KEY POINTS:
Police today resumed the search near Taupo today for the body of Tauranga drug dealer Grant Adams two days after a businessman appeared in court accused of his murder.
A team of about 10 officers are concentrating the search on an area near the Wairakei Geothermal Power plant just north of Taupo.
Mr Adams, known in the criminal fraternity as "Granite", was reported missing last year by his mother and police believe that he may have been dead since December 2005.
Earlier this month police offered a $50,000 reward for information about Mr Adams, saying they believe he was killed after a drug deal went wrong.
On Thursday a 49-year-old Tauranga businessman appeared in Tauranga District Court accused of his murder and manufacturing methamphetamine.
He was granted interim name suppression and remanded in custody until Tuesday.
Police said the reward had not been claimed.
Meanwhile police rewards of $50,000 each for information on two other missing persons in the North Island are about to run out, with their disappearances no closer to being solved.
The rewards were offered in March for information on Kaye Stewart, 62, of Wellington, who went missing in the Hutt Valley in 2005, and Nicholas Pike, 22, of Palmerston North, who disappeared in Tauranga in 2002.
The reward relating to Mr Pike ends tomorrow. Mrs Stewart's will run out on July 13.
A similar $50,000 offer was made this week by Auckland police investigating the murder two years ago of Katrina Ann Jefferies, 22, of Mt Roskill. That offer expires on December 31.
- NZPA
- NZPA
