This month marks 20 years since young Dunedin mother Tuitania Barclay vanished without a trace. Police eventually came to believe she was killed, but a hefty reward and repeated searches have failed to yield an arrest or find the 28-year-old's body. But has the heat been on the wrong man?
'Everyone seems to have forgotten her' sister says: Inside the cold case of missing Dunedin mum Tuitania Barclay
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Tuitania Barclay has not been seen for 20 years. Photo / Supplied
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An envelope dated late September 2002 seemed to suggest she was cutting things off with Brown, reading "Here the ring back who wants to marry a mental b***h".
She appeared to have taken nothing with her, leaving her car, clothes and other belongings behind.
After that final sighting it would be five months before Brown reported her missing, at the urging of concerned friends who did not believe she would walk out on the children she doted on.
This, along with other red flags such as the fact he wiped and then began using her phone and changed their dual parents benefit to a solo benefit, have cast Brown as a suspect.
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A missing persons inquiry at the time failed to elicit any useful leads.
In 2014, more than a decade after Barclay's unexplained disappearance, Dunedin police announced they were reopening the case and suspected foul play, all but ruling out suicide.
There is nothing to suggest Barclay fled overseas to abandon her children.
Later that year police offered a $50,000 reward for information.
Some time after that, detectives flew to England to interview Brown, who was questioned about the phone and the benefit.
However, police have also considered two other people of interest, including another man who has ended up overseas.
A Cold Case television programme in 2018 also seemed to cast Brown as a suspect, with several mentions of inconsistencies in the stories he told police.
Widespread appeals for information again came to little.
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Detective Senior Sergeant Malcolm Inglis, now based in Queenstown as head of the resort town's CIB, has had oversight of the Barclay file for the better part of a decade.
He was one of the two detectives who flew to the UK to interview Brown, the other being now Detective Superintendent Tom Fitzgerald, currently the country's most senior police investigator as national CIB director.
Police denied an Official Information Act request from the Herald to view the Barclay case files at Dunedin Central police station, saying it was not possible because it remained an open inquiry.
Inglis was frank when asked about the state of the investigation.
"At the moment we've exhausted all our avenues of enquiry," he said.
"And really it's just waiting to see if we get anything new or some more leads."
The case of Barclay's disappearance has failed to enter New Zealand popular consciousness in the same way as other missing persons cases.
There is no media friendly family spokesperson regularly clamouring for answers and no #justicefortuitania campaigns, despite an initial police inquiry two decades ago that would charitably be described as sluggish.
Her children have not spoken publicly.
Barclay's sister Chanel Kerr said she battles daily with guilt over the fact she has never been found.
"She was my baby princess sister and I didn't protect her," Kerr told the Herald.
"Everyone seems to [have] just forgotten her."
Barclay, known as Tui to her friends, had a tough life.
Born in 1974, she was the youngest of several children taken from her parents and placed in foster care.
She is said to have gone off the rails in her early teens.
Barclay later started funding her drug use through prostitution.
She got together with Darren Douglas.
She had her first child with him before she turned 20.
But her life was spiralling out of control and she was charged and convicted for dishonesty offences, spending time in prison and losing care of her child.
After her release she appears to have worked hard to turn her life around.
She met Brown and they had two children together.
The youngest of her three sons is now 20.
Inglis said it remained the case that the inquiry had three people of interest, one of whom has been fairly well ruled out in the police's view. He said he was limited in what further specific comment he could make due to privacy considerations.
There were suggestions at one stage that a gang with a longstanding Dunedin presence may have had some involvement, but Inglis said that had been ruled out.
Barclay had been involved with the gang in her earlier years.
No one among investigators who spoke to the Herald believes Douglas, her ex, had been involved.
He was in the North Island at the time and did not have the ability or means to make a secret return trip south completely undetected, investigators believe.
A major challenge in the investigation over the years is the lack of hard evidence, particularly the absence of a body, which is very rare in homicide inquiries in New Zealand.
