Some of the missing children and young people of New Zealand
Sunday, 17 December 2023
This story was originally published on December 17, 2023
It’s not often that a missing child appears again out of nowhere, alive and well, after years have past.
But that’s just what happened to the family of a British boy who went missing in Spain seven years ago, who turned up after escaping a “spiritual community” in France.
Alex Batty, from Oldham, Lancashire, was 11 when he did not return from a family holiday near Marbella with mother Melanie Batty, and grandfather David Batty, in 2017.
His grandmother and legal guardian, Susan Caruana, said in 2018 she believed the boy may have been taken to Morocco as part of his mother’s pursuit of an “alternative lifestyle”.
Prosecutors said the teenager, now 18, had been found near Toulouse after escaping a rural community.
They said he spent days hiking across the Pyrenees before being picked up by a truck driver who took him to a police station.
Closer to home, there are a handful of children and young people missing in New Zealand. We look at who some of them are here:
The three missing Marokopa kids
Tom Phillips and his three children were reported missing from their family’s home in Marokopa on January 18, 2022.
He’s been on the run with Jayda, Maverick and Ember – now aged 10, 8, and 7 – for almost two years and is in breach of a custody order.
And that wasn’t the first time Phillips had made headlines by vanishing with his kids.
A warrant was first issued for his arrest after he failed to appear in court on charges of wasting police resources, relating to the first time he and the children went missing from Marokopa in September, 2021.
Their disappearance sparked extensive police searches, only for them to walk through the door after more than two weeks in the bush.
Now, despite numerous sightings of Phillips across the Waikato region, the stolen ute he dumped, an alleged bank robbery, and a dairy smash and grab, police were seemingly no closer to bringing the children home.
Jayden Mamfredos-Nair
The 19-year-old went missing on April 21 and his disappearance was reported to police three days later.
There has been no sign of him since.
Mamfredos-Nair was last seen getting into a black ute with two members of the Head Hunters gang at the Birdwood Reserve in West Auckland’s Rānui on April 21.
In August, police announced his disappearance was being treated as a murder investigation, after evidence collected from the reserve and during search warrants suggested he had been killed.
In October, police searched a Head Hunters pad on Young Access Rd in Dairy Flat in hope of finding a body, but the search was unsuccessful.
Police were seen using ground penetrating radar, which can help locate burial sites or buried evidence.
A body deposition expert who previously worked with the Australia Federal Police had also been engaged to help.
In a statement, Mamfredos-Nair’s family said they were “distraught” and deeply concerned by his disappearance.
“Our hearts ache with worry, and we are deeply concerned for his safety and well-being. Jayden is a cherished member of our family, and we are desperately hoping for his safe return.”
Mike Zhao-Beckenridge
On March 13, 2015, Mike, 11, was taken by his stepfather John Beckenridge, 64, from his Invercargill school at lunchtime.
The pair were seen repeatedly in the Catlins area between March 15 and 18, but several days later, car parts and clothing belonging to both started to wash ashore at a nearby coastline.
It was two months before Beckenridge’s car could be pulled from the rough waters near Curio Bay.
After an extensive investigation, police referred the case to the coroner in 2019.
The pair remain on the police’s missing persons list, and Mike’s mother, Fiona Lu, believes they are still alive, and their deaths were faked.
Ben Smart and Olivia Hope
Ben Smart, 21, and Olivia Hope, 17, were amongst hundreds of party-goers at Furneaux Lodge in Endeavour Inlet in the Marlborough Sounds on New Year's Eve 1997.
Water taxi driver Guy Wallace said that in the early hours of January 1, 1998, he dropped the pair and a man at a two-masted yacht in the inlet.
They haven’t been seen since and no trace of the pair has ever been found.
Scott Watson was convicted of their murders but has always denied meeting Hope and Smart, having them on his yacht, or killing them.
One of Watson’s appeals was granted based on concerns about forensic evidence that was a significant part of the case against him.
Two hairs found on his yacht Blade were DNA matched to Olivia Hope, but questions have remained about the collection and testing of those hairs.
Amber-Lee Cruickshank
Amber-Lee Cruickshank was 2 when she disappeared from a house in Kingston on October 17, 1992.
The blonde, blue-eyed toddler was standing at the end of a driveway overlooking the southern tip of Lake Wakatipu.
She was wearing blue sneakers, a pink T-shirt, a white knitted jersey and grey track pants and had just returned to the Cornwall St house after a trip to the nearby dairy for ice cream.
The toddler watched a woman, Belinda Sayer, who lived at the property, pull out of the drive and head towards Kent St.
Sayer was gone for 20 minutes. When she returns, Amber-Lee had vanished.
About 10 people known to the little girl’s mother and stepfather had gathered there for a barbecue after going water-skiing.
Amber-Lee’s parents thought the other was watching her, and she vanished within 20 minutes of them last seeing her.
Initially, people thought she had run away and got lost, or she had walked across the road to the lake and drowned.
But every house was searched, under houses, in ceilings, water tanks, you name it. And the lake, twice.
'We are comfortable she hasn't wandered anywhere on land. We would have found her. Same as in the water,' head of the police investigation, Detective Sergeant John Kean said.
Her body has never been found, and the case remained one of New Zealand’s most enduring mysteries.
Kirsa Jensen
Kirsa Jensen was 14 when she went missing while riding her horse, Commodore, along a Napier beach.
She had planned to go riding with her friend on September 1, 1983.
Rain had stopped her from getting Commodore some exercise, but the sun was out that day.
Her friend cancelled but Kirsa was still keen to go to the beach, so she got Commodore ready, and said goodbye to her mother about 2.45pm.
At 5.45pm, Robyn Jensen phoned the police.
Not long after, Robyn heard a horse had been found loose near a bridge in Awatoto, about 7km from the vicarage.
It was Commodore and Kirsa was missing.
The police initially thought she could have fallen off her horse. They found parts of a bridle and hoof-prints on the beach near a gun emplacement, next to the Tutaekuri River.
But the investigation led them to believe someone was responsible for her disappearance.
An orchard worker, John Russell, was one of the first witnesses to contact the police, saying he had seen a girl with a bald, middle-aged man at the beach.
In 1985, he confessed to Kirsa's murder, but later recanted, saying he had been mentally ill. No charges were ever laid.
Retired detective inspector Ian Holyoake, 81, who headed the inquiry team when Kirsa was first reported missing, believes Russell, who took his own life in 1992, was most likely the one who killed Kirsa.
Someone once asked Robyn if there would ever be a time when she stops looking for her daughter.
'I said 'how stupid can you be?' A mother doesn't forget her child. I could no more forget Kirsa than fly to the moon. She's part of me and she's very important.
'A mother doesn't forget her baby,' she says.
'Until the day I die, I'll keep hoping. I'll never give up hope.'