Swedish tourist mystery: Podcaster conducts private search in Coromandel for remains of missing Heidi Paakkonen

Experts from Land Search and Rescue and former police forensics staff were part of the search.

A podcast host, an experienced search and rescue operator, a former police forensic expert and a group of volunteers have combed an area of private forestry land near Whangamatā in the hope of recovering the remains of Heidi Paakkonen, a Swedish tourist who along with fiance Urban Höglin target="_blank">disappeared while backpacking in New Zealand in 1989.

Their disappearance resulted in one of the biggest land-based searches undertaken in New Zealand.

Höglin’s body was discovered by pig hunters near Whangamatā, 70km from where the pair were last sighted near Thames - two years after the couple’s disappearance.

David Wayne Tamihere was convicted for the double murder of the tourists in 1990 and was paroled in 2010.

Ryan Wolf, host of the podcast Guilt - Finding Heidi said he had found new information that would change what people think about the case, and he hoped to finally solve the mystery of where Paakkonen lay via his podcast.

A flyer from the memorial service for Heidi Paakkonen and Urban Höglin by members of police and search and rescue.

Last Saturday, September 16, the HC Post joined the search party at an undisclosed location which Wolf believed may be where the tourist’s body was dumped.

The area became of interest to Wolf after he heard a first-hand account from a veteran forestry worker who said that in 1989, he came across a heavily damaged access gate on a road leading into the forest, before smelling an odour consistent with decomposition.

“In May of 1989, [the unnamed forestry worker] recalls the gate being smashed in really bad, he had a note of it in his own diary,” said Wolf.

“He had said he thought it might have been ripped out by a vehicle or something. And at the same time, he recalled stopping by a gate and when he and his brother hopped out there was a horrendous smell, he recalled thinking ‘Shit, someone’s dead round here.’ He and his brother had a quick look but saw nothing.”

Podcast host Ryan Wolf at the search for Heidi Paakonnen's remains on Saturday, September 16 at an undisclosed location near Whangamatā.

The forestry worker was present at the search and spoke with HC Post about the incident:

“I’ve been coming on this block since the 1950s - it was a rehab block from the Great War, and I know it pretty well. [The smell] could have been a bloated cow, that could have been all we smelt - you just don’t know.

“However, it was one of those smells though that kept bugging ya, and you think ‘I should have done more’.”

The forestry worker said he “looked as far as the creek”, in his attempts to locate the source of the smell.

Wolf said information gleaned from the diary of an unidentified woman suggested a link between sightings of Höglin and Paakkonen’s vehicle and the search area two years after their murder.

“A woman had kept a very detailed diary back in 1991 where she described being up in the forest one day when a key witness appeared and began telling her previously unheard information about the Swedes’ vehicle and its movements at the time of their disappearance.”

“Within these details, it became apparent that they point to the same location the unnamed forestry worker had described the smell.”

Höglin and Paakkonen had been driving a white Subaru stationwagon. The forestry worker said any attempt to get through the gate and traverse the difficult terrain with anything other than a four-wheel drive would have been fruitless.

“They talk about the gate and getting the car through, there is no way they got through, it was a mission and we had the equipment to get through. You don’t come up here with a Tonka toy and think you are going to drive all over the place.”

The forestry worker said the police contacted him regarding the sighting of the Swedes’ vehicle in the area around 1991: “Of course then two years later the old bill start ringing but I told them there was no way [the car would have successfully navigated the forest area].”

The search radius on Saturday was determined by a number of factors, which included how far an odour would travel - which is dependent on the heat of the day, distance from the road and proximity to banks that led to the river.

The forestry worker said that 30 years of detritus and clearing and replanting some 20 years ago would make the search for preserved remains like teeth and articles like jewellery especially hard to detect. “You’re talking a long time and there have been some bloody big storms since.”

A decision was made by a former police forensics officer to “clear to the stream with the metal detectors”, and the group of volunteers split into three groups to excavate the designated search zones.

Wolf said: “So we ended up searching the area as well as can be, and apart from a couple of interesting finds like the sole of a very old woman’s shoe, we came up empty-handed.

“However, the area is a stream and would have been ravaged by countless storms over the last 34 years.”

Metal detectors were used to try to locate any jewellery that may have been owned by Heidi Paakkonen.

Wolf said he planned to go live with the final episodes of Guilt - Finding Heidi this week, and the episodes contained information that he believed, contradicted the official narrative:

“The gist of the final episodes is that the reality of this case is far from what ... the public knows - based on multiple witnesses who were on a Whangamatā property in April of 1989 - with Heidi and Urban prior to their murders.

“My investigation has brought together these witnesses for the first time to piece together some of the puzzle with the sole purpose of trying to find Heidi’s remains. I want that to be made very clear, I didn’t start this with the purpose of establishing who’s responsible but purely to find Heidi, and I now believe she was never found because no one has ever looked in the right place.”