Brutal murder remains unsolved

Nearly eight months after the brutally bashed body of a man was found in a suburban Auckland house, police remain convinced the crime can be solved.

Damien Loder Allen, 33, died from "blunt force trauma" last September but police said since then they had been frustrated by people at the house and associates of Mr Allen.

The house had underworld drug links.

Mr Allen's body had been moved and the house in the suburb of Hillsborough, where it was found, had been cleaned, homicide inquiry head Detective Inspector Scott Beard said.

Police went to the house after a 111 emergency call.

Since then people there had withheld vital information about his death from police.

The file was being worked on full time by one detective but the stonewalling had not stopped, said Mr Beard.

"We are determined to get to the bottom of it. It is solvable, but we just need to make sure we dot our i's and cross our t's," he said.

Earlier this year the dead man's mother pleaded for information about his death.

Shirley Allen said her son had been murdered at a place he called home, surrounded by people he thought were his friends.

She said from her home in Queensland, Australia, she needed to know what had happened to him and who killed him.

She said the killer would have to be carrying a huge weight of guilt.

- NZPA