In the initial missing persons inquiry, police found a part of the wall in the Wakari rental property she shared with Brown that was caved in, at about the height of Barclay's head.
There were some black hairs in the indentation.
However, in the years between the first missing persons inquiry and the relaunch of the investigation in 2014, those hairs were lost or destroyed.
Inglis told the Herald having those hairs would clearly have helped the inquiry.
"Science has advanced a lot," he said.
"And if we could identify those as being hers, it certainly would have helped us down the track."
Two decades on, Inglis said uncovering fresh evidence is difficult.
"We'd certainly really like to find Tui's remains wherever they might be. But at this stage we're no closer to knowing where that might be."
The Wakari Rd rental where she was last seen is in the hilly suburban outskirts of Dunedin, near large areas of bush including the Ross Creek Reserve, featuring a reservoir.
The police dive squad has searched the reservoir for her remains and investigators have used ground-penetrating radar to examine the back yard of her last property, after a dog reportedly showed interest in a section of lawn. Nothing has ever been found.
Some new information has emerged over the years.
After the 2014 public appeal a constable, who remains with Dunedin police and declined to comment for this story, identified another home in the city where Barclay had been staying with another man, as her relationship with Brown worsened.
It appeared she had been staying at the home with that man and periodically returning to Wakari Rd to visit her children.
One former detective, who worked on the case but has since left the police and did not want to be named, said it appeared Brown did not know where Barclay was living when she was not staying at Wakari.
"To my mind, that line was never really pursued as far as it should have been," the former detective said.
"Not to say that person was involved, but he would have the potential to be involved."
That man is no longer in New Zealand and has moved to Australia.
The detective said it was right to have considered Brown a suspect, given Barclay was intending on leaving or had left, plus the problems in the relationship.
But he does not think, on the evidence and information available, that Brown was involved in her disappearance.
Detectives working on the relaunched inquiry years ago also spoke to a close friend of Brown.
Several months after Barclay disappeared, the two had a drinking session where they got to talking about her.
"And this was a guy that Bill would have trusted with his life," the former detective said.
"He never would have thought 'if I tell him what happened he's going to go to the police'."
Brown broke down crying with his friend about how Barclay was gone and he loved and missed her.
"Gone as in 'she's left me and I really miss her'.
"He's emotional, he's broken down, he's been drinking, that would have been that point that something would have come out."
Brown had no criminal record to speak of and was not involved in the underworld.
When he was with Barclay he had worked at a supermarket for a time.
"I just don't think he'd be the person that would carry on that sort of charade."
The former detective also said it appeared Barclay's departure from the Wakari house was gradual, going some way to explaining the delay in reporting her missing.
"From his perspective, she wasn't missing, she'd just left him.
"It's not like she was just there one day, gone the next.
"But she kept coming back and visiting the kids until that petered out. And then she didn't anymore. So from his perspective, you know, she had moved out."
Police have also publicly said the idea Barclay died by suicide is unlikely because no body was ever found.
But the former detective said that possibility should not be discounted.
At the other end of Dunedin is Lawyers Head, a rocky promontory surrounded by high cliffs above a sea that is regularly heaving, with strong currents that can take bodies far offshore.
In the space of a decade, before access was restricted to the outcrop in 2006, more than 10 people died by suicide in the area.
The former detective said a body in the sea off Lawyers Head could easily never come back to shore.
Inglis said he believes there is still a chance someone will be brought to justice for Barclay's disappearance.
"I think there's always hope," he said.
"But as time goes by it always gets more difficult."
The multiple public appeals had led to fresh information and new people coming forward, Inglis said.
"It produced some information but nothing that's led us to finding Tuitania's body or having enough evidence against the suspect.
"It was frustrating, to be fair.
"We've given it a pretty good shot, a pretty thorough look, and certainly tried our best to get resolution.
"But at this stage we haven't reached that point."
