KEY POINTS:
For 22 years Jimmy Slater's loved ones have agonised over what became of the young Waikato father who vanished without trace in February 1985.
Friends and family searched the Mamaku Ranges dozens of times hoping for a clue, tracing the route between Tirau and Rotorua.
The family now have closure after Mr Slater's body was found in the wreckage of his Ford Cortina at the bottom of a steep cliff.
Pig hunter Keith Davis found Mr Slater's remains on Wednesday as he pushed through dense bush on the edge of the ranges. He spotted an old car wrapped around a large tree and covered in foliage.
Hanging from the rusting Mark Three Ford Cortina Ghia were bones that the hunter initially thought might belong to a bird or animal.
He asked David Burns, a friend who lived nearby, to return to the scene with him. Mr Burns said he could see cloth, believed to be a shirt, hanging out the window. There were bones in it and in the footwell below the steering wheel. A brown shoe was also outside the car with a sock and bones still inside.
"With a torch I was able to see a bit further in [the car] and I said, 'Yes, I thought it was a person', so I said, 'Right, we'll phone up the police'," said Mr Burns. "It crossed my mind to dig in there and see if I could find a wallet but I thought, 'No that's up to the police'."
The discovery brings to a close a missing person case that has spanned three decades. While police are awaiting forensic confirmation before formally naming the dead man, they have visited the family of George Henry Slater - known as Jimmy - who went missing while driving from Rotorua to Tirau in February 1985.
"It was something that we were expecting, really," his brother Brian Slater told the Herald last night. "He went missing on that road and it was quite likely at some stage somebody would find the vehicle."
Mr Slater said his 28-year-old brother went missing after a Friday night party in Rotorua. The apiary worker, who was single but had two young daughters, left Rotorua in bad weather about 9.30pm. Searches began when he failed to show for work the following Monday.
"I spent a couple of months searching and walking that road and the bush surrounding there," said Brian Slater. "It was well searched and I just can't believe that we were so close in this particular area where the vehicle was found and I missed it."
Mr Slater said the stormy conditions meant there were no visible signs - broken barriers or foliage - of a car having left the road.
Tokoroa Detective Sergeant Kevan Verry said the car had come to rest about 30m down the steep, bush-clad bank after a high-speed crash.
Although Jimmy Slater was officially declared dead in 1992, people have always wondered what happened to him.
"They had searched the area but I guess he's been resting not that far from home all along," said Tirau resident Barrie Goodwin.
