Family mourns man who vanished

Each time there is a news report of a body being found, Leigh Kingi wonders if it's her dad.
It was a particularly hard Father's Day for Ms Kingi this year.
Her father Phillip Kingi mysteriously disappeared nearly nine months ago, somewhere between Rotorua and Auckland.
The 47-year-old father of three sons and a daughter, and grandfather of two, left his brother's Rotorua house about 1am on Wednesday, December 14. He was headed home to Auckland.
He was supposed to be meeting another family member there the next morning for breakfast at 10am, but did not show up.
Ms Kingi said her dad always chose to travel long distances in the middle of the night.
He liked the fact there were no other cars around, but the rest of the family always thought it was a bit dangerous because he could fall asleep at the wheel.
About 80 members of Mr Kingi's family spent weeks searching the highway between Rotorua and Auckland.
"We drove that stretch of road so many times. You'd usually see evidence if a car had gone over a bank but there was nothing."
While the official police investigation had been taken as far as it could, Ms Kingi said her family and her dad's friends were still trying to follow up small leads.
"But I feel like they are clutching at straws at this stage."
Any hint of what could have happened to him is more than what the family currently has to go on.
"It's pretty difficult. We didn't even find any trace of the car he was in. How does a car go missing? I don't know. I am fearing the worst at this stage. I just want closure."
A massive police effort involving helicopters and search and rescue officers tried to find any signs of him or his dark blue Toyota Vista, registration TR4622.
Mr King's bank accounts had not been touched since he disappeared.
Mr Kingi is diabetic, of large build and 1.8m tall. He is bald and has a goatee beard, and is paralysed on one side of his body from a motorbike accident when he was young.
Meanwhile, it has been nearly 20 months since Francesca Martin went missing from near Taupo.
Her father Bob Martin spends nearly every Saturday at Wairakei, north of Taupo, searching the bush trying to find the body of his 42-year-old daughter.
Ms Martin left her Hamilton home on April 20 last year and drove to the Caltex Station on Naylor St to buy cigarettes.
The 42-year-old's car, a white Nissan Pulsar, was found abandoned the following night at Wairakei, but police have been unable to establish whether it had been driven there by her or someone else.
Her disappearance came 16 months after Palmerston North woman June Sowerby went missing near Turangi.
The 58-year-old disappeared in daylight near the Tongariro Bridge at the northern end of Turangi on Christmas Eve, 2004.
She was last seen in the car park just north of the bridge between 8pm and 8.30pm.