Emptied bedroom seen as key to student mystery

By Alison Horwood

At 6.31 pm on Monday, September 27 last year, bespectacled student Gavin Dash logged on to a computer at Victoria University Law School to check his e-mails.

Less than a minute later, he logged off and simply disappeared.

By 7.30 pm, his old landlord was surprised the reliable 24-year-old had failed to keep an appointment with her in Karori, Wellington.

By Tuesday, his flatmates noticed his bed had not been slept in.

Between 8.30 am the following day and 5.30 pm on Thursday, the bedroom of Gavin's Northland flat was almost stripped.

Sheets, pillows, clothes, suitcases, his beloved table-tennis bat, law text-books, a stereo, a television, an old Total Peripheral 386 computer and its trolley were gone.

The only items remaining were a bare mattress and a bed base.

Initially there were suspicions that Mr Dash had returned to collect his belongings, but several things did not fit.

He did not take food, his toothbrush or his shaving cream. He did not own a car, so would have had to make five or six trips by foot up the steep 30m track to the road with the heavy gear and organise transport. And, if he was planning on disappearing, why would he return?

The new head of Operation Dash, Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Arnerich, admits the disappearance is "highly unusual."

Police cannot rule out that Mr Dash intended to vanish, was murdered or had an accident - but in each scenario the gutting of his bedroom does not fit.

The house was not broken into - leading police to believe that whoever took the belongings had a key - and items in other parts of the house were untouched.

Police say finding the missing items is the key to the mystery.

Investigations focus on second-hand furniture and book stores. Some of the legal textbooks were inscribed with the name Melissa Harsant.

They are also following up with taxi and rental car companies to see if anyone was involved in moving the gear.

Detective Senior Sergeant Arnerich says Mr Dash was a stable and high-achieving student who gave no indication of being depressed. He enjoyed chess, toastmasters and table-tennis, rarely drank and did not take drugs.

He was studying first-year law, after gaining a MA (Hons) at Auckland and Victoria Universities and worked part-time at Parliament writing select committee notes. "He's the sort of guy who just did not have enemies."

His parents, Lyn and Colin, and 22-year-old sister, Jo, refused to believe early suspicions of suicide.

"That's not the type of person he was - you know your own family," Mr Dash said.

Jo was in Australia when she received an upbeat e-mail from her brother two days before he vanished. He joked about the present he wanted her to bring back. "I'd like a wombat, if that's possible. You may have some trouble with Customs though. If so, then I'll settle for something cheap and touristy."

The Huapai-based family hired a private detective and travelled to Wellington to do their own investigations.

This month the police inquiry was upgraded from a single-handed operation to a team of 18 officers following a letter from the Dash family to former Police Commissioner Peter Doone asking for more resources.

The early stages of the inquiry are being reviewed by an independent senior officer, Detective Inspector Stuart Wildon.