(VEHICLE APPROACHES) (OMINOUS MUSIC) MAN: I came to work on a normal shift. I never thought that this would become one of New Zealand's most infamous unsolved cases. 18-year-old Mona Elizabeth Blades was hitch-hiking to Hastings when she disappeared in 1975. We began to realise that she may have vanished in unfortunate circumstances. A day doesn't go by where I don't think of her. I have a picture on the wall. I look at it daily, so she's always there. Police believe it's never too late to solve a cold case. But your help is imperative. We've brought together a specialist team to review some of New Zealand's most haunting unsolved murders. They'll use their skills, expertise and the most up-to-date technology to look at things with fresh eyes. For those involved in the original investigation, it's a constant torment that the case didn't get solved. As a family man and a police officer, I shudder to think... It would be a parent's worst nightmare. It's not something that ever leaves you. It certainly hasn't for me anyway. Despite one of the nation's largest manhunts, with over 500 suspects investigated, no evidence was ever found. I want closure, and I'm sure the family of Mona want closure. VOICE BREAKS: One of my biggest regrets is not being able to tell her I love her. Simple as that. 43 years later, Mona's killer is still at large. She has never been laid to rest. Can you help us solve Mona Blade's murder? Captions by Julie Taylor. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2018 At the time the Mona Blades inquiry commenced, I was a detective constable in training. In any inquiry of this nature, time is of the essence. And so we went to Taupo and got ourselves ensconced in the Taupo Police Station, and then just began general area inquiries with shopkeepers and members of the public. It was just a missing person, and we were trying to actually establish whether she'd been there and what had happened while she was there. Mona Blades was 18 years old and travelling to her nephew's birthday in Hastings. Because she was intending to surprise her family, no one noticed when she didn't arrive. Mona's sister Lilian raised the alarm when she called her mum and dad to ask when she was coming home. By then, Mona had been gone four days. I think I picked up the phone, and my sister asked me where the heck Mona was, that she needed to be coming home cos she was starting a new job. And I just said, 'No, Mona's not here.' When Ned and I started our inquiries around about the 4th of June, we were already four days behind Mona and the events that surrounded her. The family provided us photographs of Mona, and that's really when the investigation becomes real for the investigator, because now we have before us who and what we're looking for. We were supplied with a list of clothes that Mona was wearing on the day ` light-green slacks, a green rugby jersey of the same colour with a white collar, a fawn jersey ` small things that we were to look for. She was wearing a black duffel coat. She was carrying a hitch-hiker's pack, brown in colour. Brown shoes with yellow laces on them. An old brown shoulder bag. With no evidence and four days behind, they began to retrace Mona's movements. The initial stages of our inquiry established that she was taken to the outskirts of Hamilton and dropped by her brother-in-law. She was picked up there by two trainee teachers and driven to Tirau, at the intersections of State Highway 5 and State Highway 1 and picked up immediately there by a nurse who drove her through to Taupo, at the intersection of Spa Rd and State Highway 1. (UNSETTLING MUSIC) It wasn't until the media team began publicising the inquiry that the public began to contact us, and we began to realise that we were on to something fairly big. Eight days after Mona was last seen, a man came forward with critical information that would drive the inquiry from then on. MAN: I couldn't say, sorry, just sorta saw it. A truck driver had said that he'd seen... a girl fitting Mona's description running towards and getting into an orange Datsun at the intersection of the Napier-Taupo Rd and State Highway 1 leading out of Taupo. The truck driver went on to explain how he caught a glimpse of the hitch-hiker later, as the car passed him. He finally saw the same car parked on the corner of Matea Rd, 40km from where the girl was picked up. We began to get concerned for things that may or may not have happened, and at that point, it was escalated into a homicide. Obviously, we were all in shock. Something terrible has happened, and I'm not going to see my sister again. There were officers from Hamilton, Auckland, Napier, Palmerston North, I think, were there. That was the first homicide that I'd actually been directly involved in. Stewart Guy was given a copy of the truck driver's statement and began to chase down the new lead. I worked off his statements, and we did a lot of enquiries with the community that then existed on Matea Rd. As we began to realise that she had vanished, a physical search was undertaken between Taupo and Napier for a` the entire distance of that particular road, including Matea Rd. And it was done, um, in significant detail and with