KEY POINTS:
Bob Martin is determined not to give up on his daughter. In the past year, the 68-year-old, who is retired, has driven from his home in Hamilton to Wairakei, near Taupo, to conduct 30 exhausting searches for her.
The year before that, he made the journey 64 times,
each time spending whole days digging in the volcanic soil near the Wairakei Thermal Valley looking for her body.
Francesca Martin, 42, disappeared two years ago this week and her father suspects foul play. After her disappearance, Mr Martin hired psychics who, using the lead of her abandoned car, pinpointed the area where he now conducts the searches.
"I've cleared a lot of land but I haven't got any closer," he said. "Sometimes at night-time I wake up and have all sorts of nightmares about what happened to her."
Ms Martin was last seen at the Caltex station on Naylor St, Hamilton, on the evening of Wednesday, April 20.
Her father said she left her Richmond St flat, where she lived alone, to buy cigarettes, having left the lights on and washing in the washing machine.
Security footage from the petrol station showed her putting $30 she withdrew in her pocket before leaving the building and returning about 15 seconds later.
She is seen talking with the attendant and gesturing as though she is asking for directions - the last sighting of her before her car was found abandoned near Wairakei the following morning.
Mr Martin believes somebody may have asked her for directions and she offered to go inside and find out, then perhaps offered to take the person to the place.
"She was like that," her father said.
Mr Martin wants to know if anyone remembers seeing a person outside the service station hitchhiking. He also hopes somebody might recall a hitchhiker or pedestrian near Wairakei early the following morning.
Ms Martin's white Nissan Pulsar was found beside State Highway 1, near the Wairakei turnoff. A truck driver had spotted the car in the same spot with two people inside about 10.30pm on the 20th but it was not there when another truck driver drove by later in the night.
Mr Martin said his family had tried to gain a degree of closure by holding a memorial service for his daughter in December last year.
He believed she had been killed by someone she picked up or who followed her back to her flat.
He said her body could be anywhere between Hamilton and Taupo but he had concentrated on the area at Wairakei because it had been pinpointed by the psychics. And despite the mental, physical and financial toll of the searches, he was not about to give up.
"I love my little girl and quite apart from that, I would hate to think that somebody was getting away with this," he said.
"I've just got to find her. That's where I'll get my ultimate closure."
