* On the 19th of May 2012, police were called to a remote West Coast beach south of Auckland to investigate a grizzly discovery. A lady was walking along near Sunset Beach at Port Waikato with her dog. Come on, come on. This way. And there was a skull exposed. There was information that was released to the media that it was a young woman. They were looking into missing persons files. We've had so many false alarms over the years, and so I didn't think anything. I'd refused to get carried away. ESR were able to extract DNA from the femur, and it transpired that it was Jane. (UNSETTLING MUSIC) A cold case that's baffled police for almost 20 years is once again an active investigation. And all I thought then was, 'Oh, dear, it's 1993 all over again.' My hope for her was that she was alive all this time. When they found her body, fucking totally destroyed me. It was, you know, exciting, it's what you train for. Here's a chance to find a closure for the family. But after 26 years and three exhaustive investigations, no one has been held accountable for the death of the young woman. This is the frustration for me. I've now retired, and it's been a frustration of mine not being able to finalise this case. 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 up-to-date technology to look at things with fresh eyes. No one deserves to end like that at 17. She had a son. She deserved a go, and she never got that. The door never closes. The door is still just there swinging ` why, when, how, who, why? I think the question will always just be 'Why?' Can you help us answer those questions and solve Jane Furlong's murder? Captions by Starsha Samarasinghe. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2019 (OMINOUS NOTE) She's 17, a mother, a drug-user, and a prostitute, and she's missing. On the 26th of May 1993, Jane Furlong disappeared without a trace from Auckland's Karangahape Rd. Jane lived a lifestyle that was at high-risk. Jane was a 17-year-old girl who obviously, through her choices, decided to break away from home at an early stage. A bright girl, all that future... Yeah, it's just sad. Jane had been working on the streets for two years. This is Jane three and a half weeks before her disappearance. Incredibly, she and her friends had just been filmed for a documentary on prostitution. A month later, the camera crews were back, interviewing Jane's best friend Amanda about the night Jane went missing. Your best friend is missing, perhaps dead, and yet you're exposing yourself to exactly the same risk. That to me seems crazy. Why aren't you home`? I've been doing it for two years, so just because someone's gone missing, which happened, doesn't mean to say that we've got to all stop making a living. Things like this happen. But you could be making your death. Someone's gotta die some time. (CHUCKLES WRYLY) I first met Jane at Penrose High School. I was 15 years old, and we were in English class together. I didn't actually like her at first at all. She was very goody two shoes. I was teacher's pet, and then she came along, and she was the teacher's pet. Jane became more like my family. I was in 17 foster homes as a child. I didn't get on with my parents. What are you even writing in there? Nothing. Jane was bright, and did well at school. And like Amanda, she'd spent time in foster homes. None of your business! She's just amazing. She's just so amazing. We used to go out on Friday and Saturday nights, and cruise down Queen St, and get picked up by random people in cool cars. Jane came home one day with $50 cash. SING-SONGY: Look what I got. Where did you get that?! $50 was a lot of money. She explained that she had done something sexual for it. And because we were already doing that stuff for nothing, for love, for love, for attention, for whatever it was, this was just an opportunity now to do it for a living. (SIGHS) Fuck. (CHUCKLES WRYLY) 15. Oh, it's horrendous, you know. It just goes against everything you believe in and, yeah. Those two just did their own thing, and then they met Dani. You're so gross. She really had it for Dani. Soul mates from the beginning. Crazy, crazy. So then it was the three of them doing their own thing. I didn't like him. (CHUCKLES) Thought he was an egg. I just said, 'Get rid of him.' If we had've been able to get Dani out of the picture, it would've been different. Yeah. Hey, guys. (BOTTLES RATTLE) Jane and Dani burst in, and Jane was like, 'Guess what?' JANE AND Dani: We're having a baby! Oh my God! She was fairly excited, and that made me excited, cos obviously I was gonna be the godmother, and I am. I'm Aiden's godmother. And I watched him being born. I was worried about being left with the baby, cos I knew she wouldn't be able to cope. Shh. (SMOOCHES) She was very casual in all her attitude. Just casual. She doted on him. She really struggled, though, with the fact that her profession was what it was, and she couldn't do both. She couldn't be a mother and a prostitute. I think that's when it dawned on her, 'I'm in big trouble here.' (Dani YELLS) Aiden went to live with Dani's parents, and Jane was starting to have doubts about her boyfriend as well. She wasn't happy with her relationship with Dani,... Get off! It's both our problem! ...so I introduced her to my friend, and she was going to be associating with my friend that night. So we'd made plans to go out and stay out the