Jane Furlong in a photo released by the NZ Police. Photo / File
Jane Furlong in a photo released by the NZ Police. Photo / File
EDITORIAL:
Somewhere out there, someone knows who killed Jane Furlong.
Someone - likely a handful of people - know what happened to her the night she went missing in May 1993, how she was killed, who transported her to Port Waikato and how her body was buried deep in thesand dunes at Sunset Beach.
Someone has the answers to a mystery that has haunted and tormented her mother Judith and her son Aidan, who had only been alive for six months when she vanished and has had to forge his way through life motherless and undoubtedly troubled over the circumstances.
It's time for that someone - or anyone else with information to come forward, to ease the pain of Jane's family, to help police bring a killer to justice.
Jane was a girl who had her whole life ahead of her, a baby to raise, a future to pave - whether it was good or bad, it was hers to live.
Jane Furlong in a photo released by the NZ Police. Photo / File
But all of that was taken from her by another person, perhaps people.
Police are giving the case another push this week in a bid to finally find Jane's killer.
They've done plenty of appeals like this over the years, but this time they are focussing on the "critical" period in the lead up to Jane's death and certain people connected to her.
Some have refused to speak to police to date, others have alibis that have never been firmed up and some have never bothered to come forward.
The police hope that, 26 years after Jane was killed, the landscape of their lives, their allegiances and relationships might have changed enough for them to come forward and give up what they know.
Jane's mother welcomes any publicity around her girl, but is not confident Jane's killer will be identified in her lifetime.
For a mother to live each day like that, not knowing anything but desperate to know everything, must be hell.
Judith Furlong, mother of murdered woman Jane Furlong. Photo / Dean Purcell
Jane's disappearance has always had a air of seediness to it, partly because of her lifestyle and partly because of the people who surrounded her in the last months of her short life.
She was a part-time sex worker, she'd been in foster care, she used drugs, she was part of the underbelly of New Zealand that makes many shudder and turn away.
But Jane was a human being, a loved daughter and friend.
For a mother to live each day like that, not knowing anything but desperate to know everything, must be hell.
Instead of judging her choices, we must remember she was barely more than a child.
She could have been a loved mum had she had the chance - she should have had that chance.
Jane may not have been leading a typical Kiwi life, but she did not deserve to die or have her body hidden for 19 years on that isolated and lonely beach.
What she deserves is justice and it's time for those who took her from K Rd all those years ago, who took her life, who put her in deep in the sand - or anyone who has even a scrap of information about just one element of her demise, to come forward.
Her mother is absolutely right when she says the killer, and those keeping his or her secret, is pathetic.
Their silence is weak, selfish, and inhumane.
It's time to do the right thing and come forward, to tell police what you know and help them close the case of Jane Furlong, a girl who deserved more.
