Police identify dead NZ teen after three decades

Australian police have named a young man killed by a Melbourne train 36 years ago as New Zealand teenager Ricki Kunaiti.

The only clue police had to his identity was a surname on a payslip in his pocket, the Age newspaper reported.

Mr Kunaiti, 17, from Wairoa, died under a train at Richmond station on November 14, 1974.

Now his cousin Ira Te Amo, of Brisbane, plans to bring a photograph of Mr Kunaiti back to Wairoa, where she will place it on the tombstone of his mother, who died in 1977.

"Ricki was her only child and she never, ever believed he was dead," Ms Te Amo told the newspaper.

Ms Te Amo said it was a comfort to finally know what had happened to her cousin. Police in 1974 hoped the young man's unusual surname would lead to a quick identification, but attempts to locate his family proved fruitless.

The Kunaiti case was reopened after the Belier taskforce was established in January 2007 to investigate hundreds of cases involving unidentified human remains, which police had not compared with the characteristics of missing persons.

The 11 Belier detectives have investigated more than 200 unidentified human remains cases.

More than 100 have been solved by comparing the forensic and other identifying details of the cases to more than 500 missing persons files dating back to the 1960s.

Members of the crime identification squad used morgue photographs and a high-tech facial reconstruction computer program to create an image of the unknown teenager's face, published in Australian newspapers last August.

Ms Te Amo recognised the face of her cousin who had left New Zealand for Melbourne to find work, then disappeared.

This year Ms Te Amo joined police to officially farewell him in a memorial service held at Melbourne's Springvalecemetery.

Detective Sergeant David Butler, from the taskforce, told the Age it was "great" to give the family a sense of closure.

- NZPA