a lot of care. I was sure during the inquiry that we were on the right track. The search reached 145km along State Highway 5. Nowadays, they have GPS, they have drones that can search areas. We had none of that. So they were really a hands-on function, which created a tremendous amount of paperwork. Events occurred during the investigation that stay on your mind. I remember going deep into the ranges on the Napier-Taupo Rd to examine what a hunter had found and thought was a grave. All sorts of things were being found during the roadside search, and virtually, a lot of the search became a roadside rubbish clearance function. Some of the searchers, we took into our warm cars that almost couldn't speak, they were so cold. But we never found anything actually of Mona in all of that time. The key witness statement had been the soul lead in the case. Despite spending six months and 5000 hours on the search, not one piece of evidence or any other witnesses were ever found to corroborate the truck driver's statement. As an investigation grows, as this one did, and we ran out those various avenues of inquiry, the word 'discouraging' comes to mind. It's frustrating, because you don't know ` or I don't know ` whether we were close, whether we were a mile away. Where is Mona Blades' body? Can a new investigation answer that question? * In 1975, Mona Blades disappeared, and her story has become one of New Zealand's longest-running unsolved murder cases. We've brought together a group of cold case specialist detectives to spearhead a new inquiry. Leading our review will be Mark Loper, the new officer in charge. The ultimate aim of the investigation is to look for threads of evidence that may result in us locating Mona Blades. One of the original detectives on the Mona Blades case, Stewart Guy, will provide insight into the initial investigation. STEWART: Keeping an open mind is vital. It's difficult at times to do that, but the key to any real investigation is not accepting what you've been told as fact until you've established 100% that it is fact. Ron Cooper is a retired detective inspector and memory specialist. I was asked to review... the Mona Blades, um, inquiry. And so I sat down with all the paperwork dealing with what was known of the victim, what was known of the scene and what was known about the persons of interest. And Detective John Hope has spent 12 years working on this file. You want to solve it. You know, you want to be able to bring her back to her family. But it is very difficult. It really does stretch things with memories and a lot of the information has since passed on, people have died. But it is interesting because it is difficult, so that makes it a bit more exciting, a bit more sort of keen to try and get in there and how can we solve this and what other techniques and what other avenues can we look at? Four experts. One cold case. It's time for the Mona Blades investigation to begin. We will also be looking to you, the viewer, to help solve this homicide. Thanks, team, for coming along today. OK, so from here, we're going to deconstruct the investigation again. Looking through the file, to your knowledge, she made it as far as Taupo. It would seem that that's correct. In 1975, you would fight to get on a homicide inquiry, because there were so few of them, and you needed the experience. You wanted to be part of it. I'm confident that she was the person that was picked up by the motel in Hamilton. And the reason for that is that she related something personal that related to her, and the description was right, and she'd been dropped off by her brother-in-law at that spot earlier. She was picked up by those two guys, the teachers, and taken down to the Tirau turn-off, where she was picked up by the nurse and effectively, the last confirmed sighting is at 10 past 10, when she was dropped off on the corner of Spa and the Taupo Rd. And that's the last absolute we could say, definitely. Once the inquiry got under way, we located the truck driver that had said he saw Mona, and that really was the only real milestone that occurred in the inquiry. It is difficult when the things that we thought were going to lead us to what had happened don't actually lead you to what happened. A key part of the truck driver's statement was that he saw a girl fitting the description of Mona Blades being picked up by a man driving an orange Datsun station wagon 1200. MAN: Orange Datsun. MAN: And what could you see in the windows? The truck driver had been interviewed by some of the team. That began the inquiry searching for the Datsun 1200s. So that was huge, wasn't it? It was huge. As I recall, it generated something like 542 suspects for us. This was an enormous manhunt for New Zealand in 1975. We interviewed every single Datsun owner in the country at the time. These identikit portraits of the orange Datsun driver became one of the main thrusts of the nationwide search. And what did you make of the identikits? Well, the identikits were important because they'd created an image of the guy that we were actually looking for. We had to accept that what the driver was telling us was true. MAN: I saw an orange Datsun station wagon. RON: So, he was interviewed on the 7th of June. And he saw the girl running towards the orange Datsun. This is, 'obviously running toward it with a view to getting in.' He wasn't able to describe her at that point, could he? Because he` she had the hoodie over her head. He couldn't see her face. 