KEY POINTS:
Police plan to follow up leads uncovered by psychics in the 15-year-old disappearance of Te Puke woman Judy Yorke.
Ms Yorke was last seen at an orchard party near the Bay of Plenty town in October 1992.
Her body has never been found but police suspect the 25-year-old mother of two was murdered.
Her case featured in this week's episode of Sensing Murder, the TV2 programme which uses psychics to examine unsolved murders and missing persons files.
Tauranga police yesterday confirmed that a man named by the psychics as Ms Yorke's killer was already a "person of interest" in the case. Another person identified as a witness was also known to detectives.
Detective Sergeant Lew Warner, the current head of the investigation, said both people had been spoken to at the time of the original inquiry but police had yet to speak to them again.
"We're doing some follow-up inquiries but at this stage there's nothing new."
He was reluctant to comment further on plans to pursue information revealed by the psychics but said police had also received three or four phone calls yesterday, following the screening of Tuesday night's episode.
Callers' information would be assessed and inquiries conducted depending on its relevance, he said.
The names of the suspect and witness were beeped out in the programme for legal reasons but psychics Sue Nicholson and Kelvin Cruickshank said the suspect was someone now in Australia.
They believed he had killed Ms Yorke in her car, dumped her body nearby and then been helped by others to dispose of it the following day - a theory the police officer who headed the original investigation into her murder told the Herald was "extremely plausible".
Former Detective Inspector Alan Collin said he had always been confident others had helped in disposing of the body and his hopes of solving the crime lay in someone who had been involved coming forward.
"If someone does have that right information, they're going to relieve the distress and unknown factors that the family have had to live with for 15 years," he said.
Ms Yorke lived with her young daughter, around the corner from her parents, who were raising her son.
The last reported sighting of her was early on October 22, 1992, at a packing shed on a Matapihi orchard just south of Mt Maunganui.
Ms Yorke had arrived at the party in her car, which was found back at her home in Te Puke the next day.
Her parents assumed she had gone off with friends but contacted police when she did not return for her daughter's birthday on October 28.
Mr Collin, 56, said that during his 34 years as a police officer, he had led only one unsolved murder investigation and he wanted desperately to find Ms Yorke's body.
He said finding out what happened had become less important to him than returning Ms Yorke to her family for a proper burial.
Ms Yorke's parents, Willie and Jane, did not want to comment yesterday, other than to say the psychics had proved what they had known all along.
