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Home / Hawkes Bay Today

Wills family still at loss over disappearance

Doug Laing
Hawkes Bay Today·
18 Dec, 2014 04:32 AMQuick Read

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Searchers are at a loss as to how Fiona Wills disappeared.

Searchers are at a loss as to how Fiona Wills disappeared.

Mystery remains over the disappearance of Te Pohue farming widow Fiona Wills, despite a search using the country's most specialised dog search and recovery team around the extensive gardens and roads on the remote family farm northwest of Napier.

Son and former Federated Farmers national president Bruce Wills confirmed last night that still nothing had been found in four hours of searching yesterday using a team of 4 cadaver dogs from Auckland.

Intermittent showers did not hamper the searchers, who will resume the hunt at 8am today. There have been no reported sightings of alzheimer's sufferer Mrs Wills since she left the family homestead at Trelinnoe Station and gardens to feed her chickens barely 50m away, about 6pm on December 9.

Family began searching almost immediately, expecting her to have wandered but to be within short walking distance.

"It's extraordinary that with all the resources we can't find a 77-year-old woman," said Mr Wills, whose father died just three weeks before his mother's disappearance. "She's beaten helicopters, a fixed-wing aircraft, searchers, and dogs. We really are at a stage where there aren't really any other options."

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