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To her young daughter’s eyes, Patricia Burt looked like an angel when she was playing the piano. Fingers flying across the keys, it was the only time she truly seemed happy.
Memories like this are now all Hilary Martin has of her mother after she vanished on Easter weekend in 1988 during a trip to church.
A spokesperson would only say the remains had been there for “some years”, and declined to comment on the possible identification of Burt.
But Martin said officers contacted her brother this week to say a scene examination had revealed items of interest, including a denture set and medical bracelet. They had confirmed the bracelet belonged to Burt and were waiting for confirmation the denture set may have also been hers. It had the name “Bert”, possibly misspelt, printed on it.
They have done a DNA test on Martin’s brother and are waiting for results. Martin said she was “99 per cent sure that skeleton was my mother”.
Burt’s tale is an achingly sad one of a woman fighting an uphill battle against mental illness to care for her young family.
At just 5 years old, Burt was the one to discover her own mother’s body after she had committed suicide, a traumatic experience which would only serve to worsen the mental health problems she suffered throughout her life.
Martin believes her mother became addicted to prescription medications, hoarding shoeboxes full of them at home, which Martin remembers throwing out as a teenager.
Despite her struggles, as well as suspected Asperger’s syndrome, Burt managed to raise four children, something Martin recognises as impressive.
Emotionally, she said Burt could not “be there for us”, but said that was because “she couldn’t be there for herself”.
Hilary Martin on her wedding day in 1964 with mother Patricia Burt to the right, as well as her siblings, from left: Pam, Robyn and Trevor.
Martin’s memory from a young age was that her mother was unwell. She can remember ambulances coming to her home and her mother being taken away to psychiatric units for severe depressive episodes. Martin and her sister would be sent temporarily to an orphanage in Upper Hutt during these stints. Her other siblings were sent to stay with relatives.
Shock treatment was performed on her several times. Martin believes the first couple of shock treatments were done without anaesthetic.
She remembers she and her sister being scolded by nuns at the catholic school they attended, told their “naughtiness” had made their mother unwell.
Martin remembers being sad that her mother did not cuddle her “like other mothers cuddled their kids”, but also enjoys memories of her mother playing the piano.
“She was a wonderful pianist and people loved her music, and friends would get her to play for weddings. The happiest I ever saw my mother was playing the piano ... when I would see her happy, playing the piano, I looked at her and thought she looked like an angel.”
But such moments were overshadowed by the darkness, which included her time in the mental hospital in Porirua, Martin said.
She recalled many years ago her mother saying “if she would have to go back to Porirua Hospital again she would go missing and no one would find her”.
Patricia Burt (pictured) cared well for her four children despite her mental illness, Hilary Martin said.
Martin believes Burt’s fateful trip to Whitireia Park on April 4, 1988, was to follow through with that plan, and that her mother had committed suicide that day, aged 68.
Her brother reported Burt missing, but did not have any luck with police.
“[The officer] seemed invested but as soon as he said she went missing from Porirua Hospital he slammed his pen down on the desk and said ‘we don’t look for missing persons from Porirua Hospital’.”
Martin attributes this to the attitude at the time towards mental illness.
Knowing now where the skeleton was found, Martin suspects any search conducted by the police would have been unlikely to find it.
The remains were found partially buried under a bush up a steep 40-degree slope. They were only discovered because a man had gone off the path looking for seabird nests.
The remains were found off a walkway in Whitireia Park, Porirua. Image / Google Maps
Martin is not sure when they will receive what they believe to be her mother’s remains, but she and her family hoped to have them cremated, shared between Burt’s surviving children, and partially interred with their father, a World War I veteran who was buried in a soldier’s cemetery in Lower Hutt.
Martin said it was the war that brought her parents together, when her mum joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force in Upper Hutt. Her dad, Ormond Charles Hindle Burt, was 27 years older than Patricia and “adored her”.
Knowing her mother had been found after all these years was “a big comfort” and “huge relief”, as well as completely unexpected.
If she could say anything to her mother now, it would be that she can finally “understand the love”.
“I would say to her, I wish I knew and had the understanding of love for her today, back then. But back then I was, what’s the word? So damaged from my childhood that I could only see the negatives, whereas today I can see the positive with how she kept bringing up four children and being able to clothe us and feed us the way she did, with her mental illness.”
Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.