'Memory is fragile, so the role of the interviewer for interviewing witnesses is very critical' and it's fraught with danger for affecting the recall. So when you interview somebody, you've got to tread very carefully. Orange Datsun. An orange Datsun. Did you catch...? That wasn't part of our box of tricks in those days. * They continued on towards the Napier-Taupo Rd, and he was overtaken by the same car. 'Saw the girl in the car, could see her shoulder-length blonde hair 'and a plump face side-on as the station wagon passed me.' Some three weeks later, the truck driver was spoken to once more. He reiterated about being overtaken by the same vehicle. He said the girl looked up at him and 'gave me a half-pie smile as she went past.' I got a sinking feeling. I realised that he had made a number of statements over a period of weeks. And I was astounded to find that his story began to change. So, he varies between only seeing the girl in profile when being overtaken to her looking up and giving a smile. That's quite a discrepancy, isn't it? Mm. He was shown the picture of Blades, and he says, 'I cannot identify the girl as being the one on the photograph.' But in a fourth statement... Do you think that this was Mona Blades? Uh, yeah, yeah. I'd say so, yeah. I think it was, yeah. He then says, 'Going by the photos and descriptions I have seen and heard, 'I'm quite happy that the girl in the Datsun was Mona Blades.' The point is he changed his story, didn't he, about he'd actually seen? Yes. At one stage, he said he saw the car turn into Matea Rd, and then he changed his mind in another statement and said that he didn't. He varies too between not knowing what was in the back of the vehicle to seeing the backpack on the rear seat. Were all of those interviews done by the same officer? No. The truck driver was interviewed a total of four times in 1975, and each time, his story changed. With each interview, the investigating team became more and more convinced that Mona Blades had been murdered at the hands of the driver of the orange Datsun. But no one seemed to question the changing witness statements. Stu, you'll recall from our detective training, in those days, we were trained to get detail all the time. Yeah. And so` Attention to detail. Yeah. And so we interrupted people a lot. So the person would say, 'I was in a car.' You'd stop them there and you'd go, 'Whose car? Where were you? Where were the other people sitting in the car? Where were you going? 'Which direction were you driving?' And we now know from training that we've done recently and research that when you interrupt somebody, you actually affect the memory. Reading that file and reading the interviews that I conducted, now 42 years on with a lot more experience, I'd have probably asked different questions. Yeah. So, there's no other sightings of Mona Blades getting into an orange Datsun? Not that I'm aware. He's the only one. Yeah. I don't think for a minute the person was trying to confuse the inquiry or lead it astray; I just think the person, that witness particularly, may have misremembered. With the experts challenging the truck driver's statements, were there any other oversights in the 1975 file? And the thing that was quite striking is a couple of places on the file, there was, um, a record of Mona having had a David Bowie haircut at the time, so long on the sides and spiky on the top. And if he's identifying Mona from the photographs in the media, they're quite markedly different. Those ones, Stu? Yeah, those are them. Yes. Yeah. Those were the original photographs that we used. Yeah. Often, families will supply the police with a photograph that projects their child or their loved one in the best image possible. And it may not be the most accurate. One of the witnesses that picked her up from the motel actually made the comment, 'Because of the short hair, I thought it was a young man.' Quite a change from what we thought we were looking for. Yeah. It is really, really important that what you go out with to the media as a police investigator or an investigation team is accurate. If you distribute inaccurate information for whatever reason ` not deliberately, but it turns out that it's inaccurate ` you will get inaccurate information back. It's more likely Mona looked more like this. And it's possible that unrealistic photos that were being used in 1975 were, in fact, confusing potential witnesses, including the truck driver whose statements became the driving force of the investigation. I don't recall ever that talk about her haircut being raised. There's only two mentions of it on the file. One was on an inventory that the sister had raised of what might have been in the backpack, and it was just, like, an add-on comment on the bottom, and in her statement. Well, that was quite` I would've thought that was crucial, because when we were showing those photographs to witnesses, she