Troubled teenager's unexplained fate still haunts family

By STEPHEN COOK

Noelle Davies will never forget the face of her little cousin.

It's a face that has haunted her since June 28, 1967 - the day 13-year-old Kelly Haydn Collins mysteriously disappeared from the grounds of Kingseat psychiatric hospital.

Authorities say he simply wandered off and probably drowned in the Manukau Harbour. Others, including Ms Davies are not quite sure.

For her the jigsaw of mystery and confusion is still to be resolved.

A copper plaque in her Remuera garden bearing Kelly's name stands as a reminder of the teenager.

"There are so many unanswered questions," Ms Davies told the Weekend Herald.

"His disappearance has always haunted us. Sometimes I see people in the street who look so like Kelly and I ask myself 'could this be him?"'

Kelly was adopted by Auckland socialites Geraldine and Leo Collins in 1958, after his birth mother gave him up because of her ongoing battles with schizophrenia.

The couple, who were unable to have their own children, ran a hair salon in K'Rd and had no problems with Kelly until 1966, when he began displaying signs of schizophrenia.

"Up until then he was a pretty ordinary boy, a little indulged perhaps," Ms Davies recalled. "But then he became very difficult ... so much so his parents had to get someone in to help look after him."

The Collins' admitted their son to Kingseat in April 1966, and he was put on a regime of medication and daily electro-shock treatment.

Hospital records said the boy was "withdrawn, full of anxiety and irrational fears ... and generally living in a world of his own."

His condition did not improve and although he was allowed home for Christmas that year, his parents were forced to return him to Kingseat after he smeared the walls of the family home with faeces and urinated on the carpet.

Ms Davies remembers visiting Kelly the following year and says by then he had become detached and introverted.

"He wasn't the boy I remembered," she said.

"When I heard he had been having electro-shock treatment I was very upset.

"I am sure his parents were unaware this was happening. He must have been very scared."

On June 28, 1967 - the day Kelly disappeared - he received electro-shock treatment in the morning. He was then sent to the dining area for breakfast, but never made it.

Seven hours later he was reported missing by hospital staff. Three days later police mounted a search for his body.

Officers combed the grounds of Kingseat and nearby areas around Waiuku but turned up nothing.

The media were alerted and details of his disappearance were published.

Two days later, a Karaka farmer alerted police that he had found a shoe in a paddock on his farm the day after Kelly had disappeared. The shoe was later positively identified as belonging to the boy.

The search continued, this time focusing on the Manukau Harbour and surrounding estuaries, but still there was no sign.

The search was called off on July 9, with Auckland coroner Allan Copeland finding five months later that, despite the absence of a body, Kelly had drowned in the Manukau Harbour.

But Ms Davies is not sure of the finding, saying her cousin might have drowned, but there was probably just a good a chance he fled the grounds frightened and "ended up somewhere".

"We have always wondered what happened to him. I remember his mother Geraldine wondering all those years ago whether someone had taken him.

"The chapter hasn't closed on his life. If they had found a body, then we would have known what had happened. But when you don't know, it's very difficult."