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Three months ago today, the lives of Thomas and Oliver Newman changed forever. Their usually punctual father Siegfried failed to collect them from school. He is still missing, despite an extensive search.
Police are confident no foul play was involved but aren't ruling out the possibility the recently widowed 49-year-old is in hiding voluntarily.
Fresh revelations about his mental state have increased concerns of his sister-in-law, now the boys' legal guardian.
Siegfried and his sons were living in the close-knit community of Katikati, 35km northwest of Tauranga, when he disappeared on February 25.
The keen tramper and gardener was last seen dropping Thomas, 9, and Oliver, 7, at school before picking up frozen meals, presumably for dinner. His wallet and car keys were left in his leafy-lined white weatherboard house on Lund Rd.
A 40-strong team searched Katikati and surrounding bush for three days but found no trace of him.
He and the boys were still coming to terms with the death of their wife and mother, Vicki-Lee, 48, last November after a year-long battle with cancer.
Since losing his best friend and the family's breadwinner, Siegfried - known by friends as Siggy - had slipped into depression and suffered anxiety attacks. Prescribed antidepressants after Vicki-Lee's death, he spent four nights in a Tauranga mental health unit two weeks before his disappearance but was released after being classified low risk. The day before vanishing he phoned a crisis team and told them he was lonely.
His sisters, Sabine Vorgerd and Brigitte Fulling, who flew from Germany to spend two weeks combing the area, told police they were "100 per cent sure" he would not have killed himself. They said a letter found in his house pointed to foul play, but Constable Connell Couchman, of Katikati Police, disagreed.
He said police were considering two scenarios: that Siegfried went into the bush, was injured and died, or was still alive and in hiding. "You've got to feel for [the sons]," Couchman said. "I pray to God he'll turn up."
There is a glimmer of hope. Two people told police they saw a man fitting Siegfried's description outside his sons' school the afternoon after he disappeared. One Katikati resident saw a man who "looked German" walking towards Lund Rd and another saw a man walking on rural roads with a blue backpack.
Couchman said police were investigating every sighting and were confident Siegfried hadn't accessed his bank accounts or left the country.
Vicki-Lee's sister Tracey Newman and her husband Brian Hewitson. who live in Wellington and have two children, are the boys' legal guardians.
Newman said the boys relied on family photos and keepsakes of their mother for comfort.They cuddled into Vicki-Lee's hospice blanket and breathed in familiar smells of their parents from their dressing gowns.
The family gets little financial help because Siegfried's home and finances were frozen when he was listed as missing.
Desperate for answers, his sisters consulted a spiritualist from Waihi before returning to Germany. The psychic said Siegfried was living in Taupo but would return to his sons this month. Tracey was upset the boys were told of the prediction and is dreading Sunday, June 1, because the psychic said he would return by the end of May .
"The boys are certain their dad is going to turn up again. It's hard to be brutally honest with them when they've lost so much. If there was some finality it would be great."
