"I don't know where he is. I haven't known for 43 years but I just don't think he's in that hole."
Jefferie was just shy of his third birthday when he went to play in the sandpit at the house across the road from his parents' home in what is now Fergusson St.
Less than 10 minutes after Ms Reynolds saw him playing with little Karen Stubbs - whose parents then owned the house where yesterday's dig took place - Karen's frantic mother, Colleen Stubbs, screamed that Jefferie was in the Matarawa Creek.
Ms Reynolds raced to the creek, which flowed behind their home, but couldn't find her son.
Police and hundreds of volunteers searched the creek, which was drained, but Jefferie's body was never found.
Miss Hill said only a gumboot, a sock and his spade were found near the slow-flowing creek, which goes out to the Waikato River.
"We've never believed he went in the creek," she said.
The family think Jefferie was either taken or worse, but found the investigation into his disappearance slow.
"They didn't bring in the dogs until three days after and they didn't close the airports until days later."
Miss Hill said it was entirely possible her brother had been abducted and didn't know it.
"We've always hoped that someone took him and raised him as their own. It would be okay if he didn't want to know us but it would be nice to know if he's alive."
Ms Reynolds said if their worst fears ever came true, that Jefferie had been killed, the family wanted to know so they could bury his remains with his father, also called Jeff. He had died eight years ago.
The case was reignited by Hamilton cold-case investigator Scott Bainbridge, who was approached by the family to look into the case more than 40 years after a coroner had concluded Jefferie had drowned.
Mr Bainbridge said unlike some locals he did not suspect Colleen Stubbs' husband, Tom, who died in the 1980s and had reportedly been aggressive toward neighbourhood children.
He interviewed Colleen Stubbs during his research and said she was upset to learn the scan was going to take place in their old backyard. "They have never believed for a moment that he was involved in any way."
Mr Bainbridge said he had ruled out the stream and discounted the backyard theory because the ground excavated was close to the road front. Any burial would have been in full view of the public.
He had given police some possible leads but admitted he had gone as far as he could with the investigation.
"In a lot of the missing people cases I have dealt with in 90 per cent of the cases I know what's happened and who has done it but there is an odd 10 per cent that are a complete mystery to me.
Yesterday's dig followed a privately funded sonar search this year which found an anomaly in the ground.
Though a coroner concluded in 1969 that Jefferie had drowned in the creek, Tokoroa Detective Sergeant Kevan Verry said Jefferie was still listed as a missing person.
He said the sonar search prompted police to dig a 1.5sq m area just 75cm deep yesterday, but the work had not uncovered any items of interest.
