It's only a matter of time, says victim's family

Harley Dear

Lois Dear's family have a message for her killer or killers. "You're probably wetting yourselves by now over what you have done and you know you just don't get away with this sort of stuff in New Zealand," the family said in a statement yesterday.

"We have seen first-hand the awesome organising the police are putting together to find you - which they will - it's only a matter of time."

The statement, written by Ms Dear's brother, Harley Dear, said the person or persons responsible for the murder of the 66-year-old Tokoroa teacher in her classroom should give themselves up.

"The way we see it is you have two, and only two choices to make - either give yourselves up now or sit there wetting yourselves in your hiding hole and wait for someone to dob you in and the police to dig you out.

"One of these options will probably be rougher than the other."

Mr Dear said someone, or perhaps more than one person, knew who had killed his sister and he pleaded with them not to protect the person or persons responsible.

"There may even be some loyalty to cover up for these people - so to those who think this way, we would just ask one thing - please explain in person directly to all the little schoolchildren, explain to Lois' teacher colleagues and friends, and explain to us, the family, why you feel it's so necessary to protect your friend/s from the justice they deserve for committing this murder."

Mr Dear thanked the Tokoroa community and others from outside the town who had helped police, but said more information was needed, no matter how irrelevant it seemed.

"As Lois' family, we are asking could you please dig a little deeper and come up with some more clues to give to the police."

A team of 25 officers are working up to 12 hours a day in a bid to find the person/s who killed Ms Dear.

"We don't want [the officers] to burn themselves out ... but last night, voluntarily they worked on," said Detective Inspector Garth Bryan, the officer heading the homicide inquiry.

"Most of the staff are doing in excess of 12-hour days ... while we have people wanting to speak to us we will stick around and speak to them."

Today is day five of Operation Strathmore and Mr Bryan said police still did not have a motive or firm suspect.

He said the public had offered names and descriptions to police in the past few days after extensive publicity about the senseless death of the much-loved new entrant schoolteacher.

Yesterday police were examining tyre marks down the road from where Ms Dear's car was dumped by the suspected killer. The marks, believed to be from Ms Dear's car, were left at the entrance to a paddock on the side of Mossop Rd.

Mr Bryan said keys had also been found but it was not known if they belonged to Ms Dear's car.