night. On the 26th of May, Jane and Amanda and Dani took a taxi from Onehunga into town to work. So, we got up to K Rd, Dani had some shit to do with a car. I don't even know. I wasn't even listening. I really didn't give a shit. We know that Dani then had` used the taxi driver that took them there to go and uplift a broken-down car in the Newton area. See ya later, girls. He left, we stood out there, had a cigarette, talked about how our night was gonna go. And then I went on a job. When Amanda came back, Jane was gone. Gone on a job. She'll be back soon. I'll go out on another job. When I come back, she'll probably be there. There was never a time in the whole time I knew Jane that I hadn't heard from her within 24 hours. By the morning, and not hearing from her... Jane's boyfriend Dani reported her missing over 24 hours later. Although police were concerned for Jane's safety, there was no concrete evidence that she'd come to any harm. First investigation in 1993 was closed as a serious missing person file, subject to further information, because the theme was quite strong, that she possibly had left to get away from the scene. I had hoped until we found her body that she had actually escaped from Dani and gone and found a different life. New Zealand Police spent some time and energy in trying to get the outcome for the family and for ourselves and for Jane. And that didn't help not having Jane. A body always helps. But we're always hopeful. Just waiting for that piece of information that's gonna close off the file. It's always open. * When 17-year-old Jane Furlong disappeared from Auckland's Karangahape Rd in 1993, she was treated as a missing person. But three years later, when the case was reviewed, police were convinced they were dealing with something far more sinister. New Zealand's a small place. For someone to hide for that period of time and not leave a trace, is very rare. Considering Jane's personality, she wouldn't have stayed quiet for long. In 1996, Mark Benefield was a 36-year-old detective. Case was intriguing because there was a missing person without a body. It's a challenge, and you want to close that challenge off and take some pride in the achievement that you get at the end of it. Even without a body, Jane's way of life gave police no shortage of leads. Jane is the focal point, so you work from Jane's lifestyle, the people that she worked with. Some of the people that Jane and Dani lived with or associated with were involved in serious crime. Also at the time of her disappearance, Jane was helping police build a case against Stephen Collie, a serial rapist who'd attacked eight sex workers. JANE: Get off! (GATE RATTLES) She was allegedly raped by Mr Collie, but because Jane disappeared prior to trial, she never gave evidence at the trial. Had she been alive, she would've been a witness in the case. In 1996, police considered the possibility Jane had been pressured to retract or change her testimony, but had refused. There was talk that that possibly could've been why Jane went missing. But when the case went to trial, seven women still gave evidence against Stephen Collie. Jane was the only complainant who didn't. Collie was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Eight victims, one didn't turn up, why was Jane any different to any of the other victims? We are comfortable that that's not what happened to Jane. Life on the street was dangerous, but Jane was also in a bad relationship. Missing person cases are littered with the partner, who reports the deceased missing, being the perpetrator. So Mr Norsworthy was always a person of interest, and a strong person of interest. Dani, when questioned about what happened that night, was quite simple. They'd gone there in the taxi, he'd asked the taxi driver to go and check his broken-down car, and the taxi driver was going to tow it, but had to go off to get a fare, and that was the last time he saw Jane. In 1996, we did re-interview Dani. It didn't remove him as a person of interest. With no CCTV footage and no cell phone coverage to try and corroborate what he tells you was difficult. But Dani wasn't the only person of interest. There were many people in Jane's life who warranted investigation. Dani and Jane's associates are strong in the drug culture, and also the criminal culture. There were a number of people that had a grudge or wanted money off Jane and Dani. People have killed for less. In 1996 at the end of it, the investigation had advanced, but we weren't getting to a point of being able to take it to a prosecution. (OCEAN LAPS) Fast forward 19 years with the discovery of Jane's remains at Port Waikato's Sunset Beach, and Mark Benefield is now the officer in charge of the new investigation. Well, we have a team today walking around in the rain trying to find who lived here. We've got a big gap to work through from 1993. The discovery gave the investigation a huge amount of new information, but not enough to charge anyone with Jane's murder. We've now brought together a group of cold case detectives to spearhead a new inquiry. Leading our review will be Paul Newman, who worked on the case in 2012, and is now the officer in charge,... The grave site is a very important scene for us. Obviously it held the remains of Jane. It gave us a great starting point to work backwards to where she was found, to where she had disappeared