wouldn't have looked anything like... what we were looking for. We went to the wedding together, and Mona was all dressed up, obviously, and the hair was done up. I've still got one of the original photos that we used for the investigation. Looked definitely different on a day-to-day basis than the photo at the wedding. She used to just have a, wouldn't say a mullet-y haircut, but at times, it was sort of pulled back or a little bit shorter. With these new findings, the expert investigation team is starting to piece together a different picture of Mona and her movements. Where will this lead the new inquiry? And what new information will surface? * Our cold-case detectives are re-examining the 1975 unsolved murder of 18-year-old hitch-hiker Mona Blades. You develop an affiliation to her. You sort of` You get to know her ` you know her background, you know her personality, um, you know... as much as you can ` what her likes and dislikes are. Cos that can all be very relevant to finding out what happened to her. Was there something in her background that caused her to disappear? How does it link in? As part of the new investigation, John Hope has tracked down one of the last people to see Mona alive. MAN: I can remember it, yes. I can remember it. Sight of this... young girl standing in the rain is what struck me. How did you know she was hitch-hiking? What did she`? You know... She was standing out there with her thumb. She had her thumb out, yeah? Didn't have a sign, that sort of thing? Just had her thumb out. No. I can't remember a sign. Yeah. No, I still couldn't figure out why a girl on her own was hitch-hiking around the country. Yeah, I remember her being offered a smoke by my mate. Yeah. She took it. How did she seem about that? Did she seem sort of cautious or...? No, I think she was cautious. Yeah? She wasn't participating much in conversation. OK. Tried to get her to start talking at the beginning, and then... it was obvious she wasn't going to say too much else. Yeah. So we left her to it. Yeah. DARRYL: That was just Mona, really. I say quite reserved. I won't say shy, but quite reserved. You know? But, uh, there would be a, uh` a fieriness, I'd say, about her, and she wouldn't take a step backwards if something happened. MICHELLE: In my eyes, I saw her as a bit of a tomboy. Outgoing, but reserved. Fun. Always smiling. MAN: Well, she introduced herself as Liz. JOHN: As Liz? OK. Yeah. And I couldn't work out` You know, when it came out in the paper, the name that was mentioned was Mona Blades. And the description fitted. I said, 'Oh, that's the same girl.' Yeah. We used to call her either Lizzie or Mona Lisa. We dropped her off at Tirau. We were concerned for her, and so we` Yeah. ...we stopped and recall a blue VW picking her up. Yep. I mean, she was a robust girl, wasn't she? RON: Mm. You know, she wasn't frail or anything like that, and she was a very experienced hitch-hiker. Hitch-hiker, yeah. She had rules around her hitch-hiking as well. She did, yeah. If she wasn't too happy, she would say no. She wasn't someone who would sort of just get into the first car that turns up. And because of the concern of it, she did actually carry a knife with her. DARRYL: I knew that. She always had that. That's for that protection, like I said. She wouldn't brandish it around or anything like that ` far from it, but, you know, if you tried something on. And at times, that could be the downfall. You know, you go and protect yourself, and like we all know, that can be turned upon you. So that's the things we don't know, and it's the unknown ` what really happened. STEWART: Effectively, the last confirmed sighting is at 10 past 10, when she was dropped off on the corner of Spa and the Taupo Rd by the nurse. And she's pretty adamant on that timing, because she remembers she was 10 minutes late for a meeting at the Spa Hotel. So we're quite strong on that time. After that point, basically, it opens up. MARK: OK, so if we were to put the statements obtained from the truck driver aside, what are we left with? Through reviewing the old files, the cold case detectives have uncovered a raft of possible sightings of Mona. On the 21st of June '75, a witness came forward that said at about 10 o'clock, sees a girl matching the description of Blades wearing a long green parka on the corner of Lake Terrace and Titiraupenga St. RON: Then after that, there was a sighting in the information centre, which probably was her, because she told the lady in the information centre that she was going to Hastings to visit her parents, and she'd had a pack, which she left out by the door. JOHN: The next sighting was at the Waipahihi fruit shop between 10 and 10.30. The gentleman says Mona Blades actually walked past his shop. He knows her. MARK: How'd he know her? RON: She used to ride on the back of his motorcycle, I understand. So they've grown up together. I think that's critical. Mm. And then he sees her join another girl, and actually get into a car. Do we have a vehicle that they got in? A vehicle description? The vehicle he described was a smallish type of car, similar to a station wagon. He seems to think it was darkish blue or green coloured car. And how