The disappearance of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope captured the public interest like few other crimes. This extract from a new book,
Silent Evidence
, examines the haunting images of two whose lives were so cruelly cut short.
Who were Ben and Olivia? The question was vital to the police,because it might help explain where they had gone, what had happened to them. But publicly Ben and Olivia became swamped by a media storm that transformed them into silent celebrities. They became different people, symbols who had to personify the innocence that was lost when evil intruded into the paradise of the Marlborough Sounds.
For months after the couple disappeared, a single photograph of Ben and Olivia became one of the most recognisable media images in the country, used again and again. In the photo, Ben is in sunglasses and a baseball cap worn back to front, gesturing towards the camera like he's having a joke with the photographer. Olivia, in a sleeveless summer dress, is smiling at the camera, but her body language is more turned towards Ben as if she's rapt to be with the boy of her dreams.
The picture neatly captures one of the themes that made the story so compelling: they were a beautiful young couple and they had been cruelly snuffed out. Two people who happened to get together on New Year's Eve became one; they became "Ben and Olivia". It was beside the point that they weren't really a couple at all.
John and Mary Smart now have a framed copy of the picture in their home, given to them after Ben and Olivia disappeared. When the photograph was taken - at the Marlborough wine and food festival - Ben and Olivia had only the most fleeting of friendships. The Smarts didn't even know who the girl was.
Mary recalled later that Ben had a huge bunch of friends staying at home for the weekend of the festival, and they were having him on about a girl.