from. ...Detective Sergeant Tim Traviss is the 2IC on the case,... We now have a body. We have a massive advantage over the other inquiries, and I guess the big question was why was she buried in Port Waikato? ...and Mark Benefield. Now retired, but with two separate investigations into Jane's murder his belt, his insight will be invaluable. You always think in the back of your mind, I wanna be part of that next investigation. The team has come together to analyse the cold case of Jane Furlong, but will also be asking for your help to solve this homicide. The question I've got that I think is the most significant to start with is we've got Jane who disappears in 1993 in Karangahape Rd, where she's working. She ends up down here ` Sunset Beach at Port Waikato, at almost 100km away. Where's the connection? Oh, it's significant. Really eliminates Mr Random picking her up, taking her out to Port Waikato, so far away, so isolated. Someone has to have specific knowledge of the area to dig a gravesite so close to the lifeguard station there. You have to know about it and have the tenacity to dig a grave in the middle of a beach with houses near there. And it would've been` In 1993, it would've been a significant drive. It would've taken them close to an hour and a half to two hours or more. The roads weren't that great then. You know, historically, homicide investigations have always revealed that there's some connection between the offender and the location where they choose to dispose of a body. Tim Traviss was a young detective sergeant in 2012, and was also part of Mark Benefield's investigation team. It's a very bleak place and so remote, so isolated. Ironic in a way, that she was found, you know, cos I always thought that she was brought back to us so that we can solve this. Nature's just a strange thing. Jane was there till time and tide decided to bring her back. Someone knows the area enough to have the gall to bury someone on a beach with houses around you, knowing that they're not gonna get caught. You know, you assume that they've probably done it in the dark at night to limit, obviously, people seeing them from either the baches or from the car park area. You've gotta have some instrument to dig with, the sand dunes itself are gonna limit your ability to actually dig a very deep hole, because things are gonna start caving in on themselves. And you wanna work fast, cos you wanna get out of there. In the 19 years since Jane was buried, the beach has changed dramatically. The gravesite was only uncovered because of the erosion of the sand dunes, so it obviously had pushed back a fair way over those near-20 years that she went missing and was found. And we know that the beach has retracted a good 20m. The lifeguard tower there ` that doesn't exist any more, because they've had to move that and the car park back now. They're saying the car park has actually almost disappeared now. Almost disappeared, yeah. Identifying just how much the landscape had changed became vital to the team. In 2012, police unearthed a photo book showing the dune area as it was in 1993. So, what we wanted to do was to pinpoint on those photos where Jane was buried. Using the latest technology, detectives, along with Greg Hamilton of GEOINT NZ took these photos and plotted their roading dunes. So, as you know, we were provided with geospatial data, and we were asked to review that information. Serious Crash Unit, they did a very detailed topographic survey of the area. We aligned survey data with the imagery, and we were able to identify the location of the gravesite with a high level of confidence. It's very, very close to that tar. The images also showed just how lucky it was that Jane's remains were unearthed before being washed away by the tide. So, 2013, this is right into the beach, so you can see the erosion line. Huge amount of erosion, even just within a year. Yeah. So, 2012, the year of the discovery, you can see it's right on the edge of that dune. But back in 1993, the grave was 20m from the sea-face of the sand dunes. Pinpointing Jane's gravesite tells police a lot more about the behaviour of the person who buried her. There's a radius or a distance an offender is prepared to carry or move a body before burying it, and it makes a starting point which could either be the car park at Sunset Beach or access way from the road. There was actually quite a significant divide or ravine in those sand dunes, which would be naturally attractive to anybody placing a body there, because they would've been out of sight to not only the watchtower from the Surf Lifesavers but also the line of houses, which are only about 50 or 60m away. Somebody who took Jane there had to have a connection there to firstly know it existed and to be comfortable in taking Jane there, either dead or alive, knowing that they were safe. But then how deep did he put her? That's right. And as you can see, I mean, they've put sand bags in, some bits and pieces around here to support the bank from collapsing while they're doing the sand examination. The person digging the grave would've had exactly the same problems digging into sand, and it not collapsing. So we can speculate that possibly it wasn't too deep at all. Police feel certain the killer felt comfortable burying Jane at that location, so what is the connection to Port Waikato? We never went down that