many people were in it? He's saying that there was basically three people, so the driver and the two girls that got into the vehicle. Were you the other girl that Queen's Birthday weekend in 1975? It's common for people with new information to come out of the woodwork years later. The next sort of cluster of sightings we have are around about midday at the Spa Hotel wholesaler. He didn't come forward until 1993, which was quite a considerable time after the inquiries, so it was sort of discounted a bit, but there was a gentleman there who was approached by a girl who said she was Mona Blades and that she used to work with one of his sisters. At the time, she was actually with a man and said that she was going to Napier. The vehicle that he sees with these two was actually a 1970s station wagon. He said it was tomato-red in colour. And fortunately, at the time, he actually wrote down the registration number, but he never actually contacted the police at that stage. And then again, at about 1.30, there's a gentleman who's at the Spa Hotel sees two girls drinking in the bar. One of them looks similar to Blades and was wearing the green slacks and the green top. And then there's a third sighting, which is from the barman who said at about 1.30, he sees two girls in the Spa Hotel drinking, and one had a green two-piece suit. So, some of those sightings came in quite a long time after the original inquiry. Were you at the Spa Hotel that Saturday 31st of May 1975? A vital statement from hours later at the hotel suggests one dark possibility. And there is that sighting later on in the evening of the woman who arrives there who sees some people putting a rolled up bit of carpet into the back of a car. RON: What was the description of that vehicle? The vehicle was just a station wagon. So that sighting was a long time after the event was actually reported. She didn't come in till sort of round 2000. So, for the witness... to remember things very brightly, they'd have to be in a situation where it's remarkably different ` strange, exciting, dangerous or extremely happy. The thing about it, though, was it was the lady's birthday. And she was able to fix it because it was her birthday celebration. It was her birthday celebration, yeah. So the modern way of thinking is to, say, put the person back in that time and space, put them into the same emotional state, touch on the senses ` you know, what could you smell? What could you hear? What could you feel? How were you feeling? And tell me what happened. So somebody from all those years ago saw something that they thought, 'That's out of the ordinary.' It's entirely possible that a witness may have seen something that they didn't think was important because the car was the focus. Because investigators concentrated on the orange Datsun, none of these sightings were fully investigated. But all of them suggest a completely different course of events. Suggests she spent quite a bit of time in Taupo, doesn't it? Mm. I'm just blown away but what I've learned since` in the last few days, over this aspect of the inquiry. Yeah, if she met somebody, she could possibly deviate, you know, her plans and travel etc and go with that person. That's a strong possibility. So what I kind of gleaned is that Mona was more a free spirit. Exactly what I've taken from what I've read since we started reviewing this file again. She might set out to go somewhere, get in a vehicle and find it's going somewhere else, and she was happy to go there. That could just as easily happen at any point along the lakefront here, which would have taken the Datsun 1200 right out of the inquiry at that point. Mm. Would have made it a totally different inquiry, I can assure you of that. I grew up believing that she went missing hitch-hiking and that an orange Datsun picked her up on the Napier-Taupo Rd. And that's where she came to her demise. Um,... didn't know of anything else. That was the only story I heard. The whole thing was predicated on that she was the victim of a hitch-hiker murder. But it may be that however Mona met her fate may be in a whole different situation. It's very possible that it's someone she actually knew. I don't believe Mona Blades left Taupo alive. * WHISPERS: I didn't know we had to get dressed up. WHISPERS: We're not going to bed, Ron. We're going out. (ROLLER DOOR RATTLES) (INTRIGUING MUSIC) (IGNITION CLICKS, CAR WHIRRS) (MAN SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE ON VIDEO) Hit it! (CAR POWERS UP) (EXCLAIMS EXCITEDLY) (WHOOPS) # Lazy days... # (MEN LAUGH) Oh my Gawd! Hey! (SCREAMING) Yes, yes. I don't feel well. BOTH: What?! (TYRES SCREECH) (WOMEN LAUGH) There you go. (BOTH LAUGH) (ENGINE REVS) What have you got under the hood, bro? You wouldn't believe me. (TYRES SCREECH, MEN EXCLAIM, CAR WHIRRS) (BOTH LAUGH) (CLICKING) WHISPERS: See you tomorrow. WHISPERS: It is tomorrow. * The team reinvestigating the cold case of Mona Blades believe she could've been murdered by someone she knew They now turn their attention to Mona's movements in the months leading up to her disappearance. We have an image of Mona Blades. We wanna turn that on its head and have a good look now at her associates and what she