Missing Northland woman case a mystery, says searcher

Cristel de Vetten

Searchers looking for Northland woman Cristel de Vetten, now missing for 11 days, say it has been one of the most frustrating searches they have done.

Ms de Vetten disappeared on February 10 from her home at Matua Block near Kerikeri on February 10, leaving her four-year-old son Jaxon in the house.

She was depressed but left no clues she was suicidal and there was no sign of a struggle in the house. None of her personal possessions had been taken. Her car was still at the house and her clothes and money had not been touched.

Police fears were growing daily that she would not be found alive.

Searchers immediately began a systematic search of the area surrounding the house, looking in a 300m-wide area of thick bush and gorse.

They also looked for more than 30km up and down the coast outside the inlet where Ms de Vetten lived.

However, searchers said today they had nothing to go on and nowhere to start because police were so short of clues.

One searcher, who did not want to be named, said if she was known to be suicidal, they could go to favourite places, vantage points or logical points where she might have gone.

Ms de Vetten's family said she was uncharacteristically quiet before she disappeared.

However, searchers said she did not like the bush and seldom ventured into it from the comfort of her home.

"She never went into the bush."

It is understood she only once helped her partner John Craven with work on the property in the last few months.

"The rest of the time she stayed right inside the house so she wasn't a natural person to go into that bush," said the searcher.

He said the house was not far from an inlet and that gave searchers another option.

"One of the options we looked at was she simply walked down to the water, sat on the edge on a beautiful day, took a few pills and slid into the water.

"On Saturday, we did 36km of coastline in kayaks and poked into every nook and cranny we could."

He said had she died and her body been blown or washed ashore, they would have found her.

The searcher said it was "one of those really empty searches" because they had no facts to work from and no place to start searching.

- NZPA