way. It was always out west, Bethells Beach or Muriwai or something like that. We never went down that way. We have no links to Port Waikato whatsoever. Every person we spoke to, basically, was asked that question of how well did they know Port Waikato, but there was only one person of interest who had a link. What we do know is that one of her associates had a family bach down there. That person was interviewed, and was quite open about that connection. They front-footed it in the interview, they acknowledged that there was that connection there through the family, but because they had become estranged from the family, the person said they weren't welcome there, and so they didn't go there very often. They did accept that they had taken the boyfriend down to Port Waikato several times, but that was the extent of it. And when we put it, the connection to Port Waikato, in the suggestion that her boyfriend had been out there, he denied it completely, That's right. ...saying that he'd never been there. You're left in that really challenging situation where you have one person saying one thing and one person saying the other, and it's very difficult to corroborate either. With two strong persons of interest pointing the finger at each other, the team is left hunting for the holes in someone's story. * 17-year-old Jane Furlong went missing on the 26th of May 1993. She was last scene in her usual spot on K Rd by her friend Amanda and boyfriend Dani, just as she was about to start work. If something has happened, I just hope that they catch the jerk and do something about it. People like that shouldn't be allowed to roam around. 19 years later, she was found 90km south, buried in the sand dunes at Port Waikato. The cold case team now believe the key to breaking this case wide open is the offender's link to the gravesite. The significant part now, of course, is we've got the body and we've got a location and have a scene ` something they didn't have in 1993 and '96, which we can start putting context around a lot of the information that they had back then, but we can't get passed the fact that we've got one person within that circle of friends closely tied to that particular location. And it's significant because it's such a distance from the city. When police first interviewed the suspect with the Port Waikato bach, he said he'd also taken Jane's boyfriend there. So, we know Dani's got a violent criminal history. He has a lot of convictions for violence towards women, and one of those is a conviction of assaulting Jane. Fuckin' off the charts. It really was. It was off the charts. Some of the shit that I saw was just... It's the kind of shit I'll never forget... at its extreme. (CLATTERING) JANE: (SCREAMS) What are you doing?! (DANI YELLS) Help! He dragged her around by her hair, went to hit her with a metal bar. And then I jumped on top of her to stop him from doing that, and only then did other boys step in. After Jane vanished, police received a lot of information that suggested Dani had a hand in her disappearance. There was talk around these parties where Dani and his best friend at the time would tell everybody they did it. What's that all about? Crazy. I recall going to a prison in the South Island to interview an informant who alleges that at parties, Dani professed to have killed Jane and buried her at a bridge in Te Atatu, which clearly has now shown not to be the case. Oh, shit. Sorry, sorry. Whether that was people wanting to big-note, feel that he was important, who knows. We know that Dani had an affinity for the Woodlands, Riverhead. Waitakeres. Looking for certain, um... Magic mushrooms. Magic mushrooms, yeah. Which showed he was a lot more comfortable with that sort of area than he might've been with Port Waikato. Not to say, as you can keep an open mind, that we have to. Dani denies ever going to Port Waikato, which leads the team back the person of interest with the family bach. We do know that his whereabouts on the 26th of May are unknown between our red-zone time of 8pm to 11pm. And he hasn't given us an account for that time. And then the following day, he was to appear in court, and he failed to appear in court. The link to Port Waikato is important, but it's even more compelling if the strong person of interest can't account for his time around Jane's disappearance. What we need now is somebody who was close to him at the time, a friend or an associate, who can come to us, and they can corroborate or refute what he said. We need that person to come forward. Can you help? Police are hoping that some of the people who've been reluctant to speak with them in the past, are now more prepared to open up about what they know. Jane kept a diary for the last three years of her life, and it's also become a valuable source of information. $100 for a night's work, eh? $150 for the next night. Reading the diaries, as a father, it paints a very tragic picture and really personalises Jane as a real person. She weighed herself a lot. 7 stone... 