did... in Auckland and in Hamilton and see if that has any relevance to actually where we're at now. Any further about this. Yeah. We started` went back to Mona's sort of time up in Auckland. And from that, we actually found out that she had a couple of good friends, and these two girls and Mona would sort of hang round quite a bit. The two girls would sort of associated to one of the bikie gangs up in Auckland, and through that, Mona would sort of go along with them and attended parties and different sort of meetings and things like that. And she actually had a bit of a relationship with one of the guys there for a while. She actually left and went back to Hamilton where, again, she has a loose association to other associates into another different bikie gang in Hamilton there. And, again, she has a friend in there that quite likes her. DARRYL: I was in the local motorcycle club and working as a diesel mechanic. I met Mona through her sister Lilian. Mona was, you know, a very, very attractive person, no two ways about that. Definitely noticed her when she walked into a room. You could just talk to her. You know, she'd come up and talk to you, but, you know, you'd just have a good conversation. It's like when you click with somebody. You know? So Mona has links to bike gangs in Auckland and Hamilton. But is that significant? Were members around Taupo that weekend? The 31st of May, being Queen's Birthday weekend, there was about six of seven different bikie gangs from around the country that all met in Wellington, including the groups from Auckland and from Hamilton. I notice in the file, there's a noting there that's suggesting that there's no way that a bikie gang could be involved in her disappearance. Yes, that's right. But now, quite clearly, from all the people I've spoken to, they were actually on the move through Taupo on that particular weekend. STEWART: The shadow patrol was assigned to a motorcycle gang that might be on the road travelling. So the shadow patrol would go with them, then record what was going on. At certain points, they'd stop and check them. Would that always happen or...? It was a regular event. If more than certain number of riders were on the road, then a shadow patrol was allocated to them. It was perfectly normal. From the file, John, you've gleaned that there was a shadow patrol in the area. There was, yes. There was a group were shadowed down from north down to Tirau. There was a note on the file that they were actually turned around at Tirau and went back north again. But since talking to the associates in the group there, quite a few of them actually described they went down to Wellington. There is definitely a record of one of the groups coming down from Auckland and one from Hamilton as well. So it's definitely feasible that on that weekend, there was bike groups going through Taupo, heading south, of which some of them would have known Mona. Wellington's quite a specific time for these guys. On the night of the 31st of May, a young girl was kidnapped from Wellington township, taken through to the park, where she was subject to quite a vicious attack. And resulting from that, the next morning, she made a complaint, and the police went there and actually arrested about 14 different guys from different gangs for the attack on her. So it's quite feasible, if you want to put it as a possibility. How does it link into this? They're going through Taupo on that particular weekend. They know Mona. They've seen Mona. It's quite easy that they could've spoken to her and then picked her up and taken her for a ride or, yeah. STEWART: But somebody, given the number of people that have been involved around the place, somebody would have seen and possibly knows something about it. We know Mona a bit more now. Clearly, Mona was different to what I understood her to be at the time of the inquiry. The fact that she was carrying the knife to protect herself. The fact that she was affiliating with gang members and that sort of thing. Clearly, she was a different person to what I thought she was at the time of the inquiry, where we thought she was` she was almost shy. RON: If it wasn't a hitch-hiker thing, and she was involved somehow in a group, we know also that, historically, some women get themselves in unsafe situations, um, and wind up being victims. And we know now that from Mona's, um` knowing her a little better that she would have put up a big fight. Dead right. She wouldn't have sit around taking` She wouldn't have been an easy mark. No. Could we have done something else? Should we have done something else? Those are issues that go round and round in the mind of any investigator who finishes an inquiry unresolved. * Our cold case detectives now believe it's unlikely the driver of the orange Datsun had anything to do with Mona Blades' disappearance. They believe she never left Taupo alive and that she could've died at the hands of someone she knew, possibly a gang member. Mona's family hopes that you, the viewer, can help bring some closure to this case. We've only got one last chance with this documentary to really jolt somebody's memory. Don't pre-judge Mona as a person because she went out with me, you