death. Several weeks later police found a woman’s leg floating in the Waikato River at Tuakau Heads, which Mr Bainbridge believed was likely to be that of Ms Grierson-jackson. Her body has never been found.

Mr Bainbridge said police told him clothing found with the Port Waikato skeleton was too recent to match the era when Ms GriersonJackson disappeared, and because it was fully intact it was also unlikely to be her.

It was also possible the woman police are trying to identify had never been reported missing.

‘‘It might be the black sheep of a family that’s gone off with the boyfriend and they think they’re perfectly well living in Australia or whatever.’’

It could also be someone from a migrant community or a foreign student with no strong links to family back home, he said. If the woman was murdered, Mr Bainbridge said it was likely she died in the area as it was unusual for a killer to transport a victim far from the scene of the crime.