44. The way that she articulated herself shows an underlying intelligence and awareness. At the same time, she was very young, trying to interpret the world through very young eyes. Today I bought a Datsun 120Y for $100. Meticulous records of her money and earnings and stuff and who owes who money. Every financial transaction had been recorded to some extent in the diary, which tells us things ` how much she paid for cars. She bought the car that had broken down that Dani was driving. And obviously there was another car that had been taken off them. That's right. Significantly, of course, she pays for the` what was the Oldsmobile, which was the subject of a crossbow incident. You have this really intriguing sort of incident, which he coined as 'the crossbow incident'. Where the fuck's my car?! Danny and Jane frequented a place where people would go to do drink and to smoke cannabis. The people that ran this location, one being our person of interest, believed, rightly or wrongly, that Dani and or Jane had stolen property belonging to them. The person of interest was a lead conspirator in deciding that they were going to take the car that Dani and Jane owned to pay part of that debt. Jane being Jane was at the front. Get off my property! Rah-rah, little red-head going, 'Rah, rah, rah!' Give us the fucking car. GIRL: Jesus Christ, Jane` I told you, I don't have your car. Jane had a knife on her at the time and had confronted this person who had pointed the crossbow at her. We were called for back-up, got loads of people. All of a sudden, we could hear police sirens and helicopters, so we all sort of split. Hurry the fuck up! Dani, go! Let's go! (TYRES SQUEAL, PEOPLE CLAMOUR) (PEOPLE YELL, CLAMOUR) (RESOUNDING POP) Fuck, he's shooting! Go! Oh my God! (SIRENS WAIL, CAR ENGINE WHINES) Assholes. That was a pretty freaky night. Apparently Jane and Dani gave statements to the police about what happened. So that could also be another reason for... whatever. The cold case team believe the crossbow incident is significant. It was only five months before Jane's disappearance, and marks the start of escalating tensions between Jane and her friends and a group of people who are of interest to the inquiry. Told ya, I don't have your car. Fucking bullshit. Our person of interest is central to the plot to take the care off Dani, and that starts a series of events which you see sort of unfold, not only over that day and night, but also has a flow-on affect. 4th of March 1993 she writes, 'Shannon rang up and told me to tell Dani he wasn't welcome around there any more.' It appeared to aggravate their relations. We know that because the gangs were now involved. 'The heavies went round there and threatened Michelle and him.' They wanted to exact their debt, and they were busy at the time going systematically round the associates of Jane and Dani, and doing what we'd call now home invasions and taxing them. She pissed people off cos she was a woman who stood her ground. Didn't take any shit. She was real. I don't think anyone can handle real. 'Take that little girl. She's only 15, 16. Just a little girl. 'What does she know?' You wonder if they're a little bit out of their league, dealing with violent people, gang members. You wonder whether they knew what they were getting themselves into. We know that she owed money to people. One of those people might have gone a step too far and killed her. From all the statements we've taken, from all the witnesses we've interviewed, you never see that debt paid` If we add to the fact that where she was found, and then link it to that person who's linked to the group of people around that debt, then there's that possible line in the sand. And he's the only person with a fixed connection From that group of people. That's right. And for me that is the significant question. Mm. Have the team uncovered a perfect storm ` a person of interest with an unresolved grudge against Jane and a connection to Port Waikato? * 17-year-old Jane Furlong was last seen working on Auckland's K Rd in 1993. The mother's remains were only discovered after years of severe erosion exposed her resting place. The cold case team now turn their attention to what was in the grave. We've got things that we found in the gravesite, and we know what's there or what's missing, which only the killer will know. Investigatively, that's really important. Obviously, Jane's remains were found in the grave, and it was the items that were found in the grave with her, and some of the items that weren't that have given the investigation a really solid base that we have to hold very closely to our chest. Jane was last seen in an outfit she'd typically wear to work. Dani states that Jane was wearing a black long-sleeved lacy top, black cotton short mini skirt, a black high-heel shoe, brown leather jacket with tassels on the arms. But she also had a change of clothes with her. On the 5th of June 1993, Dani further states that Jane put into her canvas bag her jeans and her black Jack Daniel's t-shirt. It was really interesting the items that came out of the grave that had we had to give to the ESR. To the layman, you'd think, 'Oh, there's nothing coming out of that,' but the work they did unravelling the strands to help us identify the pieces of clothing was extraordinary. I'm picking, literally, I'm picking what was some very confusing items. Certainly. That wasn't readily identifiable. Unwilling to compromise the investigation, the team will not divulge everything found with Jane. However the detectives are, for the very first time, prepared to reveal significant detail. Within the tangled mess, we were able to identify approximately eight items of interest that would potentially help to identify what