By Rachel Tiffen
Human bones have been found at McLaren Falls.
A week after a psychic investigation of the 20-year-old unsolved murder of Luana Williams was aired on television, police yesterday took two archaeologists to examine skeletal remains discovered at the reserve.
In TV2 show Sensing Murder, three psychics independently identified a spot
at the falls as the burial site of Williams.
The Tauranga woman disappeared without trace from her Gate Pa home on June 5, 1986. Her body has never been found.
A man phoned police the day after the show screened, saying he knew of a skull at the falls.
But his discovery was kilometres away from the spot the pyschics were drawn to - at the top lake end of McLaren Falls.
Inquiry head Detective Sergeant Eddie Lyttle and the two archaeologists were staggered by what they found yesterday afternoon.
Three skeletons were found - but none of them was Williams' remains.
The man who tipped police off said he stumbled upon the skeletal remains 10 years ago but had not reported it.
"He just rang and said he'd seen a skull at McLaren Falls. So we followed it up and said could he take us to where it is," Mr Lyttle said.
But it soon became clear the skeleton was not buried alone.
"One skull was protruding but on closer examination we saw the others. If you got in really, really close you could see they were skulls but on the surface they didn't look like skulls, they just looked like bones."
Mr Lyttle said the Historic Places Trust archaeologists were able to determine that the bones were ancient, likely "pre-European" by marks on the bones, the shapes of the brows and the shapes of the heads.
He said the remains were in a steep, scrub-locked area, not easily reached by foot.
Police Maori liaison officer Kupa Te Ao was now contacting local iwi to notify them of the find.
Luana's mother Denise Williams was not disheartened by the news that the skeletons were not her daughter.
Rather, she was pleased police were following up tip-offs and that closure could be near.
Last week Mr Lyttle said police would not dig up the McLaren Falls area identified by psychics as the burial site of Williams as information must be "evidential" before it can be used as the basis of further investigation.
On the television show, mediums Sue Nicholson, Kelvin Cruickshank and Australian Scott Russell-Hill independently identified an area of bush about six metres south of a carpark at McLaren Falls as the spot where Williams' body lay.