know. Look at Mona as a daughter. Mona's mum would never agree to service, ceremony, all that, cos she always thinks that, you know, she hasn't come home. But she wants her home. And I think that's like the rest of us. You know, we just want her back to be buried, you know, by her mum and that back in Hastings up on the hill. It would be lovely to find that closure and lay her to rest with Mum and Dad. Determined to deliver a resolution, the cold case detectives have discovered one more piece of evidence that could be pivotal. JOHN: There was reference to another statement that was taken on the Friday. There was a group of bikies at the Wairakei truck stop, and with them was a red Toyota car that was described travelling in convoy with this group of bikies. And that's not uncommon for vehicles to follow a bike group in case someone breaks down or...? Definitely, yes. A lot of the time, the women weren't allowed to travel with the guys or ride the bikes, so that was an issue around that. Could that been the red vehicle seen later at the Spa Hotel? It could well be. With the focus on the orange Datsun at the time, witnesses of a red Toyota might have dismissed their sighting as unimportant. Did you see anything that Queen's Birthday weekend in Taupo that could help the inquiry? If there was a bikie gang involved in the disappearance, there's a number of them. Right? We do know, don't we, that sometimes relationships break down. A lot of these people have actually moved on. They may still be loosely associated with the particular group that they were with, um,... or not at all, in some cases. Thieves fall out. People change their priorities and get different values in their lives and may come forward, so never say never. The Mona Blades file contains a locket of her hair, ensuring that if any remains are found, the cold case team can prove it's Mona. I think they think they're bulletproof, but I struggle with the belief that he or she would hold it in for all those years. They won't step up. No. They haven't got the balls to step up, you know. That's the thing to me. With the conference over for now, Detective John Hope had organised a meeting with Michelle, Mona's sister, to keep her up to date on their new areas of investigation. JOHN: So, what we've done recently is we've gone back over the entire file, and it's been reviewed again to have a look at any other avenues, if there's something that was not looked at completely at the time, back in '75 or since then. In Auckland, Mona had a couple of friends who were associates of one of the bike clubs up there. OK? And she was good friends with them. That particular group, we know were seen heading south on the same weekend. So it opens up the possibility that did they come through Taupo on the Friday or Saturday. They know Mona. Did they offer her a ride or something? It is definitely new information that I have not heard before. I would hate to think that it would` that someone she knows has done something bad to her. When we look at something completely differently, you know, we get a different sort of perspective on it. Well, that's right, because the direction was definitely heading towards the orange Datsun. Yeah. Mm. And, um, people could've quite easily dismissed anything else, thinking that that wasn't her. Maybe we've been going down the wrong track all this time. Mm. Mm. So... let's hope. Over the past 40 years, has someone been sitting there, thinking they've got away with murder? It's now your turn, the viewers. Police wanna hear from anyone who was hitch-hiking in the Taupo area over Queen's Birthday in 1975. Does anyone have any photos from that weekend? Were you the girl that Mona was drinking with? Were you at the Spa Hotel? Or has someone relayed a memory from this time. Did you see a red Toyota that weekend? The family only want closure. It has been 42 years now. And, um,... I'm not really concerned about who or what has happened. I just want her found. You'd think after this long it wouldn't get to me like this. (INHALES SHAKILY, EXHALES) The family aren't the only ones carrying the burden of Mona's disappearance. And for the officers, there's still the burning desire to solve this cold case. RON: To be able to find some remains and repatriate them to the family, um, would be huge. Sadness will always be there, but` but closure for knowing that she's come home would be fantastic. Having gone over the sightings of Mona in Taupo during our conference, I've got quite a number of questions now that are going round and round in my mind. It's entirely likely that there's somebody out there who saw what happened that day in 1975, and for whatever reason has not spoken to anybody about it or even come forward to the police. So the opportunity there is there now to do that now, to give finality to Mona's family and to assist this inquiry as the investigators of today carry on in their search to find out what happened to her. So if there's somebody out there with that information, they should talk to the police about it. Make a phone call. Call into a police station and chat with the officers. However small that information might be, it just might break this thing wide open.