clothing and what Jane had with her at the time that she went missing. It was very unusual. It's not a sort of case that we encounter regularly at ESR. We probably are involved in body recoveries only maybe once a year, and very rarely are we involved in body recoveries where the person has been dead for a number of decades. I could see there were threads, there were overlooking threads, there was indications of sewing, there was indications of elastic. It was just a matter of just laying everything out, looking to see what matched in the way of colour, what matched in the way of overlooking pattern. We were able to identify that there was a t-shirt present. We had the manufacturer's tag at the top, which highlighted the area where the neck is, and we also obviously had the sleeves and the body of the shirt. The painstaking forensic analysis of the gravesite has given us an inventory of what she had with her when she was buried. Will identifying these items be the key to solving this cold case? The black t-shirt certainly opens up the investigation's timeline. She definitely has got changed at some stage. And I guess that really raises that question of what happened to her between that time she was in K Rd and to the time that she's ended up at Port Waikato. Yeah, definitely. I mean, when was she buried? When did she have the opportunity to change the clothes? And over what time frame are we looking at? Jane was wearing her favourite leather jacket when she was last seen, but it's missing from the gravesite. It was either separated from her during the process of transporting her from the city to Port Waikato or somebody's keeping it as a keepsake, or even handed it on. They'd need to get that off their chest at some stage. You don't want to go on to your deathbed with it on your conscience. Do you, the viewer, know anything about Jane's leather jacket? Now the team has established what was buried with Jane and what's missing, they review the timeline and discover a sighting that up to now has never been fully corroborated. So, Amanda and Jane are working up there. Amanda gets that job. When she comes back, Jane's gone, and that's around about 8.30, isn't it? That's right. 8.30, yes. Everything after that becomes a little bit grey for us. Several witnesses have said that she's run into one of these parlours. I think it was Adam & Eve. She was running scared from somebody. Somebody was chasing her. Although in 1993 K Rd was a very dangerous place, this sighting has always seemed unlikely, because it was quite a distance from Jane's patch. The Rendells Girls ` in between Rendells and McDonalds ` that was our spot on that side of the road. The infamous three ` Natacha, Jane and Amanda. Everybody out here knows that there's a risk they're taking, but it's a risk that we're willing to take. Jane and her group of very young prostitutes worked in an area between upper Queen St and Mercury Lane outside Rendells. 500m along was a completely different set of women. Jane and her associates weren't welcome there cos there had been previous conflict between some of the older woman that worked at the other end of K Rd and them. In 1993, not only did it seem unlikely that Jane was as the other end of K Rd, there were also differing reports as to who was running. But there was some confusion over whether it was, in fact, Jane's friend Natacha that was actually the one being chased. Which then was a little bit confused at the time as to who actually saw who. Natacha Hogan and Jane were very similar build and obviously attired in similar ways, so were often mistaken. Sadly Natacha was killed shortly in '96. We couldn't speak to her again, which is very sad. Fellow sex worker Natacha Hogan was never able to clear up the confusion because three years after Jane went missing, she was murdered by serial killer Hayden Poulter. However on review, the 1993 file clearly shows that Natacha had spoken to police about the incident. She had heard the same story about Jane running into Adam & Eve's. It could only have been Jane because Natacha would've been speaking about herself. And now the team uncover another witness to corroborate Jane fleeing. Help! Some time later, we had a third person who was also working in that location and was able to pretty much tell us the same story. She gave a statement to us saying that Jane ran into the parlour and asked to be hidden, and she gave her name to her as Jane Furlong. (MAN YELLS, BANGING) What the hell is going on? Then two heavies coming in to the parlour and asking for the person that ran into the parlour, and then they went off, and obviously then Jane fled from the parlour, and that was the last sighting. Between that particular witness and the other two, it's frustrating that that particular line in 1993 wasn't followed through. Could've actually re-tied up that link across here as to where she was and what she was wearing at the time and all the above. With three first-hand accounts of Jane running scared that night, police believe the sighting at Adam & Eve's is highly credible. But it still leaves the question ` why had Jane strayed so far from her usual territory on K Rd? VOICEOVER: When it comes to family, what's normal? There's stay-at-home mums, working mums, nans, grans who pick you up and put the dinner on. Daddy. Two daddies. Long-distance daddies. Perhaps it's Grandad who helps