Police investigate mother's 'sighting' of missing son

Police are investigating a mother's claim that she recently spotted her son, who vanished in 1989.

Retired eye specialist Margaret Coop, 76, says she saw her son, Dunedin doctor Peter Coop, on a riverbank in March, but could not catch up to him.

The sighting was "somewhat tenuous" but police are treating it seriously, Senior Sergeant Stu Koefoed of Nelson Police told NZPA today.

Police are publishing a picture of Dr Coop in local newspapers in the hope he or someone who knows where he is will come forward.

Dr Coop vanished in Dunedin as he was about to attend an ophthalmology course, while his parents, eye specialists Douglas and Margaret Coop, were in Canberra.

Police believed he staged the disappearance because he felt under intense pressure to follow his high-performing parents into their speciality.

They retired to Christchurch in 1991, but returned to the family home in Nelson, where Peter and most of his siblings went to boarding school while their parents worked in Canberra.

After he vanished, lights were seen on at the Nelson home, prompting speculation he had gone there from Dunedin.

Dr Coop vanished seven months after he married, and his wife Galina had him declared legally dead so she could remarry. He would now be 42.

Several reported sightings across New Zealand of Dr Coop, who was 1.87m tall and had striking blue eyes, came to nothing, Mr Koefoed said.

Dr Coop's mother told police on Friday that she was walking on the Collingwood St Bridge over the Maitai River, looked down at the riverbank and saw a tall, thin man walking with a three- or four-year-old boy.

"He turned slightly and she got a partial view of his head and she believed quite firmly that that was her son," Mr Koefoed said.

She could not catch up to him, or get his attention.

"It seems somewhat strange that if he is looking much as he was when he went missing and he's from Nelson, and presumably with a child, that we haven't had any other sightings or any other reports during the last seven months."

However, the sighting was worth following up, and Mr Koefoed urged anyone with information or sightings of Dr Coop to contact Nelson police.

Dunedin police sent their file on the case to Nelson last week.

Peter's sister, Diana Coop, the conservator at Archives NZ in Wellington, said she and her sister Cynthia thought it more likely that Peter had left New Zealand if he was still alive.

- NZPA