Excited police are urging Bay people to tune into a television crime show with a psychic twist tonight in the hope of solving the 20-year-old murder of Luana "Laverne" Williams.
It appears the psychic vision employed in TV2's Sensing Murder could hold the key to figuring out what happened to Williams back in 1986.
Tauranga CIB head Detective Senior Sergeant Greg Turner appealed to Western Bay people to watch the show _ titled Lost Soul _ at 8.30pm and come forward with any relevant information.
"The more Tauranga people who watch it the better," he said. "We are extremely heartened by the response to the Rotorua police following the show last Tuesday about Olive Walker. It generated a substantial number of phonecalls, which have been followed up."
Luana Williams' disappearance on June 5, 1986, devastated family and friends and has preyed on police minds since the case was re-opened as a homicide investigation in 1994. Initial inquiries led officers to treat the case as a suicide or missing person.
But tonight readers can witness an unbiased psychic analysis of the case. Throughout the show, mediums Kelvin Cruickshank and Sue Nicholson and Australian Scott Russell-Hill will communicate with the spirit world to try to discover the truth of Williams' murder.
Her case is the fourth in the series _ following on from the unsolved homicides of strangled Auckland woman Tracey Ann Patient and last week Rotorua teenager Olive Walker. An Australian case has also featured.
Rotorua Detective George Staunton, who appeared on the Walker episode, said several people had come forward with suggestions of who the identikit picture could be, which included men police had already looked at. The picture was drawn up from a description given by a psychic, who previously knew nothing about the case or suspects.
Mr Turner said the Williams' file was definitely still active and Detective Sergeant Eddie Lyttle had kept in regular contact with the family. Mr Lyttle is on leave and unavailable for comment.
Mr Turner said police always looked at any information _ psychic or otherwise _ that could help solve the case.
Former Tauranga Detective Sergeant John Bermingham, now retired from the police and working as a private investigator, was one of the officers involved with the case. He always believed it was foul play.
"Right from the first phonecall I got, I knew she had been murdered, but the powers-that-be call the shots," Mr Bermingham told the Bay of Plenty Times.
He still strongly believes Williams' disappearance was drug-related, but says everybody has a theory. "You had to know the criminal fraternity and you had to know this group out at Greerton."
Mr Bermingham said he thought about Williams and her family often and hoped the show would provide closure. "I would be over the moon, I don't care how they find it (body) ... "
Investigations into 25-year-old Williams' disappearance from her Gate Pa home proved inconclusive.
Her defacto partner was at a bar drinking with a friend the night she vanished and came home to find the house as he had left it, but with the pets inside and the dishes done.
Williams' personal belongings such as her purse, money and cigarettes were there but she was nowhere to be seen.
For months after, the family clung to the hope that she would appear at her brother's wedding in Australia _ as planned _ but she never showed.
And years on from her disappearance, family members say they were questioned by police about suspected body sightings _ including of a shark attack victim in Australia.
The autopsy revealed the victim had old broken bone injuries as Williams had, but it did not turn out to be her.
Rumours have flown about Williams' drug history and the part that may have played in her disappearance, the involvement of an associate who finished a prison sentence for a string of assaults last year and whether Williams merely fled in search of a new life.
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