you out with your homework. Or maybe your friends are your family, like a sister from another mister. Families come in all shapes and sizes, but it's mealtimes that bring us together. * (BABY CRIES) 17-year-old Jane Furlong has been dead now for longer than the short life she was allowed. But after 26 years, police have uncovered new information that could bring some justice for Jane and her friends and family. I still wonder to this day why her and not me. I was in the same position as her, working on the same street. A lot were the same people, doing the same drugs. Maybe if we find out why she was killed, things will make sense. Until then, nothing makes sense. Police have always believed the last sighting of Jane Furlong was around 8.30 in the evening, standing outside Rendells, where she usually worked. But after re-examining the file, there's now strong evidence of a later sighting, 500m away, of Jane running scared from someone who was chasing her. But what was she doing at that end of town on someone else's patch? When the men came into the parlour, as Jane was hiding, this witness asked them why they wanted her. They said that Jane owed them money for drugs. And we know of Jane's drug habits through her diary, and she owed money to various people. It was also alleged that she owed money to our person of interest as well. That comes from his own statement, doesn't it? It does. And of course there's his link to this particular location in that cafe. Cos he used to frequent the Inbetween Cafe. The Inbetween Cafe was in the same block as the Adam & Eve massage parlour where Jane ran to hide. A couple of the witnesses that we spoke to had indicated that Jane had started indicating the Inbetween Cafe. We know that our person of interest would often stop in at places like the Inbetween Cafe, in his own words, to play video games. So, having Jane up at that, sort of, area of K Rd, I guess, it puts them on a collision course at some point. You've got a person who's very much at the centre of the loose group of associates around Dani and Jane also connected to what we know as the crossbow incident. And Port Waikato. Trifecta. Fresh eyes have allowed the cold case team to draw a series of strong connections to one person of interest. Could the new links finally lead to Jane's killer? She wouldn't have backed down. She would've fought. Circumstances could've easily spiralled out of control. Jane was no shrinking violet. She would stand up to most people. Foolishly, probably, believing that other people had her back. I don't think they did. For someone who was so small, she had a lot of guts, and she knew what she believed in, and she had the right sense of things. She wasn't an arsehole. We just were surrounded by arseholes. What frustrates me about this case is that we have this person of interest with the Port Waikato connection. We haven't closed off that time zone that he's unaccounted for between 8pm and 11pm that night. We know that there's people out there that are holding information back and are still unwilling to speak to us about that person. At some point you just wonder whether that burden of holding on to that information just gets` will get a little bit too much. Been a few that have refused to engage with us. Some of them have been ` who we've interviewed ` have... given us a certain amount of information, but when it comes to some of the hard questions, haven't been prepared to open up to us fully. The team believe there are still witnesses out there who haven't disclosed all they know of Jane's disappearance, or who was around her at the time. She was human being. She was a young, intelligent woman. You look at her diary, you can see she's crying out for help. Just a few days before she disappeared, she writes, 'I've tried to be good and nice to everyone. I've never mucked any one around, yet everyone shits on me. 'I hate life. Why can't I be loved?' How much do you think about her now? All the time. Every day? Do you cry much at all? 25 years it's been going on. It's a lifetime. I was only 43 and now I'm nearly 70. (CHUCKLES WRYLY) Dear, oh, dear. I have regular contact with Judith, Jane's mother. It would be a great deal of satisfaction to be able to give her some sort of closure. She wanted to be a mother. She wanted to get off the street. If she had found a different way... Like, these days, you can do free courses. If she could've done a free course for child psychology and raised her child, she would've done that. And I'm really sure she could've. I'm sure she would've been a great psychologist. Who knows what would've happened to Jane in the years if she'd been` if she'd lived. One thing I can say is that a mother would've had her daughter, and a son would've had a mother, and their lives, because of it, would've been different. Even for the detectives who worked on Jane's case time and again, there's the nagging disappointment of not being able to solve this. There's the frustration for me. I've now retired, and it's been a frustration of mine not being able to finalise this case. I left with disappointment that we hadn't actually got that point. I feel very confident. We've collated a very strong investigative case with the right people coming forward. I truly believe that this case can be solved. Captions by Starsha Samarasinghe. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2019